Open Profile messaging: finding people you can message for free

An Open Profile is a LinkedIn Premium setting that lets any member send the person an InMail without being connected and without spending an InMail credit. For outreach it means a free first message to those people who have it on. You cannot assume how many in a list do, so check a sample before you plan around it. In Sellinger, the agent reads the flag and sends an Open Profile InMail without charging a credit.

Free is a strong word in outbound, because the usual cost of reaching a stranger on LinkedIn is a limited invitation or a scarce credit. This post explains what Open Profile is, what it is not, and how to plan around it without leaning on numbers we do not have.

What is an Open Profile?

A setting on the profile of a LinkedIn Premium member. When it is on, anyone on LinkedIn can send that person an InMail without being connected, and without using one of their own InMail credits. Our glossary entry on Open Profile gives the short definition.

It helps to place it among the ways to reach someone:

Why does it matter for outreach?

Because credits are limited, and the cheapest first touch to a stranger is a free one. If part of your list has Open Profile on, you can message those people directly, without waiting for an invitation to be accepted. For a person who rarely accepts invitations from strangers, that may matter.

It does not remove all limits. In Sellinger, the daily InMail limit counts free InMails too. And LinkedIn can refuse a free InMail: if it does during a cycle, the account stops trying it for the rest of that cycle. Treat the free message as a bonus, not a guarantee.

How can you tell who has one?

On LinkedIn, the profile of a Premium member with the setting on shows that anyone can message them. Checking by hand works for a small list.

For a larger list you cannot do it by hand. Sellinger reads the flag from the profile data when it routes the first touch, so you do not need to look. The practical question is not who has one but how many in your list do, because it decides how far your credits go.

How many people have one?

We do not know, and we publish no figure. The share depends on the audience: some professions use Premium more than others, and Premium members choose whether to turn the setting on. Do not use a number from a blog, ours or anyone's, for planning.

Instead measure on a sample:

1. Take 100 profiles from your list. A random draw, not the first 100.
2. Check how many show the open message option. By hand, or let the product route a small batch and count how many go as free InMails.
3. Scale your estimate with a margin. If 12 of 100 have it, plan on a range around 12, not exactly 12.
4. Enter it in the planner. The InMail credit planner takes your estimate of the Open Profile share and your credits and shows how far they go.

What should the message say?

The same as any first message, with the extra care that a subject line is public. The InMail the agent writes has a subject under 60 characters with no clickbait or emoji, and a message of three to five short sentences. It opens with one concrete thing about the person's work, says briefly why you are reaching out and what is in it for them, and ends with one easy question. It has no calendar link and does not pretend you have spoken before.

Because it is free for the sender, there is a temptation to send more of them. Resist it. A person with an Open Profile may receive a lot of free messages, which is a reason for yours to be specific. On our own LinkedIn outbound, observation openers beat question openers by 10 to 15 points, and the same logic applies. See observation openers beat questions.

How does Sellinger use it?

With InMail on for an account, the agent checks whether the lead's profile is open. If it is, it sends an InMail and LinkedIn does not charge a credit. Otherwise it spends one Premium credit, and when no credit or daily slot is left it sends a plain connection request. The full routing is described in how an AI agent decides between an invite and an InMail, and the settings are on the InMail product page.

A worked planning example

The numbers below are made up to show the method. A team has a list of 400 people it is not connected to, 20 Premium credits left this month, and the default daily InMail limit of 10.

1. Draw a random sample of 100 profiles. Suppose 12 show the open message option.
2. The sample is small, so use a range, say 8% to 16%. On the list of 400, that means roughly 32 to 64 people reachable for free.
3. Those free InMails need no credit, but they still use the daily limit. At 10 a day, 32 to 64 free InMails take about 4 to 7 working days of slots on their own.
4. The 20 credits cover 20 more people with no Open Profile. They go to the most valuable leads first.
5. The remaining people, about 316 to 348, get a plain connection request.

The result is a plan with three tiers: free InMail to the open profiles, paid InMail to the top leads, connection requests to the rest. The daily limit, not the credits, is the first thing to bind in this example, which is easy to miss if you only count credits.

What changes at different shares?

The same list of 400 under three assumed shares. The shares are made up.

A larger share moves people out of the slow lane, but it never removes the daily limit. At 100 free InMails and a limit of 10 a day, the free tier alone takes ten working days.

Questions that come up

Is an Open Profile InMail the same as a normal message? For the recipient it arrives as an InMail from someone they are not connected to. For the sender it costs no credit.

Should I send only to Open Profile members? No. That would shrink the list to whoever turned the setting on, which is a self selected group, and may not match your buyer. Use it as a free route where it exists.

What if LinkedIn refuses a free InMail? The account stops trying free InMails for the rest of that cycle, and those leads fall back to the next option in the routing. See how the agent decides.

What do we not know?

• Whether an Open Profile InMail gets more replies than a connection request. We publish no InMail result because there are too few sends.
• How many people have the setting. Measure your own list.
• Whether LinkedIn will keep the feature as it is. Features change. Check LinkedIn's current help pages before you plan a campaign around it.

As with all LinkedIn automation, no tool can guarantee that LinkedIn will never restrict an account, and Sellinger's limits are our own defaults, not LinkedIn rules. For first touch choices that include email, see InMail vs connection request vs email.

A checklist

• [ ] I know what Open Profile is and how it differs from a normal InMail.
• [ ] I measured the share on a sample of my own list.
• [ ] I entered that estimate in the credit planner.
• [ ] My daily InMail limit counts free InMails too.
• [ ] Messages are specific, not mass produced because they are free.
• [ ] I make no claim about reply rates without my own test.