InMail LinkedIn – How To Use It

By following these best practice tips you will increase your InMail response rates and engage with your prospective customers more easily.

• Focus on quality versus quantity.
• Don’t inundate your recipients’ inboxes. It’s okay to send a follow-up InMail if a suitable time frame has elapsed, but don’t re-send someone the same message again and again.

Write a compelling subject line

• Make your purpose clear and give them a reason to want to learn more.
• Consider mentioning your company name or theirs, or asking a question.
• Be brief.
• Be polite and to the point. Shorter is better.

Start a conversation

• More ‘salesy’ type InMails get lower response rates. Instead start a conversation.
• Personalise your messages
• Customise your messages and make them highly personalised. Avoid spam and canned messages.Consider some of the following:
• Demonstrate that you’ve done your homework on the recipient’s company.
• Mention a common contact.
• Refer to a common LinkedIn group.
• Comment on a LinkedIn group posting (theirs or someone else’s).
• Discuss a common company, experience, or personal interest based on reading their profile.

Ask for an opinion

• Make it about them.
• Make it about their needs, interests, and goals and not just your product or service. Avoid product and service descriptions.

Develop a clear call to action

• Make the next steps clear. Assuming that the InMail is forwarded as InMails frequently can be by CEO’s will it be clear what the recipient should do?
• Combine InMail with other contact methods.
• By itself InMail can generate response rates substantially higher than email or cold calls. Some industry consultants have increased contact to meeting ratios with InMail as much as 8% using a multi-contact approach (InMail + email and/or phone calls).
• Mix it up and find the pattern and approach that generates the best response rates for you.

Select recipients carefully

• Who you choose to InMail matters as much as what you say. Recipient response rates are likely to be higher for active LinkedIn users (high number of connections, member of many LinkedIn groups, frequent updates, and complete profile).
• Remember the option to ‘Get Introduced’.

InMail may not always be the most direct path.

• Where appropriate, take advantage of the LinkedIn option to ‘get introduced’ (one of the ‘connect’ options along with ‘Send InMail’). The two most successful ways to gain access to a senior executive are through an internal referral (someone in their company) and an external referral (someone outside their company that they know and trust).

Build your sales profile

• The first thing an InMail recipient will do is review your profile. Poor profiles reduce InMail response rates. Review tips for building a sales profile and make sure you have a profile that builds your credibility and potential value.

Note: Always send on Monday’s between 9:00-10:00am and indicate that you know something about them in your email.

Let me know if these tips have been helpful by leaving me a comment below.