A specialty voluntary-benefits firm had let their LinkedIn campaign go quiet during a busy fourth quarter. When they came back, they had a complicated request. They wanted two campaigns running in parallel: one for recruiting independent district agents, and a brand new one for direct business-to-business outreach to HR teams. Different audiences, different copy, same software, same shop.
George, the founder of a specialty voluntary-benefits firm, had been one of our earlier customers. The original campaign was about recruiting independent agents in his district. It worked. It paused for the holidays. By the time he came back, his needs had grown.
The recruiting need was still there, but it was no longer urgent. He had a backlog of warm relationships from a couple of strong recruits the previous year, and his team was still working through that block. What was urgent was a brand new motion. He wanted to put one of his best salespeople on a direct B2B campaign aimed at HR professionals and small-to-midsize business owners. Different audience, different message, different intent.
The risk was that the recruiting copy and the sales copy would bleed into each other and confuse the prospects. Both would say the firm's name. Both would mention voluntary benefits. To the LinkedIn algorithm, and probably to a busy HR director, they would look identical.
The team did not invent anything new. We applied a discipline we have applied for several customers running multiple campaigns at once. The unfair advantage was that we knew which corners would get cut if nobody enforced them.
Once both campaigns were running, the most useful thing we could tell the customer was how differently the two performed, even though they were running side by side from the same account.
Above the twenty to forty percent target. District managers and producers are easy to reach because they are looking for who is hiring. The recruiting opener does not need to work hard.
Lower, but still inside the healthy band. HR directors and benefits administrators get more outreach than producers do. The bar to win their attention is higher and the connection rate reflects that.
Across both campaigns combined. The fully-managed motion was the entire point. He had to look at the inbox at all only when something escalated, which it did once or twice a week.
Paraphrased from a recorded check-in, with permission and with all identifying details removed.
This is the third case in the Field Notes series. The variations across the three keep teaching us how the same software fits very different customers.
His advice to other firms looking to do something similar is practical. The software can run two campaigns easily. The hard part is the inbox, because the inbox is one human team trying to hold two different conversations at once. Pay attention to whether the team responding to your prospects can switch tone when the campaign tag switches. If they can, two motions is fine. If they cannot, run them sequentially, not in parallel.
The firm still has both campaigns running. The recruiting motion is on a slower setting now that the early block is fully worked. The sales motion is still ramping.
It can be done well. It can also be done poorly. We have learned which side of that line takes more setup work and we will not let you cut the corners.