I spoke to another agency owner last week and he told me about an experiment they'd run on LinkedIn, and I liked it enough to pass it on!
Instead of sending a standard LinkedIn message, they built a short, personalised document for each person they wanted to speak to.
About 20 a day, well researched using AI but totally bespoke to that individual and business.
It took roughly 1.5 hours of work in total. They’d only been running it a week and they had 4 calls booked and 1 sale.
This was quite a high-ticket offer as well, not a few hundred pounds.
I was booked call number 5…
Yes, they had me hook, line and sinker.
The message was so naturally written, not selling anything and genuinely giving me a quick heads-up that the doc could really help with X.
When you receive a friendly message like that, you’re not on edge, you’re more curious what’s inside.
What went in the document
A multi-page Google Doc that opened with a blurb about me, the business and some of the activity we do. Nothing weird but a real snapshot, like an exec summary.
Instantly I read it and thought “yup, you’ve got that pretty accurate, now what”
…scrolls onto the next few pages.
A full week by week breakdown of some email comms that we could use.
Subject lines, topics, frameworks.
The ideas were useful and made sense based on our offering.
What’s not to like?
It also helped it was a Google Doc, not a weird link to a platform I’ve never seen. It was familiar to me, low friction, minimal risk.
The whole thing was enough for me to understand and see the value, but still have questions.
Hence the follow-up call.
Why it probably worked
Here’s what the data says: Expandi's 2026 report has LinkedIn messages averaging a 10.3% reply rate against 5.1% for cold email.
That's average vendor data, but it points to a trend.
LinkedIn messages that look natural, like they were meant for the reader, tend to get read far more.
If you fancy borrowing the idea
We’re going to start testing this, so why don’t you join us?
Start small. Pick five people and, for each one, write a page with one thing you think would be useful for them, based on your service offering.
Then send it with something written like a text message to a group chat, not a corporate email.
Something with a simple CTA like; "I think this could be useful for you"
It's one person's early result, so treat it as an experiment. If you try it, tell me how it lands, because I'd like to know.
Speak next week, Josh
Read more about outreach: a practical LinkedIn outreach framework for founders (https://blueberry-media.co.uk/blog/linkedin-outreach-strategy-framework)