Chapter 67
Precision E-mails
Do you get more than 50 e-mails each day?
For most, the answer is yes. You might even get more than 100 each day. By contrast, how many LinkedIn e-mails do you get each day? Five? Ten? For savvy LinkedIn users, maybe more but it's still a small number compared to your regular e-mail. Turns out, e-mails that come through LinkedIn get opened a lot more than regular e-mails. These are the types of statistics LinkedIn publicizes on their blog because they demonstrate the value of the LinkedIn platform.
Consider unsolicited e-mails, e-mails from people you don't know. So we're not talking about e-mails from your spouse, colleagues, or friends. If you get an unsolicited e-mail, you're up to seven times as likely to open that e-mail if it came through LinkedIn rather than if it just showed up in your regular e-mail inbox. LinkedIn is a great way to deliver a proposal to an ideal prospect, especially for people in the B2B (business to business) space. You have a much better chance that the prospect will actually open your e-mail and see what you have to say.
If you're a savvy LinkedIn user, you'll know that you can only send LinkedIn e-mails—called “InMail”—to your direct network, people you're directly connected to. As luck would have it, there's a really easy way around that. Just visit the profile of the person you're trying to contact—all LinkedIn profiles are public so you can visit anyone's profile—and see which groups he or she is a member ...
