How to Use LinkedIn's InMail Feature Like a Pro

Creekmore Marketing • Mar 07, 2017

Wanting to reach out to a prospect on LinkedIn? Let Creekmore Marketing give you an extra leg up in getting your company’s next great team member!

Like everything else in our lives, hiring for your company is also digitized. While this may seem impersonal, LinkedIn is a fantastic resource that can help you find fantastic new additions to your company. The fantastic thing about LinkedIn is that it hosts its own internal messaging service, known as InMail, which allows you to get into contact with prospective hires, business partners, or leads directly. But, like with any other sort of interpersonal interaction, there are some things you should know before you start contacting prospects via InMail. Creekmore Marketing has a few things to consider before you strike up that first conversation.

1. The time of day
You want your prospect to give you the time of day, so make sure you take this remarkably crucial factor into consideration. Being a workaholic is falling out of fashion, and so the likelihood of you getting a prompt response after normal business hours or on the weekend is slim. Send your prospect a message when you know they’ll be at their desk to read it and (hopefully) respond to it.

2. Don’t be scared of research
Social media norms would have you believe that digging too far into someone’s personal information before contacting them is a bit creepy, and while that may apply for Facebook or Instagram, it is absolutely not the case with LinkedIn. If you are contacting someone in the hope of hiring them on to your company or collaborating with them, you want them to feel special. Dropping some facts you found from their profile is a great way to make a prospect feel as if you are invested in them, and people are more likely to work for or with a company where they feel as if their skills and accomplishments are being valued.

3. It’s called “LinkedIn” for a reason
Part of the reason why LinkedIn is so amazing is that it streamlines the process of networking and lays everything out neatly for you to sort through from the comfort of your computer or smartphone. Just as you would ask someone you know who knows your prospect to put in a good word for your company, do the same with LinkedIn! If you see that you share a connection with your prospect, drop that person a line and ask if they wouldn’t mind introducing you before you start sending your prospect messages.

4. Brevity is the soul of wit
Like you are, your prospect is probably busy, and may be checking their LinkedIn account between tasks at their current job. Because of this, their time is valuable, and you want to make sure they read your entire InMail message before getting pulled away. Because of this, try to keep your message as short as you can. You want to make sure all the necessary information is there, but you don’t scare your prospect off with a deluge of information. Follow this advice from my former high school English teacher: think of your InMail message as a miniskirt—long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting.

5. Everything is subjective
How many times have your eyes completely glossed over an important e-mail simply because the subject line looked so innocuous? Don’t let that happen to your InMail message! Make sure the subject line is sure to stand out amidst their other messages, so that yours not only gets read, it might even get read first.

6. Leave them coming back for more
Just like the personal statement or statement of interest you probably wrote to get the job you have now, you want to make sure that the person you are contacting wants to follow-up and knows how to contact you. Don’t give everything about the position away. Leave enough open-ended that your prospect will have plenty of questions and will reach out to you in the future.

LinkedIn may seem a bit daunting to get the hang of, but it is an excellent resource to make connections, find fantastic new hires, collaborators, and leads. By following these tips, your InMail messages to prospects are sure to catch their eye and generate plenty of responses.


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