LinkedIn read receipts: What are they and how do they work?

February 16, 2022

LinkedIn Read Receipts | Man reading text messages

What’s one of the most important tactics of an outbound sales strategy? Sending the right message at the right time. And the best way to gauge the effectiveness of your timing is to analyze the read and response rates of your messages.

That’s where read receipts come in.

With over 690 million members around the world, LinkedIn is the most popular professional network in the world. It’s always coming up with new features to keep the platform fresh and engaging. In 2017, LinkedIn followed suit with social messenger apps like WhatsApp to include the read receipts feature, which allows you to see the read status of your messages and tell if they’ve been looked at by the receiver with just one quick glance.

But how do read receipts work, and do they provide everything you need for lead generation? That’s what we’re going to look at in this article.

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LinkedIn Read Receipts: What Are They?

When you’re trying to connect with people from a sales perspective, it’s very important to know which of your messages have hit the mark. While knowing whether or not your messages have been read isn’t everything, it’s the first step to understanding whether your communication strategy is actually working.

Read receipts are a built-in way to figure out if your messages have been read by the recipient on LinkedIn. A small icon indicates the read status of your message, showing whether or not the recipient has opened the message and when.

Along with read receipts, LinkedIn also comes with a related feature called the typing indicator. This helps you quickly see if a connection is typing a reply in response to your message so that you are never caught off-guard.

Both the typing indicator and the read receipts are incredibly useful features allowing you to gauge the effectiveness of your messages on LinkedIn. They also help you decide if you should follow up on your messages and when the best time is to do so.

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LinkedIn Read Receipts: How Do They Work?

On LinkedIn, read receipts usually show up as a small icon on the bottom right of your messages to indicate that the message has been read. If you’re on a desktop device, you can also hover your mouse over the icon to tell when exactly the message was read first.

The typing indicator, on the other hand, shows up as three dots on the chatbox to display whether a response is currently being typed in by the recipient of your message.

Of course, for read receipts and typing indicators to work, both the sender and the recipient of the message need to have the features enabled in their privacy settings. If either party has these features disabled in their settings, the other won’t be able to see read receipts or typing indicators appear in their conversations. This may be the reason why read receipts are only showing up on certain messages in your LinkedIn inbox.

How to Turn LinkedIn Read Receipts On/Off

On LinkedIn, read receipts and typing indicators only work when both the sender and recipient of a message have these features enabled on their profile.

If you want to be able to tell when someone has looked at your message or begun to type a response, you need to enable both these features in your privacy settings. Conversely, if you don’t want others to be able to tell when you read a message or start typing a response, you need to disable read receipts and typing indicators.

To enable or disable read receipts and typing indicators, go to ‘Settings & Privacy’ from your LinkedIn homepage. Click on ‘Communications’, then ‘Messaging experience’. A single toggle that applies to both read receipts and typing indicators can be enabled or disabled from here.

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When Not to Use LinkedIn Read Receipts

Read receipts are useful for gauging the effectiveness of your messages when conducting outreach for sales or marketing. However, there are a few caveats.

For one, read receipts only display notifications when both the sender and recipient of a message have the feature enabled on their profile. That’s a challenge for sales professionals, who often deal with people of influence who disable these features to prevent tracking.

They aren’t always reliable, either. Sometimes, people need time to respond to a message or they simply forget to provide a response, making the read status an inconsistent way to tell if your sales pitches are working all the way through.

Moreover, the read status indicator isn’t your best bet when it comes to context. It tells you nothing about how your message was perceived or whether the leads you’re putting all your time and effort into will eventually result in a conversion.

To put things simply, LinkedIn’s read receipts and typing indicators may work for personal users in a pinch, but for professionals who need results, they often fall short.

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CoPilot AI: The Ultimate Sales Intelligence Tool for Professionals

At the end of the day, sales and marketing outreach is about so much more than getting your messages read. You need detailed insight on which of your messages are performing the best and why, along with a list of potential leads to follow up on for guaranteed sales.

CoPilot AI is a sales and marketing enablement platform that allows you to run, manage, and scale your social prospecting efforts on LinkedIn. Beyond being able to tell whether or not your messages are being read, CoPilot AI’s platform lets you tag user profiles and analyze audience sentiments to see how your messages are performing. You also get access to your 1-1 account strategist, who’ll help you plan and improve your entire outreach campaign.

With CoPilot AI, you can also schedule follow-ups, automate nurture campaigns, and convert more leads to drive more revenue.

Ready to automate your sales campaign on LinkedIn with CoPilot AI? Book a demo today!

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More resources from CoPilot AI

Creating a Value Prop

A well-crafted value proposition can make all the difference on a prospect discovery call or meeting. We break down how to create a winning one here.

How to Increase Sales in Financial Services

Want to increase sales as a financial advisor and win new clients? Here are nine reliable sales and marketing tips to grow your firm.

How AI boosts LinkedIn messaging outreach sequences

Tired of getting nowhere with LinkedIn messaging to potential leads? Here are outreach sequences which, when done with good prospecting tools, can boost interest.

LinkedIn read receipts: What are they and how do they work?

Table of Contents

More resources from CoPilot AI

Creating a Value Prop

How to Increase Sales in Financial Services

How AI boosts LinkedIn messaging outreach sequences