InMail: Linkedin shares best practices to help maximize response rates

If you’ve used Linkedin’s InMail to send sponsored messages to your audience, you’ve probably asked yourself some questions about the best way to create your text.

Knowing that many users are concerned about this, Linkedin recently published a study by Lavender on best practices to help increase the results of this strategy.

The company collected data from 28.3 million messages to come up with great how-to tips that can change your game on Linkedin. Below, I will share the main ideas and how to put them into practice to optimize your strategies. At the end of the article, I will give a final impression that I think sums up all the tips.

What is the difference between InMail and email marketing?

First, it’s important to note that a Linkedin InMail Sponsored Post, now called Sponsored Messaging , and email marketing have some similarities, but don’t necessarily share the same best practices.

In email marketing, sent messages go to the inbox (when they don’t go to spam) and the user almost feels compelled to open it (at least I feel that way), since our email box is practically a list of pending tasks.

On LinkedIn, InMail goes to the user’s inbox, generating a close and personalized interaction.

5 Best Practices for LinkedIn InMail

Now, let’s get down to business: how to create your Sponsored Post to get more responses and not be ignored on LinkedIn? Most advice has more to do with the way you write content, so having a good writing background can be a huge advantage.

1) Write short messages

That’s right, in Linkedin InMail, the most objective and precise messages get more responses . Just take a look at the table below. According to research, messages with 25-50 words get 65% more responses, even though the tool allows you to type 1900 characters

2) Avoid complex language

This tip works for other types of content, too, and makes a big difference in InMail. Avoid complex words and remember that the user should not make any effort to understand what he means.

Therefore, avoid jargon and be minimalist . Keep in mind that anyone who reads the message should understand what she wants to convey immediately. Just remember that this conclusion has to do with the clarity of the text and was drawn from the research, which took into account the number of syllables, sentences and paragraphs in the analyzed messages.

3) Aim for customization

As with email, the more personal you can get, the more attention your audience will pay. But how to do this in a sponsored post, sent to multiple users?

The answer is segmentation . Advertise by segments, defining the attributes of the public you want to reach. I’m referring to the targeting criteria set up when you created your ad, such as job title, industry, or skills. Thus, you can write a text aimed at professionals in a specific industry, for example, and be more

4) Give preference to the passive voice

This is curious, but it seems to work. Ditch the informative tone, packed with information and data, and think about your audience. What do you need? How can you help them?
Show that you’re interested in knowing how you can be helpful right now, make assumptions about your audience’s pain, and don’t be pretentious. Thus, the user will be more tempted to respond and your message becomes more attractive to start a conversation.

Finally, a piece of advice in case your message gets answered: ask more questions . Try to understand more about the person you are talking to and add even more personalization to continue the conversation. As you can see in the chart below, asking questions increases your chances of getting answers

people want to be heard

If you stop to think about it, these best practices from this research make perfect sense. After all, we live in an age where people are bombarded with information. That is why they have no time to waste and, at the same time, they want to be heard.

In short, the key to increasing your response rate on LinkedIn InMail seems to be combining an objective, easy-to-understand message with personalization and targeting your audience.

Considering that LinkedIn wants to separate the spam from the inbox , it’s important to think about optimizing your Sponsored Posts as soon as possible.

Put these recommendations into practice and let me know if they worked for you!

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