Introduction
If you sell into B2B on LinkedIn, you've hit the wall: 30-50 InMail credits per month from Sales Navigator, exhausted by the second week, and a $10/credit price tag if you want more. Meanwhile, your team is supposed to hit pipeline.
Did you know? A meaningful share of LinkedIn Premium users have a setting called Open Profile turned on, and you can message them as many times as you want, for free, with no credit deduction.
This guide shows you exactly how to do it, manually, and at scale.
The Standard InMail Math
LinkedIn plan allowances by month:
- Premium Career: 5 credits
- Premium Business: 15 credits
- Sales Navigator Core / Advanced: 50 credits
- Recruiter Lite: 30 credits
- Recruiter Pro / Corporate: 100-150 credits
For a 5-person SDR team on Sales Nav Core, that's 250 InMails/month, enough for less than a week of real outreach. Buying overage to do 1,000 InMails costs $7,500/month.
The Open Profile Loophole Fully Explained
LinkedIn's Open Profile setting makes any Premium user receivable by anyone, for free, without needing InMail credits or a prior connection. When you message an Open Profile:
- No credit is deducted
- No connection request is required
- The message lands in the primary inbox, not "Other"
- You can send follow-ups for free
- LinkedIn does not cap how many Open Profile messages you send per month
Step-by-Step: Send Free InMails to Open Profiles (Manual)
- Build a Sales Navigator lead list, filter by your normal criteria (industry, title, seniority, geography).
- Apply the Open Profile Spotlight filter, Spotlight → Open Profile. The result set narrows to only leads whose profiles accept free direct messages.
- Save the list as "Open Profile - [ICP name]" for repeat outreach.
- Open a profile, click Message, you'll see a "Free Message" prompt instead of the standard InMail credit warning.
- Send your personalized message with subject line + body. Open Profile users get a lot of messages, don't blast a template.
- Track replies separately by tagging Open Profile leads in your CRM.
How to Send Unlimited Open Profile InMails at Scale
The manual approach breaks at scale for three reasons:
- Open Profile status isn't sticky, it changes weekly.
- Checking every profile manually costs ~8 hours per 1,000 prospects.
- You can't run sequences. Manual sends are one-and-done.
Quicklead's Open Profile InMail feature changes the math. Drop a Sales Navigator URL in, and Quicklead imports every lead, auto-detects which prospects are Open Profiles (live check), automatically sends a personalized free message to each Open Profile (no credit deduction), and routes non-Open prospects through the normal connection request + message sequence.
If your campaign has 1,000 leads and 20% are Open Profiles, that's 200 free InMails sent, 200 InMail credits saved, at $10/credit, $2,000 of LinkedIn spend saved per 1,000-lead campaign.
Stop Budgeting Credits - Start Sending Unlimited
No other LinkedIn automation tool currently does this auto-detection + auto-send loop. Quicklead is the first.
Book a 20-minute demo, we'll show you how Quicklead finds and messages every Open Profile in your list automatically.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How many free InMails can I send to Open Profiles per month?
There is no published LinkedIn cap on Open Profile messages. Reasonable practical ceilings are ~500-800/month to stay safely within normal usage patterns.
Q: Does Open Profile messaging require Sales Navigator?
No. Sales Navigator's filter just makes finding them easier. Any LinkedIn account can send messages to Open Profiles.
Q: Will LinkedIn penalize my account for sending many Open Profile messages?
Open Profile is a LinkedIn-sanctioned feature. As long as messages are not spammy, accounts aren't penalized.
Q: What's the difference between Open InMail and regular InMail?
Open InMail is the message you send to someone with Open Profile enabled, it costs nothing. Regular InMail consumes credits.
Q: Can I follow up if an Open Profile user doesn't reply?
Yes. Follow-ups are also free if the recipient still has Open Profile on.