10 LinkedIn InMail Best Practices for B2B Sales

What is a LinkedIn InMail?

LinkedIn InMails are messages that an individual sends to a specific LinkedIn contact. These messages typically include company updates, invitations for events, referral requests, and more.

Although LinkedIn InMails have been around since 2007, many people still confuse the term with email messages. That’s unfortunate because it is not an email message but rather a message sent directly to someone through their social media site – in this case LinkedIn.

This article will give you the basic information on what LinkedIn InMails are and how they can help you grow your professional network without sending emails over and over again!

LinkedIn InMail and what are their functions?

LinkedIn Inmails are used to:

1. Remind your LinkedIn contacts about upcoming events and invite them to attend the meeting.

2. Ask for referrals by using these messages as an announcement. These can be referred to as a referral message or a job posting (depending on whether the sender is only looking for potential employees or if they’re also trying to find business partners, suppliers and other qualified people).

Some words of caution:

Although LinkedIn InMails can be effective in doing what you want them to do by inviting your contacts to view the message and add the contact to your network. If you use these messages to ask for personal information, or if there is a request for people to provide their personal information. So you can send them a business opportunity, these messages will not receive good reviews.

What is a LinkedIn InMail and how does it work?

LinkedIn InMails are sent from the individual who wants others to see it. They are not sent from LinkedIn nor are they sent from LinkedIn members/contacts. The message can be sent to your LinkedIn contacts and/or to other people in your network.

After clicking the “Send InMail” button, the message will appear in the contact’s inbox immediately. This means that if you send an Inmail, you will receive a response directly from the recipient. If you’re sending an Inmail to someone outside of your network, they may or may not respond, depending on whether they find it relevant or interesting enough to do so.

How do I send a LinkedIn Inmail?

You need to click on the “InMail” button located at the top of your LinkedIn homepage and then click “Send Message Now“. Once you have clicked on the “Send InMail” button, you can include your message in the text box provided. When you are done including your message, click the “Send Message” button, and your LinkedIn Inmail will be sent.

Can I send more than one LinkedIn Inmail?

If you are logged into LinkedIn, you can send up to three separate messages per day. If you are not logged in to LinkedIn at the time that you are sending an Inmail, then there is a limit of one message per day per recipient. Every individual who receives an Inmail is able to respond directly back to the sender of the message.

LinkedIn InMail Vs Sponsored InMail

LinkedIn InMail is when you write a message in your personal inbox or send an email to someone that isn’t a member of your network, whereas Sponsored InMail is when you write a message in someone’s inbox that invites them for connections, but without asking for anything in return.

So, the first crucial difference is that LinkedIn InMail essentially costs money, whereas sponsored InMail can be free if you are using it for your own business purposes.

Sponsored InMail is the newest form of advertising on LinkedIn, being introduced in 2012. Your LinkedIn newsfeed will have advertisements on it, which you don’t want to block because they are your potential customers seeking your products and/or service.

Sponsored InMail is a way of reaching out to those people without being too intrusive or obnoxious, because you are sending them an invitation to connect rather than directly advertising your product or service to them.

LinkedIn InMail enables you to invite your connections to follow your business news and updates on LinkedIn. This is a good way of offering new services and products to your connections, as well as creating opportunities for you to increase your connections with people who are looking for a new opportunity with you. However, it is important that the people you invite actually want to be connected with you.

If there are no benefits or incentives attached then many of your potential customers won’t come forward, especially if they have already connected with other salespeople on LinkedIn.

In terms of cost:

Sponsored InMail is the most cost-effective way of reaching out to your database of people who you don’t know personally. Rather than sending an email to every third person in your database, you can send them one email invite that allows them to sign up for LinkedIn. You can use this method to target potential customers who are interested in your products or services.

It costs very little to use Sponsored InMail, especially if you use Google Analytics to pinpoint which potential clients are most likely converting into paying customers. For example, if 10% of the people who visited my website left without completing a purchase then I would spend $100 on targeted promotions (i.e., Sponsored InMail). If they converted at, say, 20%, then I would make $200 in sales with a single email.

In term of attention:

Sponsored InMail is a good way of getting the attention of new clients. If they feel that you are approaching them with something interesting or desirable, then they may well respond to you and connect on LinkedIn after having received your email.

Sponsored InMail is also a great way of reaching out to profiles in your network that you may not know very well yet. Also, who may be more likely to become paying customers than your current connections. The real reason these two advertising services thrives is because they are inbound marketing. They invite people to reach out to you, rather than you having to reach out to them.

With inbound marketing your job is to be interesting and offer benefits that people will want to experience. This completely eliminates the need for you ever having to call anyone or even send an email, except in response to asking whether they want more information about your products or services.

10 Linkedin Inmail Best Practices

LinkedIn Inmail is LinkedIn’s paid advertising service. It’s an excellent way for B2B companies to get in touch with key decision makers and influencers. LinkedIn Inmail campaigns typically work best when they target a specific audience and integrate with your marketing efforts.

This article looks at ten of the most effective practices for creating a successful LinkedIn InMail campaign—and, as the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding: we’ll also show you proof of these nine best practices in action (including before-and-after screenshots).

1) Choose Your Target Audience

LinkedIn can make recommendations about people who might fit your target audience based on their title and company profile information. LinkedIn will also recommend people to you based on your past interactions; for instance, if you’ve shared articles about a certain topic with someone, then that individual might appear in your suggested “people I might know” list.

These recommendations can be helpful, but if you’re not sure who your target audience is, it’s best to ask yourself two questions: What do I want to achieve with this campaign? and Who’s my target audience? This sounds like common sense (because it is), but I’ve seen far too many LinkedIn InMail campaigns that go out to the wrong audience or without specifying who their target audience actually is.

2) Plan Your Campaign

LinkedIn is a marketing platform and it’s important to create marketing campaigns that align with your company’s marketing goals. For instance, you might want to:

1) Run a campaign that targets specific industry associations and conferences

2) Run a series of campaigns focusing on certain demographic groups (for instance, men over 50 in your company’s field of expertise)

3) Run a campaign that targets a theme and/or a keyword and that includes relevant social media sharing It’s important to get the timing right for all of these campaigns, so plan your LinkedIn Inmail campaigns ahead of time.

3) Focus on different geographical locations such as the US or Canada

If you provide an incentive for people to join your campaign (for example, increasing the number of leads received if they click on the invitation), consider creating an “Upsell” campaign.

This allows you to run a series of LinkedIn InMail campaigns where the first campaign has a low engagement rate, but those who do respond can be added to a second campaign with a higher conversion rate as an upsell where the incentives are greater.

When creating Inmail campaigns through LinkedIn, you’ll have to decide what you’re going to offer people in exchange for clicking on your invitation. People who click on your invitation will receive an email from LinkedIn asking them to accept or decline your Inmail request. If they click “accept,” then you can start sending them messages.

4) Design Your Campaign

It’s important to design your campaign in a way that is most effective for you. For example, you might want to use graphics that are geared toward your target audience—for example, by including an infographic or high-quality image with a testimonial from the person your campaign is actually targeting.

A good strategy for designing your campaign is to think about what kind of content people would most likely click on when they received this particular message.

LinkedIn’s “focused” tab allows you to target people based on their answers to long answers that LinkedIn has compiled over time. This is the best place to start when designing your campaign. Once you’ve decided how you’re going to design your campaign, it’s important to think about how it can integrate with your existing marketing content and efforts.

LinkedIn will encourage all of its users to participate in various social media platforms, so think about how you can embed your campaign into these platforms. For example, if your company has a Twitter account, then consider sharing links on Twitter that directly lead people back to the page where they can click on the LinkedIn Inmail invitation.

5) Create Your Copy & Engage!

LinkedIn makes it easy to create targeted replies so you can ask the correct questions. This is very useful if you are trying to sell people on your offer. A question that may be effective is, “What are you most interested in? I’ve got just the ticket for you!” It’s also important to start with a strong, compelling subject line. It should immediately pique people’s interest and include a question.

The subject line should include your target audience name. For example, instead of simply “Inbox,” write “Bob from Chicago.” Consider using short questions along with personalization to get people hooked. If you do this well, InMail campaigns will get more clicks and conversions than mass-marketing emails do.

6) Track Your Campaign With Analytics

When you create an Inmail campaign through LinkedIn, you’ll need to provide tracking information so your software can work out how well the campaign performs. If you offer incentives, try to track whether or not people click on them or engage in any way. This will give you valuable insight into the effectiveness of your campaign—and help you better fine tune it in future.

You will also need to track your customer’s activity in order to connect them to the right revenue account. A quick and easily created Inmail campaign can increase your business’s visibility and generate valuable leads. LinkedIn is a marketing platform that’s beneficial for B2B companies because it keeps people engaged with their campaign through continuous engagement.

Moreover, LinkedIn In-Mail works particularly well in B2B, when you’re looking to engage influencers or decision makers. Additionally, LinkedIn InMail offers an easy way for B2B companies to engage with influencers, decision makers, and other industry professionals target audiences in a creative and cost-effective way through a simple newsletter format.

7) Check Out Your New Followers

When someone clicks on the invitation, they’re sent to your website or landing page. You can then see who clicked on your invitation and when they did so, which is very useful for tracking the progress of your campaign. When you send an Inmail campaign, you’ll have the option to send more messages after the first one.

When you do this, you have to opt-in your contacts by asking if they’d like to receive these messages. This is why it’s important to send your first message at the right time. They might be too busy at that time of day or they might not be interested in hearing from you after they’ve opted-in.

When sending follow-up messages, it’s important to keep them relevant and on topic. A great tool to do this is Follow Up Boss. Which allows marketers at companies like Ryanair and Staples know when people are interested in hearing from them.

8) Don’t Forget to Remind People!

If you’re running an InMail campaign and you want people to interact with it, you’ll need to remind them that it exists. For example, you could use LinkedIn’s recommendation features and tools such as posting photos and articles to LinkedIn groups. You could also send emails to those who don’t reply right away.

9) Try it Out And See What Works!

It’s important to test your strategy before using the full version—so run a few tests and see what happens. You can try sending messages on LinkedIn without an InMail invitation; send messages only through the Inmail system; or try a combination of both. You can also try adding other people to your campaign or reaching out to people in different geographical regions.

Many businesses like to run a “test and control” experiment: they try two similar approaches and only use the one that performs better. LinkedIn has made it possible for companies of all sizes to reach out to potential clients and sell them products—and the best part is that it’s easy!

Just select your target audience, plan your campaign, design your copy, and you’ll be ready to start selling. If you want help building a campaign or evaluating its performance, contact us today.

10) Retargeting

If you’re trying to sell a product or service and want to target people outside of your LinkedIn network then you should run a “Regular” Inmail campaign instead. This is because “Regular” InMail campaigns can be targeted to anyone, not just those who already receive messages from your company. If you would like to use re-targeting as part of your campaign, make sure to make it relevant and address the recipient by name.

Say things like, “Remember when we talked about…”

Conclusion

Now that you know how to use InMail campaigns through LinkedIn, why not make the most of it? Use the tips above to create compelling content and reach out to your audience. If your first campaign doesn’t go well, change some things around. You’ll be able to make an impact with this powerful marketing tool.