Sponsored Messaging Tips 

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LinkedIn discontinued location targeting in the European Union (EU) on all Sponsored Messaging campaigns, effective January 10, 2022. Learn more.

Sponsored Messaging tips

Sponsored Messaging is an effective way to reach your audience with a native ad delivered directly to your target audience's LinkedIn Messaging. That means you engage them where they increasingly spend most of their time -- and while they're in a professional mindset. Make the most of your Sponsored Messaging campaigns with these tips for determining your objective, creating effective content, and proving the value of your ads.

Determine your Sponsored Messaging objective

Identify your key marketing objective. This will inform which Sponsored Messaging ad format you will use, your ad content and how you measure success.

You can use Sponsored Messaging to:
  •  Drive brand consideration and engagement
  •  Generate demand and leads

Sponsored Messaging comes in two ad formats:

Craft your message based on your objective

Once you determine your campaign objective, audit your content and determine which assets will help accelerate the buying process for prospects.

Here are ideas to help you get started:
  •  To drive brand consideration, reach out to your audience with blog posts, webinars, or industry trends and analysis.
  •  To drive leads and turn prospects into customers, consider sharing product demos or tutorials, and customer success stories, or invite prospects to attend a webinar or event.

Best practices for creating Sponsored Messaging campaigns

Choose a credible sender. Choose someone ideally with a title of director or higher; who is relevant to your message and credible to your audience. Set up your sender using our permissioning process.

Quick tips:
  •  Make sure the sender's profile image is a high-quality, professional image of their face. Of course, a friendly smile goes a long way.
  •  Ask the sender to confirm in member settings that their profile photo is visible to LinkedIn members. It will need to be set to either "All LinkedIn Members" or "Public" for all recipients to see it.
  •  Introduce yourself. Let your audience know who you are and why you're reaching out.
  •  Personalize at scale. Use LinkedIn macros, like first name and job title, to seamlessly personalize your ad to each recipient.
  •  Add a banner image. The banner image is only visible to recipients viewing your ad on desktop, but this space is prime real estate for ensuring your brand is top of mind. If you don't upload a banner image, another brand's image can show up in this placement.
  •  Keep campaigns running all week. Sponsored Messaging ads see the highest open rates on Tuesdays and get the most clicks on weekends.

Best practices by Sponsored Messaging ad format

Message Ads:
  •  Be concise, personal, and relevant. Use bullets rather than dense copy. Body text under 500 characters drives a 46% higher click-through-rate (CTR) on average.
  •  Add hyperlinks. Make your Message Ads more interactive by adding hyperlinks, proven to lift CTR by 21%.
  •  Refer to Message Ads specs for more detailed information to guide your ad creative.

Conversation Ads:
  •  Leverage one of our templates. To get started, take advantage of Conversation Ad templates in Campaign Manager. Available templates by objective include: drive trials and demos, offer professional services, and promote your podcast. You can edit any of the templates to make them your own.
  •  Use multiple messages and buttons. Like a conversation -- and to provide a more engaging experience -- give your prospects the information they need in bits, not in bulk. Set up two to three messages with at least two CTAs that members can interact with.
  •  Keep it conversational. Keep your tone warm and helpful - the way you would speak on the phone.
  •  Don't include "not interested" CTAs. Uninterested recipients will simply close the ad. Instead, focus on CTAs that help achieve your business objectives.
  •  Use rich media. If you are seeing low engagement, consider adding rich media like photos.

Measure and optimize

  •  Define how to measure success for your business. Use all the reporting tools available in Campaign Manager to gain new, valuable insights about your prospects and customers. For instance, see how your Conversation Ad is performing with detailed click reporting and use demographic reporting to optimize targeting so you drive demand with the right audience.

  •  Install the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your website to track conversions from your Sponsored Messaging campaigns.

  •  Use Lead Gen Forms to collect leads directly in LinkedIn to drive 2x more conversions.

  •  Use Sponsored Messaging to complement your marketing efforts. Advertisers see strong open and CTR rates while running Sponsored Messaging in tandem with Sponsored Content. In one case study, an advertiser saw a 19% uplift in open rate and a 72% increase in CTR for their Sponsored Messaging campaign while running Sponsored Content alongside it.