8 Effective Tips for Writing LinkedIn Messages

The Importance Of Efficient LinkedIn Messaging

Efficient LinkedIn messaging is crucial to building and maintaining professional connections. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for networking and establishing new professional relationships. However, poor practices when it comes to accepting invitations or sending messages can damage these connections and hinder future opportunities. By focusing on efficient messaging practices, individuals can save time and effort while building strong, lasting connections.

Efficient messaging saves time and effort, allowing people to focus on other important tasks. By automating messaging on LinkedIn and using the right tools and processes, people can optimize their time and achieve greater accuracy in their efforts. This can lead to more meaningful and productive conversations, ultimately benefiting both parties involved.

Effective messaging is also essential to making a good first impression. People can establish a connection and build rapport by identifying commonalities and personalizing messages. In addition, following best practices for InMail messaging can help people make an amazing first impression on potential customers and partners. By taking the time to craft thoughtful and effective messages, individuals can establish themselves as professional and trusted contacts, setting the stage for future collaborations and opportunities and increasing the likelihood of generating leads from LinkedIn.

How Many Messages Can You Send on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn closely monitors the use of its platform to ensure that users are not using it excessively. If you exceed, there’s a risk your account might be classified as spam.

It’s about sending quality messages not just quantity alone. Growth-X is an excellent automation platform that can help you send personalized, quality messages to your audience while saving you lots of time.

Understanding The LinkedIn Audience

To do strategic messaging on LinkedIn, the main thing is to understand the audience of this platform. It is essential to consider their demographic profile and professional interests. LinkedIn is a platform mainly oriented to professionals, business people, and entrepreneurs, so the audience is mainly composed of working-age adults.

Here are some key aspects to better understand LinkedIn’s audience:

• Demographic profile: LinkedIn’s audience tends to be mostly adults, with the majority of users in the 25-54 age range. There is also a higher level of participation among men compared to women. However, the platform is constantly evolving, and there is increasing diversity in terms of age and gender.
• Educational and professional level: LinkedIn primarily attracts people with a high level of education, such as those with university degrees, postgraduate degrees, or advanced education. In addition, the audience tends to be professionally active, with higher participation from employees, entrepreneurs, and business owners.
• Work Interests: LinkedIn is primarily used for professional purposes, and users are interested in career, industry, networking, and professional development topics. Users tend to look for job opportunities, make connections with other professionals, and share knowledge and experiences related to their areas of work.
• Sectors and areas of interest: While LinkedIn covers a wide range of sectors and areas of interest, some of the most common include technology, finance, marketing, human resources, consulting, and entrepreneurship. Users are also interested in topics such as leadership, business strategy, skills development, and industry trends.
• Usage and behavior on the platform: LinkedIn’s audience tends to be most active during weekdays and work hours. In addition, users tend to use the platform to search for and share relevant content, network with other professionals, and participate in groups and discussions related to their interests and work goals.

Understanding this audience is essential to making the most of connections and promotion opportunities on the platform.

8 Effective Tips for Writing Efficient LinkedIn Messages 

If you want to maximize the effectiveness of the messages sent to prospects, here are 8 tips that will help you.

1. Keep It Short

LinkedIn messages are similar to texting. They pop up in a tiny window, so any prospect will have to scroll downwards to read the whole thing. 

You should keep your networking message as short as possible. Your initial message should never exceed more than three sentences. It’s limited to 300 characters. Your only goal with the initial message is for the prospect to read your message and express their interest.  

Here’s one of the best pro tips you should know: any message that’s more than a few sentences will require the recipient to scroll down. If the first few lines of your message are not catchy enough, your messages will be largely ignored. 

As you can see, the bottom part of the message is hidden, and you have to scroll downwards to see it. If you have a random message popping up with no personalization, chances are that the message will receive less attention.

Your prospects don’t have any relationship with you, so sending them LinkedIn messages continuously without offering anything of value is not a great idea. They may associate your name with spam. If that happens, they won’t bother opening your messages again, and your LinkedIn cold outreach strategy will suffer. 

Therefore, you have to understand the importance of making a strong first impression. When writing a message to an audience, make sure you personalize it. Segment your target audience effectively via the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, so that you know how to send messages the right way. Conversely, here’s how a well-thought-out invite message would look like:

Hi {receiver.first_name},

I hope you are well.

I see we are both in the IT and Software space. Looking to connect with ambitious tech leaders in Nigeria. 

I see from your role at {receiver.company_name} that you are responsible for growth, keen to discuss growing in Africa and trade insights. 

Other LinkedIn Message Examples

There are plenty of other examples of LinkedIn connection messages. For instance, if a prospect requires more information about your offer before making a decision, you need to be forthcoming. Here’s an example of a well-written response in this case: 

Sure CUSTOMER!
Here is some more information about our product: www.link-to-more.information.com
However, no one-pager can do justice to what we offer- I would suggest setting up a quick demo with my colleague FIRST LAST so that he could elaborate more on Growth-X and how we can help you reach your goals. 
You can use this link to set yo a meeting with FIRST LAST:
https://calendly.com/xxxxx
Thanks!
SALES REP

Now, if you have been sending follow-up messages to no avail, it’s important not to badger your prospects. Instead, you can send a last-resort message, which could actually elicit a response from certain prospects. Here’s a prime example:

Sure CUSTOMER!
Since I haven’t heard back from you, I’m assuming that you won’t be moving forward. Please, message me if you should decide otherwise. 
I hope to work with you in the future!
Best,
SALES REP

These are some simple examples of well-worded messages that can generate positive responses from prospects. 

You must treat your prospects like actual individuals. If you start pitching or selling with your first message, your recipients won’t care. Visit their LinkedIn profile so they get the idea that you paid personal attention to them. Obviously, this takes more time, but you can automate it using a LinkedIn automation app such as Growth-X. 

Growth-X assigns a Customer Success Manager to each of their clients. The CSM expert works closely with clients to optimize their targeting through the Sales Navigator and assists with the messaging. 

Even one word can make a huge difference, so having someone with experience to guide you is always a bonus. 

2. The Subject Line is More Important Than You Think

Recipients are not going to open your LinkedIn messages if the subject line is too long, or if it doesn’t appeal to them. To craft a good LinkedIn message, you need to create a subject line that looks as if it were personalized for the reader, but one that doesn’t give too much away. 

Remember, your first message is all about starting a conversation. You should not be looking to make a sale in the first message. Your primary motive should be to start a conversation with the recipient, and once they are interested, you can continue with your pitch.

The length of your subject line is also of critical importance. Be direct about what you want. Remember, most people won’t read your LinkedIn messages if they are too long. The first rule of sending LinkedIn prospecting messages is to shorten your subject lines.

Even a simple “Looking to Connect” can increase your open rates by as much as 14% as compared to an empty invite. 

Clearly, successful marketers know the importance of short subject lines. Research shows that 82% of marketers prefer sending messages with subject lines that are less than 60 characters.  

Avoid writing generic subject lines in order to meet this short character limit. Even something as simple as “How about coffee?” is bound to attract attention.

Mentioning the recipient’s name in the subject line of your invitation message can also increase your open rates by as much as 26% as compared to sending a message with a generic subject line, especially when sending an introduction message.

3. Sending Follow-Up Messages

It is also highly probable that you might not receive an immediate response from a recipient right away as they may have been distracted at the time you messaged them and then forgot about it.

That’s where follow-up messages come into play. A follow-up message should be polite and courteous. You should never assume the worst. Personalizing your message is important (It’s recommended that you add their first name to the subject line, and then mention it several times throughout the message).

Before you send a follow-up message, you should decide what the follow-up aims to accomplish. What aims do you wish to accomplish with your follow-up messages? Do you simply want to remain in the recipient’s mind in case they decide to make a purchase in the future, or are you actively looking to convert them?

Common follow-up objectives include:

Meeting requests

Request for information

Just catching up 

This is important when writing your call to action as well. With time, as you continue to build trust with the prospect, you can provide more and more information about your product and service as well.

Follow-up messages must never seem like they were sent as a mass message to multiple recipients. You probably won’t have time to go through each and every profile, and that’s okay. However, if a prospect receives the same worded message again and again, they will probably not respond. 

Every company has a different LinkedIn message cadence for follow-ups. Find what works best for you and make sure it aligns with your goals.

4. Avoid Personal Introductions with LinkedIn Messages

Avoid giving out lots of personal information about yourself in your LinkedIn messages. It’s ideal to keep it short.

Instead, create a first sentence that immediately attracts attention. Share an interesting stat with the reader, or tell them something that you think is relevant to their field. 

It’s going to generate a much more positive impact than writing about yourself. It’s one of the most common LinkedIn outreach strategies that many people don’t pay attention to.

5. Get to the Point. Quickly. 

We live in an era of 8-second attention spans. It’s not that adults are incapable of paying attention to different things. It’s simply that we are so overwhelmed with information that our brain is unable to pay attention to one thing for a prolonged period of time.

What does that mean? The average attention span of an adult nowadays is less than 8 seconds. That’s less than that of a goldfish. If you don’t get to the point quickly with your first LinkedIn outreach, you are simply going to lose your audience. Keep in mind that the average reader needs around 15 seconds to skim over 50 words. 

That’s one of the main reasons why you need to get to the point quickly, right off the bat. This is the best way to attract your reader’s attention. 

Give them an interesting piece of information, and then dive in. Explain your opportunity as succinctly as you can. And, this brings us to the next point.

6. The Value Proposition

LinkedIn messages are all about value propositions. This is the core of the message, and if you do not describe this properly, you are not going to get many responses.

Having a strong value proposition can dig you out of the hole, even when your message is weak. But, if your value proposition is not on point, even the most well-worded messages are going to fall on deaf ears.

7. Leverage Social Proof – But Be Careful When Adding Links

To really hammer in your point, you need to leverage a bit of social proof as well. If your LinkedIn campaigns have yielded positive results in the past and you have quantifiable numbers, use them to attract attention. It’s a simple LinkedIn growth hack. 

It helps build trust as well. However, be careful when adding links. When you include a link in your LinkedIn messages, the platform automatically expands it into a thumbnail.

This can take up the prospect’s whole screen and distort the message as well. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that you should never add links. However, it would not be good practice to add a link in your first message.

8. Offer an Incentive

Do you have a lead magnet or a free resource that you can offer to your prospects? For instance, an ebook or a report relevant to the prospect’s industry might be a great way to break the ice.

But don’t just shove it down their inbox. Instead, ask them for permission first. Say something like, “I have compiled an excellent ebook that talks about X and Y points. If you want, I can send it your way?” 

Make sure you emphasize the value that this offers. You can then supplement this by asking for a meeting or for a small follow-up call. 

By doing this, you are effectively ticking three important boxes:

1. You are asking for permission first.
2. You are providing value to the prospect.
3. Your chances of getting a “yes” increase dramatically. 

Obviously, this approach primarily depends on the quality of your resources. One of the best ways to figure this out is to reverse the roles. What if you were the prospect and somebody else pitched this resource? Do you think it would be viable? 

Remember, a small blog post that’s patched up together in an hour isn’t going to do the trick. It will hurt your LinkedIn cold outreach strategy.  

Finally, you should thank the reader for their time. The last couple of lines should always be for thanking the reader and for paving the way for a future conversation. “I would love to hear from you,” or a simple “Would you like to talk more about this?” are both great.

Writing LinkedIn Messages – Checklist to Follow

Before you send LinkedIn messages to your audience, you may want to use this checklist: 

Have you segmented your target audience?

Is your introduction short and interesting?

Does your message contain a link?

Is your message skimmable? 

Do you have a list of follow-up messages planned?

Are you providing a free resource? 

Have you added personalized greetings?

Is your subject line capped at 3-4 words?

When done correctly, LinkedIn messages can help you find quality leads easily. As long as you follow these best practices, you will see an immediate increase in your response rate. 

Best Practices For Automating Messages On Linkedin

Part of the success of strategic messaging on LinkedIn will depend on how you maintain ongoing relationships with your customers, and that’s only possible if you help yourself with automated LinkedIn messaging.

So, here we leave you with some best practices for automating messaging on LinkedIn, including:

• Segment your contacts: Not all of your contacts have the same needs or interests. It’s imperative to categorize them into groups so you can tailor your messages effectively.
• Use customizable templates: Although you should customize your messages, you can create templates that will save you time when sending similar messages.
• Schedule your messages: If you have a list of contacts you want to send messages you can schedule them to be delivered at specific times.

Remember that personalization, clarity, value, call-to-action, and politeness are key elements to crafting effective messages on LinkedIn. Adjust these aspects according to your objectives and the context of your message, and be sure to tailor it to each person you are targeting.