Imagine you get an email from someone you’ve never met before. It’s about an attractive business proposition, but is it legit? Ordinarily you might spend some time hunting around online to learn more about the sender.
But now, LinkedIn says its new app LinkedIn Intro can do all that for you…and more.
Figure Out Who You’re Talking To
First, you can immediately put a name to a face. LinkedIn Intro places the name, photo and brief information from a sender’s LinkedIn profile near the top of the email. It will even tell you where they work.
This allows you to quickly distinguish between emails. You can see at a glance whether this is a legitimate contact from a likely business connection or spam to be discarded.
Second, tapping the bar at the top of the email quickly gives you even more information about the sender. You’ll see his or her past and present occupations, education and mutual connections, for example.
It’s everything you’ll need to craft a more informed response, and make a better impression.
Here’s a quick video overview:
Rahul Vohra, co-founder of Rapportive, an email company LinkedIn acquired last year, says his team built the new app after coming to work at the professional networking site.
In a recent post on the Official LinkedIn Blog, Vohra explains the motivation for creating the app:
The growth of mobile email is simply staggering. Four years ago, less than 4% of emails were read on mobile. Today, half of all emails are read on a mobile device.
Availability
The LinkedIn Intro app is available in English to users all over the world as a free download. You’ll need to enter your phone number at the LinkedIn Intro page.
LinkedIn says the app will support Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and iCloud. But so far, it’s only available in the Apple Mail app for iPhone.
Basically, if you want to find out who’s emailing you on your iPhone, LinkedIn Intro looks like a good tool.
Image: LinkedIn
