LinkedIn InMail vs connection request: when each one wins

01Should you send an InMail or a connection request?

Start with a connection request and a note. Switch to InMail only for senior buyers with an obvious reason. The other case is when you genuinely can’t connect at all, such as someone outside your network with InMail turned on and no shared group.

02What is LinkedIn InMail?

InMail is a paid LinkedIn message you can send to someone you aren’t connected to. It comes with Premium, Sales Navigator and Recruiter plans, as a set number of credits a month, rather than unlimited sending.

Basic, free accounts don’t get InMail credits at all. A Basic account can only message people it’s already connected to.

03What’s the difference between InMail and a regular LinkedIn message?

A regular message goes free to a first-degree connection, no credit needed. An InMail reaches people outside your network and spends a credit. A message request sits in between: it’s free, and it works only for Open Profile members, people in the same Group, or your current coworkers.

04Can you message someone on LinkedIn without connecting?

Yes, three ways: an InMail paid from your plan’s credits, a free message to an Open Profile member who has chosen to let anyone on LinkedIn message them for free, or a free message request to someone in a Group you share, or a current coworker.

Open Profile only works one way: you need Premium to turn it on for your own profile, but anyone can message a person who has it on, Premium or not.

05Do you need LinkedIn Premium to message someone?

Not to message your own connections. That’s free on any account, Basic included. You need a paid plan, such as Premium or Sales Navigator, to send InMail to people you aren’t connected to.

06Is LinkedIn InMail free?

No. InMail spends credits that come from a paid plan, and no plan gives unlimited credits. The one exception is Open Profile: Premium members who turn it on can be messaged by anyone for free, credits or not.

07How many InMail credits do you get?

These figures come from LinkedIn Help. Sales Navigator gives the same 50 credits on every edition, Core through Advanced Plus.

08Do InMail credits roll over or expire?

Sales Navigator credits renew on the first of each calendar month. You can hold up to 150 at once, and unused credits must be used within 90 days or they’re lost. Premium credits renew on your billing date instead of the first of the month.

Either way, a credit sitting unused for three months is gone. Spend the ones you’re not going to use on a lower-priority name rather than losing them.

09Do you get InMail credits back when someone replies?

Yes, within 90 days, but LinkedIn’s two pages word the rule differently. One page credits you when the InMail gets any response within 90 days, auto-replies included. The other says the credit comes back when the message is “accepted, declined or responded to directly” within 90 days.

Both agree on the 90-day window. They disagree on whether an automatic out-of-office reply counts, which one page implies and the other doesn’t mention.

10Can you buy more InMail credits?

No. LinkedIn says you can’t buy extra InMail credits on any plan, and no plan gives unlimited credits.

11Does LinkedIn InMail work for sales?

It works best for a senior buyer with an obvious reason to talk, and worst as a mass channel, since every send costs a scarce credit. LinkedIn’s most widely quoted InMail response figures come from recruiting, not sales, so treat them as a different use of the same tool.

Recruiters and sales teams send InMail for different reasons, at different volumes, to different audiences. A recruiter benchmark tells you little about a founder sending 20 InMails a month to buyers.

12What is a good LinkedIn InMail response rate?

LinkedIn counts an InMail as answered if the reply comes within 30 days, and holds recruiters to at least 13% on 100 or more InMails sent in each 14-day period. That’s recruiter data, labelled as such by LinkedIn itself.

LinkedIn publishes no sales benchmark for InMail. Compare your own rate week to week instead of chasing a recruiting number that measures a different job.

13How do you write an InMail that gets a reply?

Keep it short even though you have room. One reason, one question, and a subject line that names the reason instead of a category like “Partnership opportunity.”

The body can run to 1,900 characters on one Help page and 2,000 on a newer one, but you’ll rarely need a tenth of that. Sample subject and opener: “Your post on 90-day ramp times” then “You wrote that new engineers take 90 days to ramp. Is that still true after the reorg, or has it improved?” (106 characters in the opener alone, well under either limit.)

14Can you follow up on an InMail that got no reply?

Not with another InMail. LinkedIn’s rule is direct: “You cannot send a follow-up InMail unless the recipient accepts and responds to your first message,” and never after they’ve declined it.

That makes the first InMail more important, not less. If it doesn’t land, a second InMail isn’t an option, so you’d need a different channel, such as a connection request, if you still have a reason to write.

15How do you get a C-level executive to reply on LinkedIn?

Give them a reason tied to something they did or said, not a title-based guess about their priorities. Keep it to one question, and use InMail only if the reason is strong and they haven’t accepted an invitation from you already.

Seniority raises the bar on the reason, not the length of the message. A specific, checkable detail works better on a CEO than it does on anyone else, because a CEO gets more generic messages to compare it against.

16Quick answers

17Where this leaves our own outreach

None of our three plans sends InMail. Starter, Signal and Authority all run on connection requests and the free messages that follow acceptance, sent through a cloud-based sending tool with daily limits. If a client’s account also holds Sales Navigator, the InMail credits that come with it are theirs to use however they choose.

Read what to write in the note itself next, or see ten first lines founders delete, rewritten for the same reason-then-question shape applied to messages after acceptance.