Recently LinkedIn rolled out a new marketing campaign to promote their Pro level service. Via an email marketing campaign select LinkedIn users were offered one free month of Pro Membership.
This entitles users to 3 Inmails, extensive search results, premium level search filters for their search and the ability to organize profiles in folders. You also can see a more extensive list of who has viewed your profile and you get access to LinkedIn’s Reference Search. The Pro level is their lowest tier of premium services. Pro is followed by Business Plus and Executive, which allow more access to the features above.
While LinkedIn open rate and conversion rate on this offer will probably be very good, their ability to hold those who excepted the offer will be key. To do that, the features mentioned above will have to really provide the LinkedIn users a better experience with their product. Will the ability send Inmails, see more results who viewed your profile or see extensive search results make these users begin to pay for the premium services?
From the my perspective, these features do not add much to my experience. Sure, it is nice to see if an old colleague or a recruiter viewed my profile but would I pay for it? Probably not.
From the perspective of a recruiter, hiring manager or someone in HR, these features could be useful and this free trial could lead to new paying customers for LinkedIn.
Take notice today or your LinkedIn status feed and look for notifications of those who received a free upgrade for their account. It will be interesting to see if LinkedIn targeted different levels of LinkedIn users or if they went straight to upper management, founders or HR/recruiting.
Did you receive a free invite this morning? Let us know in the comments if any of the features will turn you into a paying customer.
About Justin Freid
