Seeking a paid content tool that delivers

Perry Sjögren has been working in the central marketing organization for Microsoft US long enough to remember when social media wasn’t popular. “People didn’t start out doing paid content on social media,” he recalled. “It was all organic.”

When paid social products did become available, Sjögren experimented with many of them, on all the platforms you’d expect. One quick discovery? LinkedIn Sponsored InMail “always worked.” “It’s been my top tactic,” he said.

Perry’s InMail insight became extremely valuable when Sjögren was tasked with promoting an interactive virtual event for Microsoft called Business Forward. He knew InMail would be part of his mix. He just couldn’t have predicted how much.

Leveraging LinkedIn InMail to gain thousands of registrants for a special event

For the Business Forward event, Sjögren’s mandate was to drive registration and boost attendance—dramatically. The event’s purpose was to educate attendees about new ways to think about data, artificial intelligence, and processes for digital transformation. Naturally, its audience was technologically savvy and often online.

Perry and his agency ran a campaign for Business Forward on multiple channels over the course of three weeks, including LinkedIn Sponsored InMail. In the first week, he tested several social media platforms and compared results, quickly discovering that some worked far better than others.

“We used paid tactics on five different platforms,” he recalls. “Ultimately, we switched all the remaining budget to InMail.”

Early InMail results yielded 10x more registrants than other platforms. And by the end of the campaign, InMail was responsible for 2,212 out of 2,550 event registrations.

Not only were the registration numbers astounding, but the open rates on invites were off the charts. Using targeted lead generation, Microsoft saw an open rate of up to 48% on their event registration invitations—an unprecedented result.

“The beauty of those numbers,” says Perry, “is that people kept opening the emails even after the paid campaign stopped.” That’s because InMails don’t rely on a campaign spend to remain active; they stay in a user’s Inbox, waiting to be opened.

Using LinkedIn skills targeting to speak to a receptive audience

One of the reasons InMail’s lead gen forms worked so well was their skills targeting algorithm. Perry’s LinkedIn account rep ran forecasting on nearly 20 terms to see which ones had the most scale and relevance to the campaign. In the end, they selected three—cloud computing, network security, and information security—that aligned with their target base and integrated those into their email body copy.

“With LinkedIn’s algorithm, our ads are getting more fine-tuned as time goes on,” Perry says. “For each recipient, we referenced skills they had listed on their LinkedIn profile in the body copy of our email. It made the communications pop—and improved open rates. And once we identified skills, we were able to optimize the rest of our budget.”

LinkedIn InMail cuts costs while driving more leads

Thanks to InMail, Microsoft was able to meet their goals for event registration—and reach more of their target audience. Not only did InMail help them narrow down their search, it also produced more value for the money, with a lower cost per event action (CPEA) of $88—lower than any other channel. Instead of spending part of their event budget on unopened emails and uninterested recipients, the company was able to connect with people who would benefit from the event the most.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft is planning to use InMail and other LinkedIn solutions for future campaigns.

“LinkedIn is expanding their portfolio, and there are some things we can’t wait to try,” says Perry. “We’re planning a lot of cool stuff in the months ahead.”