LinkedIn Salesforce Integration Overview. Can it provide an edge to LinkedIn users?

LinkedIn is the fastest growing platform with 800 million+ users; LinkedIn could be very helpful for entrepreneurs, agencies, start-ups and even individuals. There would rarely be an individual or business that has not heard about it. LinkedIn is mostly used to generate leads and engage with people with similar ideas, or it could be helpful for someone who is looking for a job.

One can also use LinkedIn for branding their product or service among such a huge audience. But it is a very tedious task to use LinkedIn for outreach, especially when you want to interact with people in bulk. One can use LinkedIn Sales Navigator or a LinkedIn automation tool for lead gen, However, LinkedIn also offers integration with Salesforce so that one can use the functionalities of both the tools with better features and improved user interface.

Basically, in LinkedIn Salesforce Integration, you can blend a LinkedIn account with a CRM to boost your sales efficiently. Let’s discuss more about LinkedIn Salesforce Integration and how it can help your business.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that provides easy ways to reach prospects. Salesforce has been one of the most popular CRM software used by small and large businesses. It is a powerful cloud-based software that you can use to develop a sales funnel and convert leads into long-term customers.

In addition to this, You can do different activities in one place, like creating and managing your customer contact lists, tracking their sales cycle, keeping a tab on their buying preferences and much more. All this data is stored in the cloud so that you can access it from anywhere, anytime. Salesforce can also be integrated with third-party apps like Gmail, but here we will discuss its integration with LinkedIn.

But firstly, you need to know about the LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

Sales Navigator is a better variant of LinkedIn designed for salespeople. It is basically a paid version with some brilliant features making lead generation easier and provide an edge over the accessible version of LinkedIn, especially for beginners. it also comes with some criteria and algorithms to provide you with the best. In addition, you can also view data and analytics to know how your journey is going. It is essential to track all your activities from the beginning to fill every gap. Sales Navigator helps you target people quickly and close excellent deals with them.

LinkedIn Salesforce Integration

The integration of LinkedIn with Salesforce uplifts the social networking platform, leading to a better configuration of LinkedIn. You can take numerous actions on one platform without needing to switch the tabs repeatedly. An individual can also find some good leads which would be based on your targeted audience.

Data regarding your prospects can also be brought on to the CRM. This data can further be used to reach out to the people and in nurturing the leads. Salesforce’s pipeline also makes it effortless to manage the leads. Moreover, this integration allows you to look out for people using the advanced search feature.

And if you use it with LinkedIn sales navigator, you get access to certain other functions as well, like reaching out to people who are not in your connections through Inmails and can get high-quality leads that perfectly match your search. One can also view real-time insights and use a personalized way to connect with others.

Benefits of LinkedIn Salesforce Integration

Accessible from anywhere

As mentioned earlier, this cloud-based service can be accessed from any place around the globe; you can access your important files anywhere and can get in touch with your clients even when you are on vacation.

Organized Management

Using this CRM platform, you can effectively interact with the leads and organize them in a better way and can easily access different data related to them.

Easy data analysis

One can also easily track and analyze the performance of their sales teams by analyzing the data of leads or customers.

Better collaboration with teams

This Salesforce integration also helps in better collaboration among team members as they can easily communicate with each other using this platform.

Options For Integrating Salesforce with LinkedIn:

• AppExchange
• APIs

AppExchange

This is a popular way to integrate Salesforce with LinkedIn. In this process, you need to install the AppExchange software package and then connect your LinkedIn and Salesforce accounts. And after setting up the things, you can perform various actions in Salesforce like:

• Importing the CRM contacts
• Using Inmails in your Salesforce
• Viewing lead-related data
• Personalization option

APIs

Another method that you can use is API or native integration to sync your Sales navigator account with Salesforce. All the significant data will be imported from your LinkedIn account from Salesforce. Let’s have a brief look at what type of data can be imported:

• Contact records
• Account Data
• Suggested leads

Third-Party Applications

Another method that can be used to integrate Salesforce with LinkedIn is by using a third-party platform. For example, one can use Zapier to sync the platforms. Also, Zapier can be integrated with some other automation tools, like Salesrobot.

How to integrate Salesforce with LinkedIn?

Before we begin with this, you need to note some prerequisites:

• The administrative rights for Salesforce must be held by you.
• You must have a LinkedIn sales navigator enterprise plan or team plan.
• For installation, a browser enabled with javascript is a must.
  

Firstly, you must log in to your salesforce account and download the LinkedIn package from AppExchange. After installation, you must select the Salesforce option and enter the required credentials. Then you can add details of the Sales Navigator account. Further, you can use different options to expand your network easily and personally after setting up different things.

Top 3 Sales Engagement and Automation tools

The difference between a CRM  and an automation tool is that CRM software is exclusively designed for sales purposes. In contrast, the latter can be used for marketing purposes, connection building or cold outreach.

Outreach.io

Outreach.io is a sales engagement tool with the calibre to boost the growth of your organization by interacting with different customers. Some sales-related functions offered by this platform include:

• Analysis of activities- One can analyze all the actions that have been taken on this platform and manage the leads in a very interactive way.
• CSV importing- You can easily add the database of sales contacts from a CSV to Outreach.io to engage with them.
• Email analytics- Outreach.io offers a detailed email analysis where you can check the open, bounce, and email deliverability rates at one platform.

Shortcomings

• It has a complex user interface.
• Poor customer service
• No Zapier integration

Salesrobot

Salesrobot is a Linkedin automation tool that can help you connect with prospects efficiently. It offers hyper-personalization options to use Images/GIFs and templates to interact with the audience. Though Salesrobot doesn't allow direct integration with Salesforce, with the help of Zapier, you can use the power of the LinkedIn network with the Automation tool and a secure CRM that allows you to manage multiple campaigns accounts and more.

Let's understand how you can connect Salesforce with Salesrobot.

Salesrobot can integrate very well with Zapier using webhooks and further to Salesforce to take your Linkedin game to the next level.

Here are some of the features Salesrobot offers:

Option for email enrichment- The tool will easily find and verify your prospects' business email addresses. Because Salesrobot has integrated data from a verified email address, the chances of a mismatch or difficulties in verification are minimized.

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Smart Inbox- Using Salesrobot’s smart inbox feature, you can manage all your messages in one place in an organized manner. So message management has become much easier because of this function.

Smart campaigning- With this feature, you can easily create, manage and monitor your LinkedIn outreach campaigns to get better results. Our automation tool can even set a sequence of messages that are to be sent according to the lead’s behaviour.

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Shortcomings

Salesrobot is specially designed for Linkedin, so it cannot be used to engage with users from other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Reddit etc. It can also not be integrated with Salesforce.

Salesrobot’s integration with Zapier

Though Salesrobot doesn’t directly engage with LinkedIn Salesforce integration, you can use Zapier to form a channel between SalesRobot and Linkedin salesforce integration. The question now is, why use Zapier with Salesrobot?

• To integrate with Salesforce- As said earlier, you can use Salesrobot to link it with Zapier and then it can be integrated with salesforce providing an edge to your campaigns.
• To automate repetitive tasks- Zapier can be used to automate the tasks that you frequently do, like sending event reminders every week.
• To move data- Zapier is a great platform if you want to import or export data within two apps like Facebook and Gmail.

How to Integrate Zapier with Salesrobot?

• First, you must go to the Integrations tab and then to the Configure option in webhooks.
• You need to Add Integration now; for this, you need to go to your Zapier Dashboard and then choose ‘Webhooks by Zapier’ in the Create Zap tab.

• Now in Zapier, you need to choose the event; there are three options available for this; namely, Retrieve poll, Catch raw hook and Catch hook. From this list, you need to select one as per your requirements.

• A Callback URL will be created in Zapier, copied and come back to Salesrobot and pasted into the Callback field. Now choose the type of update and the campaign that you want to connect to.
• Then you need to ‘test webhook’ and Trigger it in Zapier. The campaign is now linked with Zapier.
• Now you can continue to set an App event where you need to choose Salesforce and then choose the event.
• Further, sign in to your Salesforce account and allow Zapier to access it. Fill in the required attributes in ‘Set up action’ like lead source, Industry, status etc.
• Lastly, Publish the zap after retesting and reviewing it.

Groove

Groove is another sales engagement platform which is a native of Salesforce. It can be used by salespeople to easily administer their daily tasks and boost revenue per rep. Groove is built for specific workflows related to the industry so that the scalability can be increased and you can engage with relevant prospects.

Features Of Groove:

• Activity Tracking- This is a fundamental function. You can track the updates related to your meetings, emails or calls.
• Email scheduling and reminders- Using Groove, one can also schedule emails and can get reminders related to critical future events.
• Contact update- You can directly update contacts from your Gmail using Salesforce Integration.

Shortcomings

• There could be some issues while connecting Groove with Salesforce.
• The interface is not very intuitive.

Final Thoughts

Salesforce is a platform that can be a boon for your Linkedin journey. Here, you can customize all your activities according to the requirement. The integration of Salesforce with Linkedin is done to derive the best leads for you. Moreover, you can manage your leads in a better way and keep track of customer data in a standardized way.

Integration of such a huge social networking platform with a CRM can bring some excellent results for sales teams due to a cut-above interface and an increased number of features due to collaboration. Another advantage that it brings is the use of advanced filters; though it is already provided with a Linkedin sales navigator, Linkedin salesforce integration definitely improves the search results. And if you want cold outreach, with customized engagement with people, then you can use automation tools.