Prospects Who Smile in LinkedIn Photos Are 3.8 Times More Likely to Respond to B2B Emails

Should smiles be a metric B2B marketers take into account when assessing the value of a prospect?

A new study from “Customer Search Engine” Mintigo suggests that the answer is yes, since prospects who smile in their online profile photos are much more likely to respond to cold emails from B2B marketers.

Mintigo’s “DNA Spotlight Report” got the help of facial-recognition platform Face.com to evaluate publicly available profile attributes found on LinkedIn. The facial expression of a prospect was one of the attributes assessed by eye and Face.com.

Smiles
According to the report, a prospect who smiles in his or her profile photo is 3.8 times more likely to respond to a cold email from a B2B marketer than one who isn’t smiling. Overall, just 5.3 percent of recipients of these email campaigns, but the response rate jumps to 20 percent for “smilers.”

Though Mintigo evaluates various forms of unstructured data to improve targeting and boost conversions, it’s typically text on Web pages. “We wanted to expand the types of information we analyze to include images and videos, so our research team used this real-world campaign to prove the concept,” said Jason Garoutte, CMO and general manager at Mintigo.

When asked whether differences in smiles, such as whether teeth are showing or not showing, affects a prospect’s likelihood of responding, Garoutte said that evaluating a smile is a subjective exercise. “We tried both with Face.com and our own eyes.