LinkedIn Premium : 33% success rate with InMail function

I recently upgraded to the Premium membership at LinkedIn, the global network of professionals.

It’s not that I desired to expand my 500+ business connections much further. After all, one has to be selective with their contacts, or things like this happen.

In this case, I was interested in getting in touch with LinkedIn members that I’m several degrees of separation apart.

Reaching out to those people was part of an investigation to identify the trails of a group of domain thieves, and as the investigation is ongoing, I will save these details for another time.

As a Premium LinkedIn member, one can use InMail – the dedicated, internal communication that lands in one’s LinkedIn mailbox.

Surely, that feature could be abused – and has been abused – by spammers or overzealous recruiters alike.

But the fact remains, that it’s a valuable communication delivery tool at a professional level, whether the unconnected party is an executive or a domain investor.

Having sent out notices with a short introduction to 3 people that I’m not connected to, I have so far heard back from one, several days later. So I will count the success rate of LinkedIn InMail to be 33%, with the added caveat that the success rate most likely depends on your target.

If your targeted contact is offline, or ignores prompts to visit their LinkedIn account to retrieve their mail, your attempts will fail. After all, once needs to be a consciously active member of LinkedIn, or any other community, in order to use it.

Still, I am satisfied with the outcome, and hope to integrate this level of membership into my future contact attempts.