5 LinkedIn InMail Best Practices (Infographic)

LinkedIn’s status as the social network most attuned to the business world gives it a unique place in business-to-business content marketing. Advertising on LinkedIn can take many forms, but one of the most effective ways may involve sending sponsored messages through the platform’s built-in communication channel, InMail. This includes crafting strategic InMail campaigns and leveraging LinkedIn Premium business features to enhance your outreach.

This kind of LinkedIn marketing requires a specific strategy, as InMail isn’t exactly like email, Facebook Messenger or any other communications tool. Custom content designed to be sent through LinkedIn InMail messages must suit both the rules of the platform and the expectations of your audience. It’s also helpful to consider how tools like LinkedIn sales navigator or Sales Navigator Core can play a vital role in helping you track data and refine each InMail template for optimal performance.

Following best practices can be the difference between valuable ad campaigns and wastes of budget. The InMail strategy you craft should factor in your target audience’s preferences and timing, as well as leverage any LinkedIn data, such as engagement metrics, to optimize each InMail message.

5 LinkedIn InMail Best Practices infographic

First Things First: What Is LinkedIn InMail?

Before delving into our LinkedIn InMail tips, it’s worth taking a step back and figuring out what the platform is and what makes it unique. At the most basic level, InMail is LinkedIn’s direct messaging platform, with functionality very much like you’ll find on popular social networks — ranging from Facebook to X (formerly known as Twitter) to Instagram. This service enables effective LinkedIn InMail outreach to potential leads, allowing you to send personalized InMail that stands out from a cold email in a typical inbox.

Due to LinkedIn’s usage in job searches, the most frequent way to use InMail is to send recruiting messages to prospects. While a standard LinkedIn member can only reach out to people they’re mutually connected with, Premium users can reach out beyond their present networks, to a maximum of 90 people per month. These higher-tier memberships — like LinkedIn Premium or an open profile setting — can be crucial when you need to send multiple targeted messages or when you leverage InMail credit for additional outreach.

If your company depends on attracting highly targeted leads, creating tailored InMail messages is one way to feed new people into your funnel. Funneling sales leads through the LikedIn page of a leading executive, subject matter expert or entrepreneur isn’t a particularly common form of cold outreach, but it can, on occasion, add value due to factors such as the highly business- and networking-focused nature of the site. It can also complement sending InMails to existing connections, combining a mutual connection approach with new introductions that can yield a higher InMail response rate.

LinkedIn Sponsored InMail: A Promising B2B Marketing Tool

Using InMail for LinkedIn lead generation on a bigger scale – as more of a general B2B marketing tool – will require more messages per cycle than these plans can provide. This is where a dedicated marketing tool, LinkedIn Sponsored InMail, comes in. LinkedIn lists several advantages of running your B2B campaigns through this sponsored messaging medium instead of email, Facebook or equivalents. You can also pair this with LinkedIn automation tools to streamline your workflows, especially if you’re also running message ad campaigns for broader coverage.

First of all, at 57.5%, the open rates for LinkedIn Sponsored Mail are 153% higher than the current email marketing benchmarks. In addition, the social platform now offers a suite of built-in conversion tracking tools to help you understand your InMail response and gauge success.

Moreover, when setting up a campaign on LinkedIn, you have the option to choose a specific objective, such as website conversions, lead generation, brand awareness and more. Your selection will determine the pricing model used for your LinkedIn Sponsored InMail campaign, as well as the available ad formats, bidding strategies and optimization goals. This is where LinkedIn sales solutions can help you monitor key performance indicators, from direct message open rates to the impact of each connection request on your InMaill strategy.

The LinkedIn Campaign Manager suite of paid advertising tools also lets you link website conversions to your outreach efforts. The dashboard gives you a quick and easy view of the return on investment (ROI) of a given campaign, as well as granular details such as click-through rates (CTR) on ads of all kinds. All sponsored content across LinkedIn ads, including but not limited to Sponsored InMail, is filtered through this set of analytics tools. As you generate more LinkedIn data, you’ll be able to refine your InMail outreach approach and test different template variations.

With this suite of features at your fingertips, you have the technology you need to start reaching out to prospects and potential customers — but success isn’t that simple. Maximizing your brand’s reach means taking advantage of InMail’s unique spot in the social media ecosystem and focusing on promising lead-generation tactics. By building a library of InMail example variations, you can tweak your approach to see which template best drives positive response.

5 LinkedIn InMail Best Practices for Marketers

Making a good first impression is essential when bringing InMail into your overall marketing strategy — and that comes down to following a few best practices. Keeping your InMail campaign consistent with your brand image will help you connect with a potential client more effectively.

1. Select the Right Sender for Each Message

Since LinkedIn is heavily based on connections between businesspeople, the sender of your InMail messages should be one of your leading executives or subject matter experts. If a LinkedIn user follows a link back to this person’s profile, they should be impressed by his or her depth of knowledge and engagement in the industry. This helps ensure each LinkedIn InMail message aligns with your best practices and fosters an effective LinkedIn InMail experience.

LinkedIn’s own advice on creating ad campaigns focuses on the sender’s authority being a major selling point. Rather than having Sponsored InMail content come from an intern or a mid-level marketing employee, the messages should originate directly from someone in the C-suite, or someone who has a background that relates directly to what you’re selling. This person’s LinkedIn profile might also benefit from using LinkedIn Recruiter or LinkedIn Sales Navigator features to build credibility.

Since LinkedIn ad campaigns are rarer than email blasts, even sponsored messages carry the weight of a person-to-person conversation. The person on your company’s end of the conversation should be someone who recipients will be eager to learn from, and who can initiate a connection request in a way that feels both personal and professional.

2. Include a Banner Ad

Some of the features of InMail are optional but worth using. LinkedIn suggests that adding a 300×250 banner to your messages adds more promotional value. For example, if your marketing team has created a banner that perfectly matches the current lead generation campaign, the ad will reinforce the call to action (CTA) of the InMail message. This approach can also tie into advanced LinkedIn messaging campaigns, boosting the appeal of your sponsored message.

What’s more, including a banner ad ensures that no other company’s content shows up in that particular spot in the recipient’s inbox. You don’t want the message of your campaign to be diluted by having a competitor’s content appear directly next to it. Banner ads can also be used to highlight an InMail credit discount or to showcase unique aspects of your LinkedIn Premium membership.

3. A/B Test Your Campaigns

It’s safe to assume your targeted recipients will be more likely to open and read InMail messages than emails, due to the simple fact that the former is less common and less likely to be part of a spam blast. Nevertheless, you still need to focus on crafting content that people will respond well to if you want your messages to go unignored. Effective A/B testing can also provide LinkedIn data to help refine your approach, improving actual InMail response and the response rate.

Treating an InMail ad campaign like an email cold outreach effort involves testing and measuring the content’s conversion rate and other metrics, refining messages over time and optimizing your performance. This is a valuable way to keep your LinkedIn marketing from fading into the background.

LinkedIn itself recommends updating factors such as subject lines, pictures and CTA based on A/B testing. Think about which version of your campaign has produced the greatest impact, and what you can learn from that success. You might even test slight variations in your InMail template or personalized approach, seeing which version fosters more success and resonates most with a mutual connection.

4. Keep Your Messages Short and to the Point

When designing the body copy for your InMail message, it could be tempting to lay out every single reason to try your products and services. After all, you’ve got the attention of targeted decision-makers. Shouldn’t you use every bit of that attention? Not exactly! The best approach is more subtle – and takes modern tech preferences into account. Many of your recipients will probably open these messages on smartphones, so keeping your InMail dispatches very short may be wise. Shorter messages also often feel more like a direct message between two existing connections.

The ideal length is between 50-125 words, which is likely enough to get your point across. If you can get a LinkedIn message down to this length, you may greatly increase the odds that recipients read the missive in full, and therefore reach the CTA.

On mobile devices, you don’t get the option of using a banner ad, which makes the written CTA even more effective than on a desktop. Listing out your most compelling product features as punchy bullet points may draw prospects to your main LinkedIn page or website where the in-depth lead nurturing can begin. This streamlined approach to InMail outreach can be particularly important in business contexts where professionals receive many messages.

5. Be Conversational

When sending messages through LinkedIn, it can be tempting to be very business-like. After all, some of the value of the network comes from the fact that it doesn’t have a massive presence among casual users the way X and Facebook do. You are here to represent a company, so shouldn’t you be formal? According to LinkedIn’s own InMail advice, it can actually pay to go against the grain and be conversational.

Sending a sponsored message that reads too much like a formal introduction may turn recipients away without getting them to engage with the substance of the copy. Reading about the benefits of your products or services shouldn’t be a chore for your target audience. This advice combines well with the need for brevity. If you’re intentionally making your InMail messages short and easy to read, it’s likely they won’t be too formal. By crafting a personalized InMail, you can make a more human connection, especially compared to a typical cold email.

LinkedIn: Part of a Balanced Marketing Strategy

Account-based marketing efforts that incorporate many channels shouldn’t overlook LinkedIn and its messaging solutions. A LinkedIn campaign can either complement more general outreach through email and other social networks, or it can be the primary method of contact — especially if your company is trying to make direct connections between your subject matter experts and the decision-makers at potential client companies.

Leveraging LinkedIn Recruiter, LinkedIn Sales Navigator or an open profile can help refine your approach and segment your audience more precisely. Your success or failure with InMail messages may come down to how much you focus on the content of each individual campaign.

Contacting people through LinkedIn instead of email or a less business-centric social platform can give you a direct line to display the value of your company. Forging such a connection is an opportunity to achieve a return on investment as new contacts rely on your brand’s expertise. If you follow InMail best practices and adapt your messaging to the unique LinkedIn inbox environment, you’ll likely see better outreach success.

LinkedIn is a versatile network. Blogging, multimedia-enhanced paid campaigns and other advertising options can accompany your InMail efforts to create a balanced picture of your brand identity. Using Sales Navigator core features, taking advantage of LinkedIn groups for networking and encouraging a mutual connection to make introductions can all strengthen your InMail outreach strategy. Platform-specific best practices can bring a strategy together and turn this buttoned-down network into an exciting marketing tool.

Editor’s Note: Updated July 2025.

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