LinkedIn InMail Prompt
A subject line and body written for a paid message, preceded by an honest verdict on whether to spend the credit at all. An InMail is the only LinkedIn message that costs money, between roughly $2.40 and $8 depending on your plan, and the credit comes back only if they reply within 90 days. This prompt treats it accordingly: it decides whether to spend, then writes a subject line that survives the preview pane and a body short enough to read on a phone.
You are writing a LinkedIn InMail. Unlike every other message on the platform, this one costs a credit, and the credit is only returned if the recipient replies within 90 days. Write accordingly.
## My plan
{{PLAN}}
## Me
{{ROLE}} at {{COMPANY}}. What we sell: {{PRODUCT}}
Proof I may cite: {{PROOF}}
Tone: {{TONE}}
My ask: {{OFFER}}
## Them
{{PROSPECT_NAME}} — {{PROSPECT_ROLE}} at {{PROSPECT_COMPANY}}
{{PROSPECT_PROFILE}}
## LinkedIn reality (do not plan past these)
LinkedIn platform limits that apply on EVERY plan, including the most expensive one:
- Connection invitations: ~100 per week. Applies on every plan including Recruiter Corporate. LinkedIn adjusts it per account based on acceptance rate, so a low-acceptance account gets less, never more.
- InMail credit expiry: 90 days. Unused credits expire. They accrue to at most three times the monthly allowance, and a credit is returned if the recipient replies within 90 days.
- Commercial use limit: Monthly search cap. Free accounts hit a monthly ceiling on profile searches. Every paid tier lifts it, but none of them removes the per-search result cap.
- Profiles per search: 1,000 / 2,500. Regular LinkedIn search stops at 1,000 results; Sales Navigator stops at 2,500, paginated 25 at a time. Both are per search, not per day.
Treat these as hard constraints, not guidance. A plan that exceeds them is not an ambitious plan, it is a plan that gets the account restricted.
Per-plan allowances, US list prices, last verified 12 September 2026 by Linkediz:
| Plan | US list price / month | InMail credits / month | Results per search | Saved searches |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Premium Career | $39.99 | 5 | 1,000 | 3 |
| Premium Business | $69.99 | 15 | 1,000 | 3 |
| Sales Navigator Core | $119.99 | 50 | 2,500 | 15 |
| Sales Navigator Advanced | $159.99 | 50 | 2,500 | 15 |
| Sales Navigator Advanced Plus | quote only | 50 | 2,500 | 15 |
| Recruiter Lite | $170 | 30 | 1,000 | 10 |
| Recruiter Corporate | quote only | 150 | 1,000 | 50 |
Notes the numbers do not show:
- Sales Navigator Advanced Plus and Recruiter Corporate carry no published price. LinkedIn quotes them per seat block. Never state a price for those two.
- The InMail allowance does not scale with price. Sales Navigator Core costs three times Premium Career and includes ten times the credits, so per credit the cheap plan is by far the most expensive.
- Unused InMail credits expire after 90 days and accrue to at most three months' worth. A credit comes back if the recipient replies within 90 days, so reply rate, not send volume, is what the allowance rewards.
- The ~100 invitations per week is adjusted per account by acceptance rate. It goes down for accounts that send poorly targeted invitations. It does not go up because a plan was upgraded.
If the user's request requires exceeding any figure above, say so explicitly, state which limit it breaks, and propose the version that fits inside it. Do not quietly scale the plan down and do not quietly exceed it.
## Method
1. Decide whether to spend the credit. Say no when: they are reachable by a connection request instead, the evidence for relevance is weak, or the ask is too large for a first contact. State what it costs per credit on my plan when you recommend spending one.
2. Write the subject line. Under 45 characters so it is not truncated in the notification. No "quick question", no company name unless the company name IS the reason they would open it, no emoji. It should describe the content, not tease it.
3. Write the body under 600 characters. The first sentence is visible in the preview — make it the specific one, not the introduction.
4. Include exactly one ask, sized to the relationship: a question is smaller than a call, and a call is smaller than a demo.
5. Write the second InMail — the one for 90 days later if they never replied — and explain what would justify spending a second credit on the same person.
## Constraints
- Do not open with your name or your company. They can see both.
- No attachments, no links in the first message. A link in an unsolicited paid message is the clearest possible spam signal.
- Never imply a previous interaction.
- If the plan named above has no InMail allowance, say so and give the alternative route to this person.
## Output format
### Spend the credit?
Yes or no, with the reason and what a credit costs on my plan.
### Subject line
Three options, each with the character count. Recommend one.
### Body
The message. Then (n characters).
### Preview check
The first 90 characters as the recipient will see them in the notification, quoted.
### If no reply
What to do at day 7, day 30 and day 90 — including whether a second credit is justified.- The prospect is out of network and a connection request will not reach them.
- You have credits expiring this month and want them spent well rather than fast.
- You are recruiting and InMail is the primary channel rather than the fallback.
- Your InMail reply rate is low and you suspect the subject line.
- Name your plan accurately. The credit cost and the allowance both come from it, and they differ by more than three times across the range.
- Take a "no" verdict seriously — if the person is reachable with a free connection request, spending a credit is a pure loss.
- Read the preview check. Most InMails are opened or ignored on the strength of the first 90 characters in the notification.
- Track which subject lines get opened. It is the fastest-improving variable in this whole workflow.
The output schema it demands
The single highest-leverage part of any prompt. Without a declared shape you get prose you then have to reformat; with one, you get sections you can act on — and you can tell at a glance when the model skipped something.
### Spend the credit? (+ cost per credit on your plan) ### Subject line (3 options + counts) ### Body (+ char count) ### Preview check (first 90 chars as shown) ### If no reply (day 7 / 30 / 90)
What it looks like filled in
Illustrative, not a promise — this is the shape of a good answer rather than a guarantee of one. The scenario is the same fictional company used across the whole toolkit.
Prospect is third-degree, out of network. Plan: Sales Navigator Core — 50 credits a month, roughly $2.40 a credit.
Spend the credit? — yes. No connection path exists and the evidence is strong — she wrote the post herself. Cost: $2.40 on Core.
Subject line — "The five-week close" (19 characters) — describes the content rather than teasing it.
Preview check — "Dana — the line in your post that stuck: five weeks, since the ac…" — the specific reference survives the notification truncation.
If no reply — a second credit at day 90 is justified only if something new has happened since — a job change, a new post — never as a repeat of the same message.
Do not do these
Each one is a real failure mode, not a disclaimer.
- Sending InMail to first-degree connections. They are reachable by normal message for free.
- Hoarding credits until they expire. They expire at 90 days and accrue to at most three months’ worth, so a full pile is a pile already losing value.
- Writing a 1,500-character InMail. The notification shows a fraction of it and the rest is read, if at all, on a phone.
Attach these once and stop retyping your business
This prompt works pasted into a blank chat. It works considerably better inside a Project with these attached, because then the ICP, the product and the limits are already in context and every answer inherits them.
This is one step in a sequence
The output of the step before is the input to this one, and this one's output is the next one's input. That is the whole reason these are not independent pages.
Before you run it
Do unused InMail credits roll over?
They accrue for up to 90 days and to a maximum of three times the monthly allowance, then expire. A credit is also refunded if the recipient replies within 90 days, which is why reply rate rather than send volume is what the allowance rewards.
Which plan gives the most InMail per dollar?
Sales Navigator Core, by a wide margin, at 50 credits a month. Premium Career gives 5 for $39.99, which is $8 a credit — the most expensive InMail on LinkedIn. The full comparison is on the InMail credits page.
The reference behind this prompt
The cost-per-credit figures this prompt quotes, with the expiry and refund rules that decide how to spend them.
Premium Career gives 5 credits a month, Sales Navigator 50. Per credit, the cheap plan is the expensive one.
Written to a fixed structure and run through Claude and ChatGPT to confirm each one returns the output format it declares. That is not the same as a measured reply-rate benchmark, and nothing here claims one — if you run these at volume and have numbers, we want them.
Take the whole folder instead
This prompt, the files it expects and the rest of the sequence, as a zip you can drop into a Claude Project, a Cursor workspace or an agent repo. Free, no account.