My experience with InMails on LinkedIn

I've seen a few posts about people's marketing success or lack thereof with LinkedIn and wanted to share my experience.

I've used InMails twice: first to find people to determine product-market fit, and the second time to get beta customers and feedback on my website.

Product-Market Fit

I was making a Slack app, so I went to the comments on Slack posts and pulled people from there.

Here's the message that I sent:

I see that you're a Slacker (is that what you call someone who uses Slack? :).. I'm a developer/entrepreneur working on a new Slack app, and was wondering if you'd be open to sharing your thoughts on the app I'm developing. It's just wireframes at the moment. Would love to show them to you and get your feedback. Would you be open to a conversation?

I had reasonable success. I didn't track how many requests I sent, but I got nine responses and nine 15-minute interviews out of the process.

Beta Users

I re-approached the people who I spoke to about product-market fit and asked them to beta test. None of them responded, even though they all said that they'd be interested in beta testing. I decided to try my hand at InMails again.

I sent 57 InMails, got five positive responses and two people asking me to pay them for their time and one person who said she wouldn't install the app if it's not in the app directory.

I tried two strategies for the messaging. The first was a template, but based on the Slack post they were responding to which complained about people who just say "Hey" in a Slack message without further elaborating.

I used the subject line "Roast my app":

Hi Neil,

I see that you're a Slacker (is that what you call someone who uses Slack?). I'm a developer/entrepreneur and I've made a new app for Slack that avoids the "Heys" and lets you send silent messages and categorize them into FYIs, Questions, and ToDos.

Was wondering if you'd be willing to try my app for free? You can install it at https://regardingapp.com, and I'd love to hear what you think.

What do you think? Would you roast my app?

Corey.

That flat-out did not work and I got no responses.

I decided to change strategy, and hand-crafted each InMail to a specific person. I'd pick something out of their profile and talk about it, or address something specific they said in the comment on a Slack post.

Each message was different, but here's a sample of one that I sent:

I know I'm a bit late in the game here, but I noticed that you commented on Slack's post about scheduled messages six months ago and that you're a fan of them.

I'm a two-time entrepreneur who's made a Slack app similar to scheduled messages, except that it lets you send silent messages without notifications, then categorizes them into FYIs, Questions, and ToDos.

Was wondering if you'd be up for taking a look. I'm looking for people who use Slack in the wild. The product is pre-market and there wouldn't be any cost (obviously). I'm just looking for feedback on the idea, the execution, and anything else you think would be relevant.

Corey.

This worked substantially better, but the hit rate was still relatively low. You'll notice that I didn't include the URL of the app in the second message, but rather opened a conversation.

I did get responses from people saying that they'd take a look, but again: zero feedback and zero installs.

The Verdict

InMail is a lot of work, especially if you're hand crafting each message to each individual, which seems to be the only way to make it work well. I'll probably continue exploring it a bit, but I don't think it's efficient or compelling enough as a marketing channel long term.

Lastly, if you've made it this far, I'd love for you to roast my app! :) Let me know what you think of the idea, execution, and anything else you think would be relevant. You can see and install the app at https://regardingapp.com.