A colleague of mine complained recently that he didn’t think LinkedIn was useful for generating leads. Maybe you’ve felt the same way. Just imagine how your business would change if you started getting leads from fellow LinkedIn users delivered straight to your email inbox.
You can if you sign up for an account with OPPRTUNITY. (And no, I did not mispell the word “opportunity.”) How does it work? You log in with your LinkedIn account* (or sign up using your email address) and OPPRTUNITY grabs what it needs to create your account including location, image, etc. Then, you choose one of three reasons why you’re using the service: to secure leads, to find job opportunities or job candidates. The answer will determine what opportunites the service sends your way.
*NOTE: As of May, 2014 – LinkedIn no longer lets OPPRTUNITY users use their credentials to log in to the service. You must use (or create an account) with your email address.
Next, you have to choose from over 500 industry and skill sets to let the network know what you and/or your business is all about. Then, you tell OPPRTUNITY what your business needs and/or who you like to partner with. Or, in the case of employment – what types of jobs or candidates you are looking for.
Once you’ve done all that, OPPRTUNITY scans its database of registered members for opportunities happening in your region each day, and sends alerts to your inbox and mobile phone. The service also gives you multiple ways to communicate with the lead, including email, phone, skype and more.
You’ll get 3 leads per month for free, 10 leads per month for $30, and unlimited leads for $50 per month.
So, is it worth it? I’m not paying for the service yet. Most of the emails I’ve gotten lately have been encouraging me to upgrade to unlock additional leads. Of the free leads I have received, most haven’t panned out, until recently. A fellow OPPRTUNITY user contacted me and after a couple of discussions, we’ve decided to partner up to create an online marketing course. She’s a web designer with email and social media expertise, which compliments my copywriting and social media expertise! I’m really excited to be working with her. You’ll be hearing more about this new project in the months ahead.
I almost forgot a new feature that OPPRTUNITY launched that I’m going to try out. You can import the email addresses for your LinkedIn contacts and OPPRTUNITY will search through those contacts to find potential leads for your business. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time searching on LinkedIn for prospects, OPPRTUNITY can be a useful tool. Although, you do have to pay to get unlimited leads. But if the lead generates enough business for you, it could be worth the cost.
Will you give OPPRTUNITY a try? Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
Image courtesy: freedigitalphotos.net / imagerymajestic
I’m glad to hear the service worked for you. My biggest issue with Opprtunity is their spamming of invites to all contacts in a user’s address book after signing up. Unless you’re very careful and read the small-print thoroughly, your contacts will receive a seemingly endless stream of email invitations from Opprtunity. There’s no apparent way to stop this once it has happened, which suggests serious issues with data privacy & ownership on Opprtunity.
Potentially, this is a good service, but I and many other people I know have now spam-blocked all emails send from Opprtunity’s domain on server level, which means that new invites will go straight to the bin. Naturally, this limits the usefulness of Opprtunity. Until Opprtunity has sorted out this issue, apologise to users, and given members greater control of how their data is being used, I will keep away from the website.
Martin,
I didn’t realize that Opprtunity was going to do that invite business when I signed up with them initially. I have gotten emails from contacts about that. I hope they’ll get things straightened out soon.
I didn’t sign up because they smell like a spammer, and it turns out they are. I’ve heard from many people I know that they left LinkedIn for doing the same. No idea if they are still doing it, but they took huge hit for it.
I think Opprtunity is dead given that they are using such sleazy tactics.
Kyle,
Thanks for your feedback. I wrote this article several months ago, before they left LinkedIn. I had hoped it would be a good service, but I’ve heard many complaints too. Looks like it’s time to update the article!
It’s dreadful. Stay away from it. Here is my latest attempt to extract myself from their sales deluge:
Your platform is so miserably restricted on the free version that it is impossible to make an assessment as to value. You are unresponsive. Your ‘manage subscriptions’ link doesn’t allow you to stop notification – it doesn’t take you to somewhere where you can manages subscriptions at all. You deluge me with upgrade sales information. Your categories are so restricted that they are irrelevant. I cannot find a way to close my account. Great start to what looked like a good idea, but there is no way I am going anywhere near this and as soon as I can find a way to close my account, I will.
I feel your pain, Lewis. I wrote this article a long time ago. Need to update it! I haven’t used Opprtunity in a while for some of the reasons you mentioned. Better to just use LinkedIn directly as a way to look for prospects and cultivate relationships. Thanks for sharing your experience!
I just had my first email from Opprtunity to connect with a LinkedIn associate. I came across your post here and after reading some of your comments I have decided to avoid it. I have Unroll.me for all this emails you get because you like something but can’t be bothered to read all their marketing email. It is supposed to unsubscribe so I will see how it goes, else it goes to gmail spam that won’t help their cause. Thanks for the heads up from everyone. It’s a shame that they have a flawed business model otherwise it could have been a good idea.
It is a shame, Peter. It started out as a decent product. I keep getting emails from them on behalf of an old connection. I guess I should probably just delete my account now. I never go in there.
Just disputed a charge to my credit card by Opprtunity after opting out (I thought) at least six months ago.
Sorry to hear that Doug! I don’t use Opprtunity anymore either.