LinkedIn InMail: 4 Tips for Sales & Marketing Teams

The new InMail credits by LinkedIn has left many Sales and Marketing Teams struggling on how to use LinkedIn InMail without loosing on ROI. Below I have highlighted comprehensive tips to using InMail effectively for sales and marketing teams: how credits work, how to pick and warm up targets, how to write great messages, mistakes to avoid, and how to track your ROI.

So, what is LinkedIn InMail?

LinkedIn InMail is the platform’s paid way to message people outside your network a powerful tool for online networking, lead generation, and outreach. This design encourages targeted, high-quality messages rather than mass outreach.

This tool is available on LinkedIn Paid Plans, premium, sales navigator and recruiter. There are multiple plans to choose from, but I’m going to dive into the relevant plans for sales and marketing teams these are;

Premium Business: this plan is ideal for professionals and freelancers wanting moderate outreach, steady business development or networking beyond first-degree connections. This plan offers 15 credits a month.

Sales Navigator Core: this plan offers the full B2B sales, business development, and serious outbound prospecting – perfect for a sales team focusing on daily outreach targets. This plan offers 50 credits a month.

What are Credits and the Concept?

What this means for Outbound Sales

1. Outbound sales become more strategic: sales teams must prioritise high – value prospects and craft personalised messages to maximise responses on LinkedIn. The target should not be the number of outbound messaging but more the number of responses.
2. Stronger ROI focus on content and inbound, no more ‘cold outreach’ wasting valuable sales time, this is an expensive strategy and less effective. Marketing teams should now invest in content, thought leadership and organic engagement to warm prospects before outreach.
3. More Pressure on Sales Teams, Sales teams must improve targeting, messaging and personalisation, this is where the Sales team meets the marketing team, working closely with the marketing team will be beneficial.
4. Marketing Teams supporting Sales; Marketing plays a larger roe in providing high-quality lead data, account-based marketing support and pre-warmed prospects. When using InMail as your Leads/Sales tool, sales and marketing alignment is essential for maximising the impact of each InMail.
5. Genuine engagement-based selling becomes more valuable; Interacting with prospects through comments, content and conversations is important, this social selling strategy and relationship building outperforms cold pitching. Here Sales psychology plays an important part – understanding the prospects and where they are in the buying cycle will help generate those responses.

Using LinkedIn Premium Business (Beginner-Friendly) Step-By-Step Guide

Wanting to test InMail first or use as a casual lead and light B2B sales tool? Then the Premium Business plan is for you.

1. Head on over to the ‘For Business’ section on your profile and select ‘find new clients’.
2. You will then be asked a few questions – for the second one select ‘Find and reach new leads.’
3. You’ll need a Premium LinkedIn account before you can access InMail. If you already have a Premium business account then you will have already completed the first steps.
4. Find the prospects, Use the LinkedIn search bar → filter by job title, industry, location, company
5. Send your InMail – click “Message” → “Send InMail”. And keep messages short, personalised, and relevant (around 50–80 words).
6. Track Responses – If someone replies add this to your sales monitoring data and keep a list of prospects who have responded, possibly using a CRM to move down the sales pipeline. With ‘Sales Navigator’ you get the pipeline, but for those using Premium Business a Free CRM will work just as well.
7. Use Sparingly, 15 credits aren’t much so warm up your prospects first by commenting on their posts a few likes so they know of you.

Using Sales Navigator Core (Beginner-Friendly) Step-By-Step Guide

Working full time in a sales role or business development role needing to reach high volume of leads and highly targeted B2B outreach? Then the Sales Navigator is for you.

1. If you already ready have the premium account for LinkedIn then head on over to the ‘Advanced Prospect Search’. Use the Sales Navigator Filters to filter company size, industry, seniority, geography and recent activities. Save the leads to ‘lists’ to organise your pipeline.  
2. Send InMail by clicking on ‘Message’ then ‘Send InMail’. Personalise by referencing their company news, posts or shared interests. Keep your messaging concise – speak to the marketing team for help and include a micro-CTA like ‘Would you like a quick chat?’
3. Have a Follow-up Strategy at the ready. Track replies in the sales navigator and have a a strategy to follow up between 3 – 7 days later if there was no response. Use ‘connection requests and DMs’ for warm leads. Warm leads are prospects that have shown some interest or connection, such as viewing your profile, engaging with your posts or sharing mutual contacts.
4. Wear a marketeer’s hat or partner up with the Marketing Team before making your outbound sales, by combining content and engagement, this means commenting on prospect’s posts, and share content to increase visibility, this makes InMail more likely to get a response and protect your credits.

Pro tip: Sales Navigator is powerful because it’s designed for pipeline building — think of it as a CRM + LinkedIn search tool + InMail credits all in one.

Now let’s start the 4-step approach to prospecting.

Step One: Prospecting: Find the Right People

Target quality leads, not everyone. Define your ideal customer profile (ICP), the roles, industries and company sizes that match your best customers and use Sales Navigator’s filters to narrow your list. Then look for prospects who show engagement signals on LinkedIn. The signals you’re looking for are;

1. Recent Job Changes: People who have started a new job are more receptive. LinkedIn data shows members who switched companies in the past 90 days are 62% more likely to accept an InMail. Because someone in a new role is willing to explore options. In your Navigation filter use “Past 90 days – Started new role”.
2. LinkedIn Activity: Active users respond better. Prospects who have posted or engaged on LinkedIn in the last few months have a 45% higher InMail acceptance rate. In your Sales Navigator filters use “Posted on LinkedIn in past 30 days” to find them.
3. Company Engagement: If the prospect is following your company page, they’re far more likely to respond. Research by LinkedIn suggests a 270% higher acceptance rate if they follow your company on LinkedIn.
4. Colleague Connections: Leads who are connected to someone at your company show better response rates. These social signals mean the prospect already knows and hopefully trusts your brand.
5. Mutual Connections: shared connections build credibility. Before cold-messaging see if you have mutual contacts. If you do, then you could ask for an introduction first or mention the mutual contact in your InMail opener.
6. Relevance and Fit: Using your sales psychology knowledge and experience pick prospects who indicate a potential need for your offer. Look at their job title, industry and skills. For example, if you sell software to manage projects in the tech industry then filter for project managers and decision makers.

Step 2: Warm Up Your Leads

Don’t start with blanket InMail messaging, do some research on the prospect and get to know them and build context.

1. Research First: view the prospect’s profile and follow their company page. According to LinkedIn, 78% of prospects are more likely to accept your InMail if you view their profile within 30 days from viewing their profile of following the company page. In the same way, engaging with their content that will help you personalise your message.
2. Engage with their content: Simply reply to their content with a meaningful comment and reshare their content with a mention. This will be highly appreciated and builds trust and a connection. By doing this a few times your name becomes familiar them before sending them a personalised message. This way your InMail feels natural and not intrusive.
3. Join their networks: participate in their LinkedIn groups and events they care about. In your email mention you saw them or heard their talk and the event as an ice breaker.
4. Leverage Open Profiles: Some LinkedIn members have LinkedIn’s Open Profile feature enabled. This lets anyone send them a message for FREE meaning no credits will be used. 
5. Set Alerts: With the In Sales Navigator, save target profiles so you get alerts when they change jobs or share posts. Congratulate them on the update or comment on their new posts. This shows a genuine interest and makes future InMails more welcoming.

Step Three: Write your effective InMail

Write each InMail like a short friendly letter and make it bout the needs of the prospects.

1. Strong Subject Line: Keep it short and specific like ‘quick question’ or ‘I saw your post’, these have a higher chance of grabbing their attention and increase opens.   
2. Personalised Opening: Start with greeting them by their name and mention how you found them or a mutual connection. A personal hook will get attention. Most importantly use a conversational tone as if you’re emailing a new colleague.
3. Get to the point: In the first sentence explain why you’re reaching out. Focus on them, their needs, challenges or goals. A sales message should sell the value, not your product. For example, ‘I noticed you are looking to take on new products to expand your store, and I thought I might be able to help you reach new audiences and keep past buyers coming back’. According to LinkedIn data, approx. 100 words have a 22% higher response rate than longer messages.
4. Provide Value: In your message hint at what you offer. Is it an insight, a free resource or a solution to a problem they mentioned on LinkedIn? Don’t over promise, but show how engaging with you could benefit them. You can attach a short one-sheet or case study if it’s relevant.
5. Personalisation: Use details from your research. For instance, referencing a recent project, article or their milestone or even a hobby or meal they may have shared. A personal touch signals effort and highlights their background interests you. This level of personal touch can boost open rates.
6. Be friendly: Sound like a real person and not a bot. LinkedIn advice that the approach you take should be ‘professional yet conversational’. Show genuine interest, but don’t exaggerate for example “Your accomplishments in [xyz] are impressive”.
7. Call-to-Action: Close your message with a simple next step. It could be a question like “Do you have 10 minutes for a call next week?” or “Could you point me to the person I can speak with”. This is to encourage a reply so you don’t lose credit.
8. Follow-Up: Many InMails get read during work hours. Marketing will tell you to use data to understand open rates, although that may be the case for other social media platforms and emails – LinkedIn data shows day of week has minimal impact. 65% of InMail replies come within 24 hours, so keep an eye on your inbox and reply quickly if you get a response. If they don’t reply follow up after a week with a polite message.

Step 4: Measuring and Optimising InMail ROI

With every sale and marketing project you need to track progress, to help understand what works and what doesn’t work. With InMail you need to track actual results and measure its impact by:

1. Tracking Key Metrics: You can use LinkedIn analytics and your CRM to get key data to report back to your teams. Monitor your InMail open and response rates, how many leads, meetings and deals come from InMail outreach.
2. Calculate ROI: Here you want to measure the cost which includes your subscription attributable to InMail outreach and the time spent crafting messages. And then you want to measure the value, so, measure the revenue or pipeline generated by deals that started from InMails. Here is the ROI Formula:

ROI= (Revenue from InMail-sourced deals – InMail costs) / InMail costs x 100%.

You should also look at intermediate metrics like cost per meeting booked. According to LinkedIn – InMails enjoy very high open rates up to 85% and response rates around 25%, this is about 3x better than cold emails.

• Leverage Tools: Sales Navigator Advanced/Adv Plus includes CRM integration and even ROI reporting dashboards, which can help link InMail sends to closed deals. If you don’t have the advanced tools, you can manually log results. There are also browser extensions and ABM Platforms that sync LinkedIn activity to your CRM for tracking. This is where you want to book a call with your IT department.
• Lessons Learned: Use your data to learn and improve. If certain subject lines or certain messages are receiving higher open rates, standardise them. Experiment with A/B tests by trying different subject hooks, question types or benefits. Keep track of what industries or roles respond best and focus on them.

InMail can transform LinkedIn into a lead generation channel, but only if used thoughtfully and follow the above steps. By targeting the right prospects, warming them up, personalising each message, and tracking outcomes, you turn your InMail credits into conversations and ultimately, deals. Keep what works, learn from what doesn’t, and each month your InMail campaigns will improve their ROI.

Want to speak to our LinkedIn Strategy Expert? Reach out today.