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A few weeks ago we joined forces with Insight Venture Partners to talk about how the GDPR will impact our day to day marketing actions. You can watch the recording of the webinar below if you haven't already.
One question that comes up time and time again is: After the 25th of May when the GDPR will be enforced, can I still reach out to connections on LinkedIn? Can I still use InMail to reach out to people who might make for interesting business connections?
We've reviewed these questions in this post on the Insight Venture Partners blog.
TL;DR
If you haven't had the time to read the full article. Here's the TL;DR answer: Yes, you can use LinkedIn for biz dev if you follow good marketing principles:
1. Don't scrape email address and spam.
2. Research the right people to contact.
3. Reach out through LinkedIn by connecting and sending a notification within the platform.
4. Ensure any InMail or message sent on LinkedIn is personal and adds value to the person being contacted.
5. Communicated one-on-one on LinkedIn.
6. If the person we reached out to doesn’t react, move on.
GDPR is not here to stop business development and keep you from building a healthy pipeline. It's asking us to add value and show respect to our prospects (aka data subjects).