How to Improve Your LinkedIn InMail Response Rate?

InMail

The InMail response rate is calculated with the total number of messages sent during the selected time period that have received a response as of today. This calculation includes free InMail messages sent to direct connections and Open Profile members as well as InMail messages that are sent in bulk. It does not include messages sent to email addresses. Only responses received within the first 30 days following the message sent date are included in the response rate

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 digital text.

The company gathered data from 28.3 million messages to come up with great practical tips that can change your game on Linkedin.

What is the difference between InMail and Email marketing?

First of all, it is important to point out that a sponsored message in Linkedin’s InMail, now called Sponsored Messaging, and Email Marketing have some similarities, but they do not necessarily share the same best practices.

With email, sent messages go into the inbox (when they don’t go to spam) and the user almost feels obliged to open it (at least I feel this way), since our email inbox is practically a to-do list. On LinkedIn, InMail goes to the user’s message box, who doesn’t see the tool as just a way to keep in touch with other people in the market.

How to Improve Your InMail Response Rate?

Shorter InMails get above-average response rates

Keep it short and sweet. You’ve probably heard that advice before, but you might be surprised by how clearly we can see the correlation between InMail length and response rates in the data.

Defining the shortest InMails as those under 400 characters and the longest as those over 1,200 characters:

• The response rate for the shortest InMails is 22% higher than the average response rate for all InMails.
• By the same measure, the response rate for the longest InMails is 11% below the average rate.

Think twice before sending InMails on Fridays and Saturdays

Most InMail responses arrive pretty quickly: 65% arrive within 24 hours and 90% arrive within one week.

Given that, you might think that when you choose to send an InMail matters a lot. Timing is everything, right?

Well, maybe not in this case. If you’ve ever worried about the best time to send an InMail, you can breathe a sigh of relief. As long as you avoid Friday and Saturday, you should be totally fine.

Monday is the best day of the week to send an InMail, but just barely. InMails sent from Sunday to Thursday stay within about 1% of the global average.

The worst day to send an InMail, perhaps unsurprisingly, is Saturday. InMails sent on Saturday get 8% fewer responses than average. Friday isn’t quite as bad, with a marketing response rate that’s 4% below average. But it’s still significantly less effective than all other workdays.

Personalized InMails perform about 15% better than ones written

Recruiting leaders have preached about the value of personalization for years, and LinkedIn data backs them up.

InMails that are sent individually see response rates roughly 15% higher than InMails sent in bulk.

Of course, personalization is much more than just sending messages one-by-one. The digital content of your InMail should also show that you’re interested in the recipient as an individual.

InMails sent to “Recommended Matches” and “Open to Work” candidates see about a 35% lift

When you search for candidates in Recruiter, you’ll see LinkedIn’s Recommended Matches highlighted in your search results.

If you haven’t been taking special note of these candidates, you should consider it: Candidates found in Recommended Matches are up to 35%. More likely to accept InMails than candidates found in Recruiter search alone.