Using Calendly And LinkedIn For Inbound Leads

linkedin for inbound leads

The main ingredients of the LinkedIn outreach funnel include templates, email, ads, requests, and a mix of other similar items, right?

Even though you will find plenty of lead generation tools on the market, connecting everything in a way that all work seamlessly is difficult and sometimes confusing.

If the thought of merging all these things scares you – no need to worry.

After spending hours on the Calendly LinkedIn integration with various other programs like Zapier, we have solved the matter for you.

Sounds good, right?

This automation process saves a lot of your precious time and allows you to focus only on lead generation.

By following the automation process that we will show you in this read, you can set up automatic follow-ups to build various reports after connecting with your leads on LinkedIn. Apart from it, you can also make your relationships stronger with your leads.

In simple words, set up the process, grab a cup of coffee, sit back, watch your leads come in, and the process will keep them engaged on different touchpoints instantly.

Ready?

Let’s begin!

Connect Your LinkedIn Leads with Calendly Integration

Like thousands of others, are you also using Calendly to schedule your appointments?

Regardless of your answer, you should consider what your potential buyers go through when they are filling up the form.

In most cases, they only want to talk about your business.

But keep in mind that:

They are not converted into customers yet. The chances are that they will be talking to any of your competitors at the same time, and many of them will be exploring other mediums.

And by no means it’s a bad thing. When a lead is on the initial level or “need” stage in your marketing funnel, they prefer to talk to other vendors to get the best deal and to determine which one solves their problems in the most appropriate way.

Now the only thing which can make you look better in front of your lead at this level is your communication, nothing else.

We agree that your advertising campaign, product, or service attracts customers a lot but not in the initial stage.

It’s your communication and approach that impact the buyer’s approach. That is why you need to stay in your leads about yourself, brand and services regularly.

Using this growth hack, you can quickly connect with your new LinkedIn business leads as soon as they fill the Calendly form. After that, you can send them follow-up messages if needed.

As your prospects will remember your name – they will naturally like to connect with you on LinkedIn.

That’s how you can gain a drastic request acceptance rate!

Here’s what the complete flow looks like:

When a lead fills the Calendly form, they will get a LinkedIn connection request from you after only 5 minutes, along with a personalized message and image. You can add other info that appeals to your prospects before the appointment.

Above all, all this will be fully automated courtesy of LinkedIn Calendly and Zapier’s integration.

Here is a brief description of how to set things up:

  • Always ask for the user’s LinkedIn URL in your Calendly form.
  • Connect your Calendly form with Zapier and LinkedIn automation tool.
  • Next, craft a new campaign.
  • Send a personalized connection request to your business leads.

Didn’t get it? Let me explain a bit more…

Setting up Calendly form.

First, go to your Calendly account and log into the account you want to use for this growth hack. And then look for the Edit option.

Now, go down a little bit, and you will see the “Invitee Questions” section.

Next, click on the “Add a New Question” option and make it required. We suggest you ask “What is your LinkedIn profile URL?” from the users.

Connect Calendly with your automation tool through Zapier

Now, you will have to integrate Calendly into your LinkedIn automation tool through Zapier.

Here’s how to do it:

First, check in to your official Zapier account and click on the Create a Zap option. Then, select Calendly as your app and Invitee Created as the trigger.

Then, choose your preferred Calendly account. If you are connected to Calendly at this time, you will have to modify your integrations settings. Here is how to do it.

Go to Calendly, then Integrations, and from here, you can grab the API key.

The last step is testing. To do it, look for someone who has already signed up for an appointment through Calendly form/link along with their LinkedIn profile’s URL. You can also book a call by yourself for the testing.

Note: If you are using Calendly’s team account instead of a single user account, we will recommend you ensure that everything is connected properly.

Now, you can connect the Zapier with your automation tool and select Webhooks by Zapier as your app. You can do this via the Action Event option. Then continue.

For the next part, you need the URL for the reversed webhook in your automation tool.

To do that, log into your automation tool, select your campaign’s name, and copy the URL that you can use for the integrations section.

Now, go back to Zapier and paste the copied URL in the appropriate field. Then, set the JSON for the Payload type.

Finally, you can map the Data with the relevant questions that you have. You can use some other fields here, such as the user’s first name, last name, etc. Like so:

Lastly, click on the test & continue. If everything is fine, you have added a demo person to your campaign.

With this process, you will automatically connect to your LinkedIn leads when they book an appointment with you via Calendly.

Now comes the sequence for your LinkedIn connection requests and follow-up.

For this purpose, you can use the below-mentioned templates after adjusting according to your brand.

Template for Connection request message:

“This is an automated connection request {user’s first name}, we just wanted to say ‘Hi.’

I’m (your representative’s name) from the marketing department at (your firm name). We don’t know about each other personally yet, but we are pumped that you booked a call with our firm.

Talk to you soon.”

Then, don’t forget to follow up after connecting with them.

If you didn’t get a reply from them even after the follow-up, sent the last follow-up email. Something like this:

“Didn’t get any reply on my email {first_name}, so just want to ensure is everything all right?”

However, don’t stop there…

The first rule of sales is to develop relationships with your new customers. And the most appropriate way to do that is to remain in contact with those prospects. Plus, you should have the latest info about them.

So, to take this whole process to the next level, you can connect it to your CRM. By doing so, your leads will receive an automated follow-up email (we recommend Lemlist) after the call.

Now, things will work like this:

  • First, a demo will be booked through your Calendly form or link.
  • Then, they will get a personalized LinkedIn connection request with a follow-up message.
  • They will get on a call with your team.
  • They will receive an email follow-up via Lemlist.
  • And you will get their contact information on your CRM.
  • Now, let’s move on to the next section:

Connecting Your CRM and follow-up via E-Mail:

The first thing is to create a Zap. Select Webhooks by Zapier; you will find it under Choose App & Event tab.

Next, select a Trigger Event, and choose Catch Hook.

Then, add that webhook to your automation tool.

In your automation tool, select Webhooks and look for the ‘Add a webhook; option.

Here, input the following details in the appropriate field:

  • Name for your hook.
  • The event you want your webhook to be triggered for.
  • Select your campaign.
  • Now, paste the copied URL.
  • Lastly, create a new webhook.

Now, go again to Zapier, and click on Test & Review. You can see the results in the Find Data section. Finally, click on the Done Editing button to go to the next step.

Final touch-ups and adding your email campaign into the Process:

For the last section, you will need to set up a Lemlist email campaign that will send your leads an automatic follow-up reply.

Here is how you can set up an email campaign in Lemlist:

  • First, log in, and start a new campaign.
  • Select a name for your campaign.
  • Then, add your prospects to the campaign.

Now, choose or design the templates that you will use for your outreach emails. For this, we will recommend you to select Blank Email because it’s more suitable to write your own personalized template.

From here, you can also select the time delay after your prospect reviewed to send an email.

To finish the campaign’s settings, select your time zone, along with other details.

In the last section of your Lemlist campaign is to select additional options such as the email from which requests will be sent, when to pause or stop the process, and more.

Now, you need to go back again to Zapier and connect this section to the webhook.

In the End:

After following this lengthy guide and the process, you can continue generating new business leads in a true Omnichannel way.

The best and beneficial thing about this strategy is that every time your prospects book an appointment with your team, they will receive an automatic LinkedIn connection request.

Because of these inbound leads, you can easily achieve a drastic and much higher connection request acceptance rate on LinkedIn.

And once your prospects got off the call with you or your team, they will receive email follow-up messages automatically.

In this way, you will be working on your business lead’s minds, and it is also the perfect way to keep prospects engaged on multiple touchpoints. 

Above all, the whole process will be fully automated, and you can focus on other important parts of your brand.

Co-founder and CEO at Closely – Lead Intelligence and Sales Automation Platform.