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What Does LinkedIn Sponsored InMail Cost (Aka Message Ads) in 2024?

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Have you checked your InMail lately? 

Yes, it’s probably filled with connection requests and ‘quick questions’ from professionals already in your network.

But there’s something else: a sprinkling of Message Ads, designed as organic messages formerly known as “Sponsored InMail.”

That said, we’ll explain LinkedIn Sponsored InMail cost (aka Message Ads), how they work, their pros and cons, and some alternatives to consider.

Key points on LinkedIn Sponsored Inmail cost and what Message Ads are

Brands use Message Ads to deliver targeted ads as organic messages. 

How should you message prospects on LinkedIn?

Every LinkedIn user can use InMail to message their existing network. But you can only reach prospects outside of your network using one of three options:

  1. InMail Credits: With LinkedIn memberships (including Premium and Sales Navigator), you get 10-30 InMail credits every month. 
  2. Message Ads: Use Message Ads to advertise to your target audience directly in their InMail inbox. 
  3. Exported Emails: Scale your outreach efforts by exporting lead emails from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Export emails with Wiza

To make a long story short, LinkedIn Message Ads have historically been around $0.80 per send (this translates into over $5 per click), but this may differ depending on your business and location. This is much more affordable than $10 per InMail message — but much more expensive than cold email or typical CPC strategies.

What else do you need to know about InMail ads?

Sponsored InMail is now ‘Message Ads’

LinkedIn has rebranded sponsored InMail to ‘Message Ads’. This is seemingly to incorporate the offering into the rest of its advertising.

But let’s be real: everyone is still searching for Sponsored InMail. 

You did, didn’t you? We work with people all the time who still call it Sponsored InMail, so if you do, too, don’t worry.

Here’s how LinkedIn describes Message Ads:

“Send direct messages to your prospects to spark immediate action. Deliver a targeted message with a single CTA. Communicate to your prospects without having to worry about character limits.”

Message ads page on the LinkedIn website

Sounds a lot like sponsored InMail, eh?

Branding aside much has remained the same. Moving on. 

What are LinkedIn Message Ads (Sponsored InMail)?

Sponsored InMail messages — or Message Ads — are an advertising format unique to LinkedIn. In short, they are paid versions of everyday LinkedIn messages.

“Send direct messages to your prospects to spark immediate action.”

Like other LinkedIn advertising formats, Message Ads are almost purely for a B2B audience. If you have a specific target audience, Message Ads are a good channel to explore. But, like other LinkedIn advertising, the costs can add up. 

Message Ads vs. normal InMail

Here are a few ways Message Ads are different than normal InMail messages:

  • Leads can’t respond to Message Ads. You can include a CTA — as a link to a form or optimized landing page — but the people you send Message Ads won’t be able to respond directly. Since these are meant to be sent at scale, this automates much of the follow-up work. 
  • Message Ads are only delivered when people are active. This effective (sneaky?) tactic from LinkedIn boosts the open rate of Message Ads, supposedly. 
  • Message Ads are less expensive than organic InMail. Since buying additional InMail credits runs $10 per message, Message Ads have a much lower cost at scale. In general, brands will spend less than a dollar per Message Ad sent. 
  • Message Ads are marked as ‘sponsored’. While you can send completely organic InMail messages (or email) with a premium LinkedIn, Message Ads are delivered with a ‘sponsored’ tag before the subject line. 
Example of Message Ads

Is it better to InMail or connect on Linkedin?

Connecting and InMailing are two different ways of making contact with an individual – both of which have their own advantages and drawbacks. While building connections on LinkedIn can be a great way to expand your network and increase visibility within the platform, doing so requires you to wait for the other person to accept your request. This can lead to long waits that may not suit your timeline or goals.

InMail offers a more direct approach – allowing you to send messages directly into your target’s Inbox. However, this method may be considered less “organic” than connecting and also costs money in most cases. Plus, if you don’t have a strong idea of who’s in your target audience, using InMail may become expensive very quickly if you’re targeting too broadly.

Ultimately, the choice comes down to what fits best for you and your business objectives: If you want quick action from someone or need more control over who receives your message then InMail might be a better solution; if organic growth is important then connecting should be given priority.

How do you set goals for your Message Ads campaign?

Like with any other campaign, the first step towards creating your own LinkedIn InMail campaign is to set goals and purpose.

You’ll have to define what you want to achieve with the campaign and how much you want to spend on it.

While doing this, you need to set a conversion goal to determine if this tactic does pay off. Furthermore, you need to define your target audience more specifically. You can target by job title, skill, specific industries, or segmented customer lists.

What does LinkedIn Sponsored InMail cost – what is the price of Message Ads?

You might have arrived at this post because you had one question in mind: what does LinkedIn Sponsored InMail cost (Message Ads)? Don’t worry, we’ll answer that now.

Just keep in mind that these prices are subject to change and may differ depending on your location.

With Message Ads, businesses can reach potential customers with personalized messages on LinkedIn. On average, it costs upward of $0.80 per successful send (your region may vary). However costly, these messages may be well worth the investment if you’re hoping to nurture higher-quality leads and drive conversions.

There’s no way around it: Message Ads are one of the most expensive forms of advertising on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn already has one of the highest CPC rates of any digital platform.

That’s because Message Ads are priced by the number of messages sent, not the number of clicks.

These are rough estimates, based on the lower end of bidding and an estimated CTR:

  • Cost per send: this depends on your audience and targeting, but messages can cost around $0.80 per send.
  • Spend: You must spend a minimum of $25 per campaign.
  • CPC: With an open rate below 50% and an optimistic CTR of 4%, you can expect at least $5 per click.
Explanation of Cost Per Send (CPS)

Why use Message Ads? (pros & cons)

Sales leaders use Message Ads for a host of reasons, from lead generation to account-based sales. 

Here are a handful of the pros and cons of using Message Ads. 

The pros of Message Ads

  • Specific targeting: You can hone in on high-value leads, using InMail messages as one touchpoint in a multi-touch campaign. Message Ads allow you to target users you believe are most likely to be interested in your product or service, based on criteria such as job titles, interests, and location. That way, you can tailor your message to their relevant needs and interests and you won’t have to worry about wasting money blasting out messages that are far less likely to convert.
  • High visibility: Get delivered to your prospects’ LinkedIn inbox without risking the spam folder. 
  • Bulk messages: Instead of manually sending InMail messages (and spending a fortune to do so), you can scale your Message Ads easily (but be wary of the cost that can add up). 
  • Ease of use: Many users report that Message Ad campaigns are easy to set up — though you may end up spending more time on landing pages and fitting the campaign into your funnel. 
  • High open rates. LinkedIn claims an open rate close to 70%, while some users report their open rates to be closer to 50%. Either number is higher than the average cold email open rate (though there are plenty of ways to boost your cold email campaigns). 

The cons of Message Ads

  • Cost. Message Ads can add up quickly if you’re sending thousands of Message Ads every month. It’s definitely a better option for highly targeted campaigns. 
  • “Sponsored” tag. Remember that your leads will know it’s not a truly organic message right off the bat. Message Ads have a high open-rate (who wants to leave unread messages in their LinkedIn inbox?), but actual conversion is not as clear. 
  • More time investment. To get the most out of Message Ads, you’ll need a dedicated landing page or conversion form. 
  • Unclear metrics. Spend is not tied to clicks or conversions. You pay for how many messages you deliver, period. It could easily be a higher cost than other forms of advertising (and definitely higher than cold email campaigns). 

Alternatives to Message Ads

  • Cold email: Cold email sometimes gets a bad rap in terms of organic engagement. But cold email can be easier to scale, much more personalized, and much cheaper than InMail messages. And you can still use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to prospect, and then extract emails. 
  • Direct InMail messages: These can feel more authentic and they’re almost free (since you get 30 InMail messages with Sales Navigator). Save these for your high-value targets, particularly in account-based campaigns. 
  • Other forms of LinkedIn advertising: The B2B social media platform offers a host of advertising options, from banners across the homepage to in-feed display ads. It’s worth testing out each of these options with conversions. Since you get a wider reach but can still target, the ROI may be higher. You can at least test the results before diving into paid InMail ads blindly. 

Leverage Wiza for greater data accuracy and better cold outreach results

If you want to get the most out of your cold email outreach, you should start with the best data on the market. Wiza is a sales intelligence platform that can help you find and extract emails directly from LinkedIn. Each email you scrape using Wiza is verified in real time to ensure you only send emails to live and active email addresses.

Using Sales Navigator? You can export a full search on Sales Navigator, up to 2500 contacts at once. You can also use Wiza to build contact lists and export them directly to your CRM (or to a CSV).

If you’d like to give it a try, you can sign up with a free account today for 20 free email credits.

LinkedIn Message Ads – what you should do next?

Now that you know all of the basics of what Message Ads are and why they’re important, you can go to Campaign Manager where you can manage Message Ads. You will need to sign up for a Campaign Manager account before you can continue.

If you think your target audience will respond well to Message Ads, it might be worth it to give it a try. Otherwise, we’ve provided you with a few alternatives if you’re considering a different route.

Either way, the best thing to do when it comes to outreach is to try new techniques and see what works for you and what your prospects respond to.

When you find what works, then you can go from there and optimize your process.

Create prospect lists from Linkedin.

Convert any Linkedin search to an email list ready for outreach.

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