Are you on LinkedIn? Your answer is probably yes. Have you been collecting connections for the last 10 years or so and doing nothing with them? That sounds pretty normal too. If you’ve been on LinkedIn for business over the last 10 years or so, you’ve seen a lot of changes to the platform. Long gone are the days of constant spam from job recruiters (sorry). The platform has been able to overcome this by introducing new paid for features like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn InMails; limiting the ability of users to send unsolicited messages and contact requests to people that don’t really know. This is a good thing.
If there was a reason to put your hand in your pocket and pay for a social network, LinkedIn would be the best option for your business. But where do you start and why should you be paying to play? Easy. Everyone on LinkedIn is primarily there for business purposes. It’s not really about what you had for breakfast or where you were last Saturday night. It’s about adding value to your connections with great content and helpful insights. It’s all about positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Someone that others turn to for advice and great service.
LinkedIn InMails Change the Game for Businesses
Several years ago LinkedIn created a feature that allowed you to message people outside of your network. It’s limited by the number of requests you can send each month and what package you signed up to for your account. This stops the spam culture. But what it has also allowed if for users to pay to send messages en masse to large groups of targeted users. Imagine being able to send a message to several hundred people that were decision makers in their business, had just recently changed job and or perhaps are very active on the platform? All of these targeting methods are available on LinkedIn InMails. But why use them in the first place?
Depending on the ‘ask’, your message should have an overarching objective. Do you want them to connect with you, watch a video, read a blog or attend an event? This is all possible with InMails. Imagine, metaphorically, that your targeted message was connected to a heat seeking missile and was only going to be consumed by your target audience…What would that be worth to you? How much would you pay to have this opportunity?
If you give or take a quarter, the average costs associated with sending one message to your targeted users is around $1. So, if you found 1000 users that matched your targeted audience, you could for only $1K send an message to all of them en masse. But here is where it gets interesting. The sends will only happen when the end user is online. The open and click through rates then become extremely crucial. Just like email marketing for business, sending InMails will also include of the nuance that successful email marketers have been using for 20 odd year: fabulous (clickable) headline, followed by a well-written message, finished off with a call to action (ask).
Email Marketing Still Works
Just like email marketing, the methodology with LinkedIn InMails is the same. Now that you’ve got a tool like LinkedIn to find your audience, why on earth would you not want to use it? Why would you not want to cut through the noise and get in front of your best target audience? Here at LeftLane we’ve been helping clients with InMails quite successfully for several years now. If you think we could help your business with LinkedIn InMails, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We offer bespoke training and consultancy on Linkedin. We’d love to hear from you!