For almost all sales managers, the real power of the LinkedIn platform lies in LinkedIn InMail. InMail is one of the most effective and best ways to work on your sales activities on LinkedIn. The feature is amazing as it allows you to reach out to high business leads directly and with high conversion rates and CTR.
LinkedIn InMail works flawlessly for sales — but is it the appropriate option for sales outreach? This guide answers this for you along with other key details about LinkedIn InMail.
What is InMail?
Let’s get straight to the topic. LinkedIn’s InMail feature allows you to send messages directly to other LinkedIn profiles even if you’re not linked with them.
This feature extends your ability to reach out to prospects and users you want to connect with due to any reason. Whether you want to approach them for a sales opportunity or influencer outreach.
Furthermore, InMail messages are restricted to only 200 characters in the subject, while you can write messages containing up to 1900 characters or approx. 350 words.
What are InMail Credits, and How can I get them?
The InMail credits mean how many InMail messages can send to other LinkedIn users even if you’re not connected to them. The number of InMail credits that you will get depends on your account type:
- However, if you have a LinkedIn Premium account, you will get 5 InMails monthly.
- A LinkedIn Sales Navigator Professional account offers 20 InMails per month.
- Team version provides you 30 InMails.
- Free LinkedIn account doesn’t have any InMail credits at all.
InMail For Outreach: Is it effective?
Nowadays, most users are frustrated with a connection limit of 20 per day or 100 connection requests per week. If that’s the case with you, think about changing your outreach.
Moreover, if you are getting the new Linkedin’s connection limit like many others, it is due to these reasons:
- Your acceptance rate is down or less than 70% averagely.
- Your LinkedIn profile is not properly warmed up or requires boosting of your LinkedIn SSI.
- You have several pending connection requests.
LinkedIn can restrict your outreach connection requests at any time, even if you follow the regulations and use the platform in the right way.
Further Reading: Tips for sending InMail linkedin
This is the latest update by LinkedIn, and you need to get used to it. This keeps you vigilant and works as a reminder to make your LinkedIn campaigns more beneficial.
But the good thing is, as per our observations, if more than 70% of people accept your connection requests, LinkedIn will give you a bit of leverage and offer more invites than standard as more users are accepting your connection requests.
We cannot determine what LinkedIn’s purpose behind this change is. But we can say that they are trying to get more users to connect with others, especially who are known to each other.
Suppose you are suffering from this latest LinkedIn update. In that case, we have a fresh and efficient solution for you. By following it, you can easily avoid this connection limit entirely and book many calls via automated open InMails.
But the first thing you need to do is re-optimize your original outreach campaign. And here, you will also need to open LinkedIn InMails. Here are some ways to re-optimize your outreach campaigns.
How to re-optimize LinkedIn Outreach Campaigns
First things come first; if you are disturbed by this new update, you are doing something in the wrong way.
So, it would be wise if you reconsider and re-optimize your outreach campaigns to get maximum conversions.
Moreover, try to take this connection limit as an opportunity, and by spending a bit of your time, you can easily improve your LinkedIn outreach campaigns.
With the positive approach you can:
- Build your customer personas.
- Change and experiment with your targeting.
- Test outreach templates.
Let’s briefly discuss them below.
Building out your customer personas further
At this point, you must have a clear understanding of your target audience and market. You should know the following details about your audience:
- In which groups do they usually hang out and why?
- What type of content or LinkedIn posts they like or engage with.
- What content they prefer the most.
After knowing all the essential details about your target market, it will be beneficial for you to define your B2B audiences into:
- Engagers – Users who remain highly active like your posts, but they never buy from you.
- ICP – People who are working in the same work industry and seamlessly fit in your customer persona.
- Event organizers – These types of users arrange and host events you want to speak at or are related to your work. Then, you can scrape those LinkedIn events and connect with like-minded people.
- Co-pilots – Includes those users who have the same target market but provide different solutions to the users.
Switch and experiment with your targeting
According to the experts, the connection limitation is slowly becoming the new standard, and marketers need to modify their outreach as well.
In our opinion, if more people accept your LinkedIn connection requests, you can more invites.
This will work as an incentive for all LinkedIn marketers, and they will work to achieve an acceptance rate of up to 70% on averagely.
For this purpose, the below mentioned outreach strategies and targeting can be more successful:
- Group scraping marketing strategy.
- Retargeting via LinkedIn content.
- LinkedIn personalization outreach campaigns.
- Prospects targeting using specific tools.
- Omni-channel outreach campaigns with hyper-personalization.
LinkedIn Open InMail Best Practices
Before we discuss the use of automated InMail outreach function, it’s better to go through some of the best LinkedIn InMail best practices.
When sending LinkedIn InMails, keep following things in your mind as these are the best practices:
- Keep things simple and to the point
- Get personalize.
- Include a CTA.
- Re-check the targeting.
These are some of the best practices that industry experts recommend when running InMail outreach campaigns. Initially, these hacks may look obvious, but they are extremely effective in getting great responses. So, let’s have a look.
Keep it simple and direct.
No one likes to read an InMail that is too long or out of context. Most business people have busy schedules, and they don’t like the long LinkedIn message, especially if it is a cold InMail from a stranger.
You can include 200 characters in the subject line of InMail messages and around 2,000 characters in the body paragraph.
Further Reading: LinkedIn Character Limit 2023
If used properly, these are enough to grab the prospect’s attention, and your InMail can generate a higher response rate than the traditional cold requests.
Personalize
It is another way to grab a prospect’s attention. Most users don’t like that old stuff and traditional LinkedIn templates. So, personalization works if done properly.
It is also seen that many users follow traditional approach such as names, organization name, and generic compliments that is applicable for everyone. In this case, conversational messages are more suitable than formal ones.
However, personalized messages are not generic and are suitable for only one prospect. In simple words, you cannot use your personalized messages or lines for all of your prospects.
Include a clear CTA
No matter what is the objective of your outreach campaign, you must include a clear CTA at the mail’s end.
The point is, if a prospect is speed reading your message (which most people do), they will see a clear CTA at the end that indicates what the message is about.
Even if they read your message on the go and sense that you are not asking anything specific, they will assume your cold message doesn’t matter and won’t bother reading.
Alternatively, if they skip to the message’s end and see that you’re asking about their preferred mode and time, they will definitely get the hint that you want to get on a call. Then, the chances are that they will read the rest of your message to determine whether it is relevant or not.
Following are the best LinkedIn CTAs:
- Request for your time on a call.
- Asking for thoughts on my article.
- Endorsement request.
- Joining a group.
- And more.
Lastly, ensure that your CTA is as per your LinkedIn campaign’s objective.
Take advantage of the A/B Testing
As in other forms of marketing and advertising, it is always advisable to tests your ads all the time. The same applies to LinkedIn Sponsored InMails.
Some vital elements that you should test on a regular basis include:
- Your Subject lines.
- CTA buttons.
- Visuals and Images.
- The opening para of your messages.
- Closing sentences.
- The overall length of InMail messages.
Keep testing end experimenting with other elements and versions! However, ensure that only modify one feature at a time. Because if you modify too many variables at the same time, things can become confusing and messy.
Double-check the targeting.
Last but the most essential point is double-checking your targeting. Whether you are using the best LinkedIn outreach templates, timely follow-ups, and well optimized LinkedIn profile, but if your messages are not to the point or according to your target audience, all of your efforts will go in vain, and you can lose your campaign.
Thus, ensure that you are approaching and targeting the right and relevant people. Otherwise, you can suffer from LinkedIn’s 100 connection per week limit.
By following the above mentioned best LinkedIn InMail practices, you can easily achieve some serious and desired results.
Now let’s take a detailed look at LinkedIn Automated InMail and how to use it efficiently to book more appointments.
LinkedIn Automated InMail
By using LinkedIn open InMails along with other outreach growth hacks, you can create a fruitful campaign. Besides, this also helps to bypass LinkedIn’s connection limit.
But first – what is LinkedIn open InMail?
LinkedIn open InMail: explained
If you are using a premium Sales Navigator subscription, you can send open InMails to the other users that are also open, even if you are not connected to them.
To become an open profile member, you need a premium LinkedIn subscription. And then, you view the full profiles of other premium users who have enabled “open profile.”
LinkedIn has set a limit of 800 FREE open InMails for premium users in one calendar month. And this will help you to bypass LinkedIn’s connection weekly limit!
If you are a new LinkedIn new user and just starting, we recommend you take a slow but steady start and first get used to the open InMail outreach. We advise you to keep it 25 per day max initially.
To launch and use an open InMail campaign, follow these simple steps:
- Go to the Campaign option and choose ‘Add campaign.’
- Then, click on the InMail campaign.
- Now, you can write your messages. Then, add leads to your campaign by using the ‘Search’ feature. After completing the search, you can filter out the results as per your preferences. From here, you can also check whether or not the prospects received your open InMail.
- Then look for the ‘Assignment Filter’ and select Show open ‘InMail,’ and you can filter out those profiles that can receive open InMails.
- Now, you can select and assign them into your campaign.
- Finally, you are all set to launch the campaign.
InMail LinkedIn Examples
Personalization based on a shared interest in the same post (post engagement)
1 Step. Connection message
Hello {first_name},
Just saw your comment here https://bit.ly/linktothepost I checked out {name_of_company};
I love what you’re doing over there. It would be nice to grow from each other!
2 Step. Invitation to join the group
Hey! Thanks for connecting with me. We at {my_company_name} are working on creating useful and practical content for (audience).
I guess it might be insightful for you too ✨
We share:
- (Specify)
- (Specify)
- (Specify)
Join us here: https://bit.ly/linktotheresource
Personalization based on a shared event + job title
1 Step. Connection message
Hey {first_name},
Saw you at this event https://bit.ly/linktotheresource
Amazing stuff, huh?
Hope we can connect and stay in touch from now on. Always happy to meet like-minded people 🙀😃🤹🏻♀️🌱
2 Step. Invitation to join the group
Hey there! Thanks for adding me. I was thinking that maybe you’ll find some value in our group https://bit.ly/linktotheresource, since we cover many topics that are quite relevant for those who’re passionate about (field). There are (value within the group) fresh hacks, templates, downloadable content. Will be awesome to see you there.
Personalization based on a company name
1 Step. Connection message
Hey {first_name}! I have been following your work with {company_name} for some time, and was really impressed about what you guys are doing. I’m interested in (specify). Let’s connect?
2 Step. Struggle + Solution
Heey, thank you for adding me. We at {my_company_name} have tested numerous ways of (specify).
Have you ever wondered how to (specify how you solve a struggle).
I’ve come through a lot of ups and downs myself in this area. Would love to talk a bit more about this with a professional. Are you available for a chat?
3 Step. Follow-up
Heey, {first_name}. Just wanted to find out whether you’ve received my message. Since I haven’t got any response from you, I assumed it might get lost 👺{my_first_name}.
4 Step. Wrap-up
Since I haven’t received any reply from you, I assume you’re not interested in communication. It breaks my heart, but I'm a tough bird 🐦
In case you’d like to get acquainted with the new proven ways to (topic), here is my article https://bit.ly/linktotheresource
Best, {my_first_name}.
See more templates at the link “Template for InMail“.
In the End
There we are at the end of this comprehensive guide about using LinkedIn InMail for your outreach campaigns and other marketing activities.
It doesn’t matter what your business goals are; you can reach out to professionals, companies, and business owners via LinkedIn InMail. Besides, it is also an excellent way to build up a relevant and active community of followers to get qualified leads.
