🤔LinkedIn Message Read Receipts: Did They Read Your Message? – Expandi

8 mins

On LinkedIn, read recipients show you who has and hasn’t seen your messages through LinkedIn messaging.

Essentially, your prospects can tell when you’ve seen their messages and that you haven’t replied yet.

Now, if you’re like most people, this doesn’t sound ideal.

Whether you’re using LinkedIn for recruitment, lead generation, or just plain networking, it’s sometimes best to have the luxury of time and reply later.

It can be challenging to keep up with all the messages in your LinkedIn inbox even if you have every intention of replying later.

Sometimes, leaving a message on ‘seen’ might send the wrong message in your communications.

The person you’re messaging on LinkedIn can also tell when you’re typing and maybe anxiously waiting for you on the other end of the screen.

For example, let’s say a lead sends you an important message on LinkedIn and saw that you received and read it.

Failure to respond to a message in timely order can send the wrong signals.

While in reality, you could be getting ready to hop into a meeting or signing off work.

The point is: Sometimes, you’d rather the person on the other end of the screen NOT know that you’ve read their message.

And you can do just that with LinkedIn’s read recipients and typing indicators settings, as we’ll cover below.

Below, we’ll cover:

  • How LinkedIn Read Recipients Work
  • How to Turn LinkedIn Read Recipients and Typing Indicators Off In The Settings
  • Improve Your LinkedIn Messaging: Top 5 Best Practices

Now, here’s what you need to know to make the most out of LinkedIn’s messaging system.

How LinkedIn Read Recipients Work

Once a user clicks on a message in their inbox, LinkedIn puts a “read” signal next to it to signify it was seen.

But for read recipients to be active, both the sender and the recipient need to have this turned on in the settings.

This is why you might have noticed that the “read” icon shows up with certain connections only.

This is important to note because if the person you’re contacting has read receipts turned off; you will NOT be able to see if they’ve viewed your message or not regardless of whether your read recipients settings are turned on or off.

Similarly, you can also turn off your typing indicators (we’ll cover how below) so that your recipient will NOT be able to tell if you’re sending a message at that moment.

Let’s take a look.

How to Turn LinkedIn Read Recipients and Typing Indicators Off In The Settings

Do you want to make it, so your LinkedIn recipient doesn’t know if you’ve read their message or not?

No problem!

Here’s what to do if you don’t want to have an obligation to reply to someone who might be sitting there waiting for your message:

1. Go to Settings & Privacy from your LinkedIn homepage.

2. Click on Communications and Messaging experience.

 

3. Click the circle button to turn Read Recipients on or off.

This applies to typing indicators as well.

So, if you turn this off, your recipients will not be able to see if you’re typing or if you’ve read their message.

Here are a couple of other things you can change in this settings section.

LinkedIn messaging experience

In the same LinkedIn messaging experience section, you can also tweak the following settings.

  • Messaging suggestions – Allows LinkedIn to show you suggestions on how to reply to your messages. Some of these suggestions will be personalized, using LinkedIn’s automated systems to recognize patterns in your notes.

  • Message nudges – If you want to receive reminders about messages you haven’t responded to yet. These notifications appear next to messages you haven’t responded to in your inbox and they can be helpful to keep up with your messages and not miss out on any important ones.

But if you’re having trouble keeping up with your LinkedIn inbox, you can also use Expandi to filter, tag, and organize all of your messages in a neat, easy-to-use interface.

This way, you can also set up automated LinkedIn flows and follow-up messages to save time responding to your leads.

Sounds good?

Learn more about using Expandi in a free live demo now!

Now, let’s get back on track.

Now that you know how to tell if someone has read your message on LinkedIn or not, the use cases for this should be obvious.

Whether you’re networking on LinkedIn or doing lead generation, you’ll want to adjust your read recipients based on your conversations and time effort.

As in, if you have no time to reply to your leads because you’re doing a lot of outreach, it’s better to have your read recipients turned off. So that you don’t keep them waiting for a reply after connecting.

Showing that you’ve read your lead’s message but haven’t replied for a while might send the wrong message.

On the other hand, if you’re having a real-time LinkedIn conversation, it’s better to have your read recipients and typing indicators turned on so that your leads know you’re there and that they can expect a reply soon.

Alternatively, you can use Expandi to automate your follow-ups entirely so that you don’t even have to send them on your own manually. You can even adjust when to send an automated reply based on time.

Wondering how to improve your LinkedIn communications and outreach in general?

Let’s look at some tips to help you make the most out of your outbound messaging.

Improve Your LinkedIn Messaging: Top 5 Best Practices

Whether you have read recipients turned on or off, there are specific steps you can take to maximize your conversations with your leads.

Aside from using outreach templates, here are a couple of best practices from experience we make sure to include in our messaging – no matter the objective.

  1. Include one ‘ask’ per message

Most of our cold messages that get a high reply rate include only one ‘ask’ per message.

Because chances are, if you’re bombarding your leads on LinkedIn with multiple questions and long sentences, they won’t bother replying at all.

Keep things simple. Include only one ‘ask’ per message.

Something like:

  • What do you think?
  • Let me know if you’d be ok with a call later this week, the second half of the day?
  • Would that be something you’d be interested in?
  • Let me know if there’s any room for collaboration here?

As always, it’s better to be as specific as possible.

With your pitch as well as your ‘ask’.

Because it’s easy to bombard your leads on LinkedIn with long messages that they won’t read.

And worst of all – with no CTA or ‘ask’ at the end of your message, they’ll just be confused on what to do next.

But sometimes, you’ll notice your leads read your message and haven’t replied.

In that case, the next best thing you can do is to:

  2. Always follow up

Did you know that 44% of sales reps give up after one follow-up?

Just because you’ve got a foot in the door doesn’t mean you’ve closed the sale.

Whether it’s a cold email or a LinkedIn message, you should always be following up.

Because, just like you, your leads are busy and are probably also juggling other tasks.

And just like you, the message might have slipped their mind or they never got around to it.

The point is, you should always follow up regardless of the medium or message.

Something like:

  • Hey {first_name}, did you have a chance to go over this?
  • Know you’re busy, just bumping this up in your inbox!
  • Let me know when you get the chance!

And so on.

Alternatively, you can also follow up with some of your new content pieces, case studies, client wins, and so on.

  • Hey {first_name}, just published something you might be interested in… [URL]
  • Hi {first_name}, just wanted to let you know about a quick win with one of our clients regarding…

Now, if you’re doing LinkedIn lead generation and outreach campaigns at scale, following up with each of your leads might be hard to do manually.

But with Expandi, this becomes a piece of cake as you can just set automatic follow-ups, for specific leads, with a particular period.

Check out our complete guide to marketing funnel automation for other similar flows you can set up in two clicks with Expandi.

  3. Consider replying now and aiming for inbox zero

One easy way to get overwhelmed by your LinkedIn inbox is to keep putting off messages to reply to them later.

Inbox zero, meanwhile, is an email management philosophy aimed at keeping your inbox empty or almost empty at all times.

Think of your LinkedIn messages as tasks that need to be completed.

And the more you put them off, the more tasks you’ll have when you return.

So, consider replying as soon as you receive a new message to reach inbox zero.

This way, it’ll be less overwhelming when you open LinkedIn to zero new messages. Instead of 20+ new messages, you’d have to comb through one by one.

Worst case, if you’re still too busy to reply to your messages, you can either:

  • Tell your recipients you’re busy but will follow up in 1-2 weeks.
  • Say you’re busy at the moment, but they can follow up again in the future so that you don’t miss their message.

  4. Be brief and straight to the point

Regardless of your outreach objective, you’ll want to be straight to the point with your messages.

Because, chances are, your leads get many other messages daily. And if you want to get their attention, you need to be brief and straight to the point, instead of follow-ups of wasting their time with your whole life backstory.

Consider this brief template:

  • Personalization.
  • Introduction.
  • Case study.
  • CTA.

This way, you clearly state why you’re reaching to them specifically, introduce yourself without hard-selling, provide a 1-2 sentence case study that demonstrates your skills, and provide only 1 CTA.

Consider some of our other LinkedIn best practices if you want to generate more leads and boost your social selling efforts.

  5. Consider using LinkedIn automation to reach more people

Last but not least, if you want to reach more people, consider using some LinkedIn automation tools to generate leads on autopilot.

With tools like Expandi, it’s easier than ever to set up automated outreach flows to target your target audience on LinkedIn.

To make things even easier, you can use pre-set flows and outreach strategies such as this one from the Expandi templates marketplace.

Then, you can also go beyond LinkedIn and automated email follow ups, LinkedIn InMails, post engagement, and more.

Whether you’re spending too much time interacting with your prospects manually or just want to connect and close more deals on autopilot, Expandi can help take your outreach to the next level.

Conclusion

Now, to recap, let’s go over some of the most frequently asked questions on LinkedIn read recipients.

  • Does LinkedIn have read receipts?

Yes, LinkedIn read recipients are displayed when a message has been read. Assuming your recipient has it turned on in the settings, you can tell if they’ve read your message or not. And the same applies to you. Your recipients can know if you’ve read their message or not, depending on your settings.

  • How do I know if my LinkedIn message was read?

If your recipient’s read receipts are turned on, you’ll get a miniature version of their profile picture below your message, notifying the message has been read. Keep in mind this only happens if your leads have this setting enabled

  • Can I read a LinkedIn message without the sender knowing?

Sometimes, you don’t want to reply straightaway. To read a LinkedIn message without the sender knowing you can mark a conversation as unread:

  1. Go to your LinkedIn inbox.
  2. Move your cursor over a conversation in the message list and click the closed envelope icon to mark the conversation as unread.
  • How do I turn off read receipts in LinkedIn?

Here’s what you should do to turn off read recipients in LinkedIn:

  1. Go to Settings & Privacy from your LinkedIn homepage.
  2. Click on Communications and Messaging experience.
  3. Click the circle button to turn Read Recipients on or off.
  • Can LinkedIn messages be unread?

Yes, you can unread LinkedIn messages if you want to reply later. To do that:

  1. Click the Messaging icon at the top of your homepage and go to your LinkedIn inbox.
  2. Move your mouse over a conversation on the left side and click on the closed envelope icon to mark a conversation unread.

Alternatively, another great way to manage all of your LinkedIn messages is through Expandi.

With it, you can organize and manage all of your lead conversations, outreach campaigns, follow-ups and more – all-in-one-place.

Get started with a free Expandi 7-day trial now! Sign up for a free live demo and learn why Expandi is the go-to LinkedIn lead generation tool.

 

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