LinkedIn Read Receipts: How Do I Know If Someone Sees My Message?

What’s the worst thing about outreach?

Not knowing if they’re ignoring you or if they didn’t see you.

Enter LinkedIn read receipts.

In this guide, we’ll explore how you can leverage LinkedIn read receipts, find out if people have seen your messages, look at workarounds, and employ better ways of getting your messages read.

Ready?

What Do LinkedIn Read Receipts Do? (And, What Can I Do With Them?)

LinkedIn read receipts are a way for you to find out if someone’s read your message on LinkedIn.

This is useful to find out if your messaging has made a difference.

For example, if you’ve sent a message that was read but hasn’t been replied to, it could be an indicator that:

• A prospect is biding their time
• They don’t have the urgency to reply
• Messaging just wasn’t relatable
• They ignored it
• You’re being pushy
• It was too sales-y
• It was too long

Of course, there could be a bunch of other unrelated reasons, but it’s a tool that you can use to your advantage.

It’s On By Default

Every LinkedIn profile will show you if someone’s read your message or not unless you turn it off manually.

However, it also turns off the indicator for someone typing a message when you do.

Where’s the Date?

LinkedIn won’t show you the date when they’ve read your message, but if you hover over a message (on desktop), you should see the time. If you check your LinkedIn every day, you’ll figure out the exact date they’ve seen your message.

You’ll see a little corner icon indicating a message was read.

LinkedIn InMail Does Not Have Read Receipts

LinkedIn read receipts and typing indicators only work on normal LinkedIn messaging.

Right now, there is still no way to find out if someone’s read your LinkedIn InMail message.

That shouldn’t be a problem if you rely on organic growth hacking to make proper connections with your prospects on LinkedIn/

How About Message Requests?

LinkedIn message requests don’t have read receipts on, so there’s no way to figure out if someone’s read your request or if you’ve read theirs.

This UI feature minimizes any misrepresented communication if a person chooses to ignore a message request.

Should I Turn Off Read Receipts?

If you’re using LinkedIn privately on a professional level, then you could choose to turn off your read receipts. It helps buy you time when answering messages.

However, if you’re connecting with people, I highly suggest that you don’t.

When you turn off read receipts, you also can’t see if people have read the messages you sent them.

That could be a problem if you’re trying to determine if your messaging is working.

How Do I Turn Off LinkedIn Message Read Receipts?

Turning off your LinkedIn read receipts is pretty simple.

However, there’s no way to toggle it without turning off the message typing indicator as well.

First of all, you want to head over to your LinkedIn newsfeed and click on your profile icon.

In the dropdown, click on “Settings & Privacy.”

This should open up a list of settings for your LinkedIn account.

You want to go to the subsection “Communications” and click on “Messaging experience”.

This is where you’ll find the option for “Read receipts and typing indicators”.

When you click on it, you’ll have the option to turn it off.

Yup, it’s that simple.

However, note that there’s no way to turn off typing indicators independently.

What Do You Do If a Prospect Is Leaving Your Messages on Read?

Follow-Up …Creatively

Don’t just follow up with generic messages like: “Hey, just wanted to kindly follow up on your interest in our solutions.”

That doesn’t work.

It’s too sales-y, sometimes pushy, and it’s just another boring piece of business correspondence.

Sometimes, you want to be more creative with your follow-up process in select industries.

You can always talk to them about something else and pin the conversation, talk about other aspects in their industry or ask further questions.

Another option – but somewhat risky – is to take the less formal approach and hit them up with a line like: “I hope I haven’t bored you to death with our last conversation.”

Don’t be generic.

It’s mediocre, and that’s not what growth hackers do.

Give it Some Time

Sometimes your prospect needs some time to look at your offer and decide if they want to continue a conversation with you.

Maybe, they just saw your message but still don’t have the time to reply appropriately.

Whatever it is, you need to give it some time.

If they’re not replying to you today, you can try again after a day or two.

The more you send them messages, the pushier you become.

Nurture on Another Platform

Don’t just limit your lead nurturing on LinkedIn because there’s a chance that they’re not active on the platform.

That’s why we always push for omnichannel marketing.

You want to spread it out.

Send them a follow-up email, a voicemail, maybe engage with their posts on other platforms.

LinkedIn isn’t the end all be all; it’s just one of the communication arms you have at your disposal.

Work on Your Sales Cadence

LinkedIn is all about organic traction.

They won’t trust you if you’re trying to stuff your solutions in your chats.

You want to take a step back and examine your sales cadence.

Are you building a relationship or selling right off the bat?

Remember, you can always use LinkedIn for your lead nurturing, and the sale always comes with the appointment. Don’t jump ahead.

Please take a look at your sales script and remove any generic elements; it needs to be personalized.

LinkedIn messaging is a personal platform to interact with your prospects; it’s not a sales call or a platform for proposals.

Takeaways

Leveraging LinkedIn read receipts is a great way to check if your messaging is resonates with your prospects.

However, don’t just limit yourself to their use.

There are many things you can do to reach your prospects, and you should focus on an omnichannel approach to make sure you’re nurturing leads properly through your funnel.

So, the next time you find read receipts missing or your prospect isn’t responding to your messages, take a step back and examine your flow.

If it’s off, don’t worry.

Tweak it and make sure you’re coordinating your other platforms for lead nurturing.

Stay Golden!