How to cold message on LinkedIn for a successful strategy?

How to cold message on LinkedIn successful ? Actually, is a bit like being in a stranger’s DMs, except that 9 times out of 10, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you.

And don’t worry, it’s normal. Most of them just send out a bunch of blurbs with no personalization.

The result? They look like spammers and the message ends up in the trash, sometimes before it’s even read. 🗑️

But you want :

• Catch the attention of the right people.
• Make them want to click, respond, find out more.
• Turn those conversations into customers.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use cold email on LinkedIn to create a real prospecting machine, without sacrificing your authenticity. ✨

Ready to write messages that convert? Let’s get started! 🚀 (Reading time: 4 minutes).

1) How to cold message on LinkedIn – defining your ideal target

When starting a cold email prospecting campaign, it’s essential to answer the question:

Who is the right person for my offer? 🤔

Prospecting doesn’t start with a message or a tool. It starts with a fine-tuned understanding of the person you want to reach.

Because yes, on LinkedIn as elsewhere, talking to everyone amounts to convincing no one. 👀

Before you get lost in the details, focus first on the essentials:

• What are his daily frustrations?
• What are his most pressing pain points?
• What are their dreams and goals?

Some people will tell you to create a very complete persona, including age, socio-professional class, level of education, and so on.

These are additional elements to the three points mentioned above.

Once you’ve defined a typical person, my advice is to call them on the phone. 📞

You can also contact your customer avatars via :

• E-mail marketing.
• A contact form on your website.
• Private message on LinkedIn.
• Forums in your field.
• Use prospecting tools to find your targets.

Paint your ideal target, then move on to step 2.

2) Optimize your LinkedIn profile

On LinkedIn, as soon as you send a cold message, your prospect clicks on your profile, and that’s where it all comes in.

In particular, it will analyze :

• Your profile photo.
• Your LinkedIn banner.
• Your title and description.
• Your professional experience.
• Your educational background.
• Your certifications.
• Your recommendations.

You have 7 seconds to make a good impression. If it’s not clear, convincing and professional, your message will be ignored, even if it’s excellent.

So what should a profile optimized for cold calling contain? 🤔

A – A professional, consistent profile photo

Your photo shouldn’t be a selfie. Nor even a photo taken with your computer’s webcam.

You need to give the viewer the feeling right away:

• 🔵 Curiosity to visit your profile.
• 🔵 Professionalism.
• 🔵 Enthusiasm.

Smile, too. This will make you seem much friendlier and open to discussion. 😃

Choose a photo that reflects your company’s values. If you’re in, or are, a very corporate company, then adapt your style.

Similarly, if you’re in a start-up with a relaxed atmosphere, then put yourself at ease. The aim is to create consistency between the company and your appearance.

B – An impactful banner

The banner must be in the same graphic style as your company. This means :

• The same colors.
• The same typography and fonts.
• Values.
• The tone.
• Commercial message.

An excellent LinkedIn banner must meet these 4 criteria (taken from the AIDA method). 👇🏼

AIDA step	Objective	Concrete advice
🎯 Attention.	Catch the eye.	Use bright colors and large-format text to arouse curiosity and encourage people to find out more about you.
💡 Interest.	Arouse interest.	Clearly display your expertise, your industry and the solutions you offer. The aim: to create an immediate connection.
❤️ Desire.	Reinforce your perceived value.	Highlight the benefits you bring, your results, your positioning or authority in your field.
⚡ Action.	Encourage people to interact or contact you.	Add a visible call to action: “Follow me with one click”, “Tell me about your project”, or “Click on the link below”.

C – A clear title + an engaging description

Your title should answer a single question: “How can you help me?

Keep it simple and direct, like :

Help B2B SaaS generate 30% more leads with cold LinkedIn.

What’s more, you can put a call to action inside. Ideally, the same as the one included in your LinkedIn banner.

Secondly, your LinkedIn description (also called“LinkedIn summary“) needs to be optimized.

And there are several ways to do this:

• Storytelling.
• Bulleted lists.
• AIDA formula.
• Etc.

D – Your experience = proof of legitimacy

When you want to cold prospect on LinkedIn, you need to prove to your prospects that you’re an expert in your field. ⭐

And that goes through your professional experience.

Don’t hesitate to be exhaustive and list all the companies:

• Where you’ve worked if you’re an employee.
• That you have supported if you are an entrepreneur.

In the details of each experience, list 2 things:

1. First, what you did in your position.
2. Secondly, what results you achieved.

E – Training and certification

Your qualifications are also a big plus when it comes to boosting your prospects’ confidence when you’re prospecting. 💥

• Schools attended.
• The level of your studies (Licence, BTS, DUT, Bachelor, Master…).

The trick here is to highlight your strengths. For example, if you’ve had good grades during your studies, then you can put your grade point average under each course.

The licenses and certifications you’ve received also play a big part in optimizing your LinkedIn profile. 📗

3) Build a multi-channel strategy

A LinkedIn cold email campaign should never stand alone. Today, your prospects are solicited everywhere: ⬇️

• Email.
• Social networks.
• Advertising.
• Webniares.

So why limit yourself to just one channel? 👀

The acquisition funnel: from unknown to customer

A good acquisition system transforms a stranger into a customer by following 3 main stages:

• 1️⃣ Discovery ⭢ the person hears about you for the first time.
• 2️⃣ Evaluation ⭢ he or she compares you to others, begins to take an interest in your solution.
• 3️⃣ Decision ⭢ she’s ready to take action.

Your mission, then, is to guide each prospect through this tunnel, with content and messages tailored to their level of maturity. 📊

Which channels to include in your strategy?

Don’t waste any time, find the answer in this table. 👇🏼

Channel	Objective	Example of use
LinkedIn (posts).	Create visibility.	Publish TOFU content (e.g. trends, anecdotes).
LinkedIn (messages).	Engage in discussion.	Send a personalized message after a visit.
Email.	Continue the relationship in parallel.	Follow up with a resource or link.
Landing page.	Convert with a clear offer.	Offer a free guide or audit.
Webinar / video.	Reinforce your authority.	Present a method or case study.

Before we move on to the next step, a quick refresher. 🧵

Multi-channel doesn’t mean “bombarding your prospects on every front”. Rather, it’s about creating a seamless, consistent experience, where every touchpoint reinforces your message. 💣

Example of a simple journey:

1. The person sees a post on LinkedIn ⭢ she clicks on your profile.
2. You send her a personalized invitation ⭢ she accepts.
3. You share high-value content with her ⭢ she downloads a lead magnet.
4. You follow up by email with a targeted offer.

4) Write a powerful message

You’ve identified your target audience and you’ve got an impeccable LinkedIn profile.

Without an effective message, it’s all for nothing.

Because a good prospecting message is much more than just a few lines. It’s a real conversion lever. And it starts with one simple thing: talking to a human being.

Here are my 4 golden rules: ⚜️

• 1️⃣ Attract attention without being putaclic.
• 2️⃣ Create a sincere, personalized connection.
• 3️⃣ Give a clear reason for responding.
• 4️⃣ Respect your interlocutor’s time.

If you’re still lost, here’s an ideal structure for a good LinkedIn message. 👇🏼

Step	Objective	Example
🧠 Hook.	Create a connection or arouse curiosity.	“I came across your post on B2B growth, very apt.”
👀 Context.	Why you’re contacting this person, her specifically.	“I work with SaaS marketing managers like you.”
🎁 Immediate value.	What you can bring her, without bullshit.	“I have a free guide that summarizes 5 strategies that work.”
📬 Call to action.	Encourage a response, without pressure.	“Would you like me to send it here?”

5) Automate your strategy with an automation tool

Prospecting by hand works, but it takes time.

Too many messages to send, not enough time. But you don’t want to become that spamming profile, do you? 👀

This is where automation comes in. 🎰

Here are a few examples of actions you can automate. 👇🏼

Action	Lens	Recommended tool ( Waalaxy)
LinkedIn profile visit.	Arouse curiosity.	Visit + invitation” sequences.
Personalized connection request.	Break the ice with a light message.	Semi-customized template with {{FirstName}} variable.
Send follow-up messages.	Remind them of your initial message, without insisting.	1 to 2 well-spaced reminders.
Follow-up by email;	Continue the conversation outside LinkedIn.	Value emails (bonus, content, testimonials).
A/B testing of messages.	Optimize your response rate.	Comparison of several versions of sequences.

Waalaxy is the solution for cloning you without you having to take any action. 👽

With our automation tool, you can :

• Scrap LinkedIn profiles and import them into an integrated CRM.
• Create automated sequences on LinkedIn (profile visits, invitations, messages, etc.).
• Mix LinkedIn actions with e-mail marketing to benefit from the power of multi-channel prospecting.

In addition, here are the advantages of our prospecting tool over the competition:

1. We offer multi-channel prospecting for maximum performance.
2. We offer a 7-day trial version for easy testing.
3. We’ve focused on the user experience (UX).
4. It’s totally secure for your LinkedIn account.
5. Customer support is available via chat.
6. Best of all: thanks to our engineers, you can exceed the 100 weekly invitations imposed by LinkedIn without risk to your LinkedIn account! 💪

6) Measure and analyze performance

The famous question we all ask ourselves after spending hours setting up our strategy: Does it really work? 👀

Without data, it’s impossible to answer. Without analytics, you risk continuing to send messages that don’t convert.

To that end, let’s discover my top 5 KPIs to track. ⬇️

Indicator	What it measures	Why it’s important
💌 Acceptance rate.	% of connection requests accepted.	Measures the relevance of your targeting + input message.
📬 Response rate.	% of prospects who responded.	Assesses the quality of your first message.
🔁 Effective follow-up rate.	% of responses obtained after a follow-up.	Checks whether your follow-ups provide real value.
📈 Conversion rate.	% of prospects who become customers (or RDVs).	Shows whether the strategy is generating concrete business.
🧪 Rate of change (A/B).	Comparison between two messages/tests.	Used to optimize your iterative approach.

How about a recap?

Remember the opening sentence?

LinkedIn cold email is a bit like being in a stranger’s DMs, except that 9 times out of 10, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you.

Well, now you have all the cards in your hand to be one of the 1 in 10. 🃏

Whoever :

• Understands his target better than he understands himself.
• Creates powerful messages.

Because when it comes down to it, LinkedIn cold email has never been the problem.

The real problem is people doing it the wrong way.

Frequently asked questions

What about all the other aspects that can be linked to a cold message/ Cold email on LinkedIn? 🥶 And if we want to go further?

How do you write a cold email on LinkedIn?

What about all the other aspects that can be linked to a cold message 🥶 on LinkedIn? What if we want to go further?

You need to think only about your target and personalization. You need to appear authentic and trustworthy.

You may not do amazingly well at first, but keep practicing. You’ll learn faster by making mistakes.

We’re here to help you along the way. We can recommend A/B testing to find out what works best for you.

How do I write a cold message? What tool can I use? Well, you have a few options:

• Use LinkedIn’s messaging system.
• Use an automation tool.

If you want to send messages in high volume, it’s best to send messages 📩 with an automation tool. A tool like Waalaxy will allow you to personalize these messages.

How to send cold emails on LinkedIn for a job?

Okay, maybe you don’t want to find prospects or customers on LinkedIn. Maybe you just want to find the next opportunity in your life. Here’s a list that might help:

• Be confident ❤️.
• Say exactly why you’re“prospecting“.
• Grab your target’s attention in the first two lines.
• Personalize your message.
• Say what you know about the company.

Personalization is really important because recruiters get a lot of applications, so you need to stand out.

So, now you know all about How to cold message on LinkedIn methods! 🚀