For years, sales emails have been at the core of any successful outreach strategy. No other medium was close for lead generation and customer engagement. But with the growing social media usage, LinkedIn is becoming a go-to place for prospecting leads and getting your message to the right people. So, when it comes to outbound strategy, which is better – email or LinkedIn message? In this article, we will explore email Vs. LinkedIn messages, their pros and cons, and find which is better.
Email vs. LinkedIn Message: Which is better?
Cold email is simpler but can be hard to get results. While LinkedIn gives better results but is hard to scale. Therefore, you should use both as they are two complementary outreach channels. When you combine the power of LinkedIn outreach and cold emailing to connect with the right people, you see the results you expect from a proper outreach campaign.
Cold Email Pros and Cons
Pros of Cold Email
Your message reaches directly to their inbox
Unlike LinkedIn messages, cold emails land directly into the main inbox of your prospects. This is not the case with the LinkedIn message, as you need to first send a connection request before sending a message.
Easy to scale
You can send up to 150-200 emails per day with your email address, which means you can send up to 6000 cold emails per month, including follow-ups. Please note that 6000 cold emails don’t mean you can contact 6000 people.
Cons of Cold Emails
Difficult to find the right emails
The hardest step is finding the right emails, which you can collect manually or by using an email finder. The best strategy is to get emails from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This way, you get the CSV data of all the leads with their verified emails. Please note that you will never find 100% of the emails and among them, not 100% will be verified emails. With email finder, you can expect to get 30%-70% of verified emails.
Pass the spam filters
To get into your prospect’s inbox, you need to work on deliverability to pass spam filters. To do this, you need to ensure:
- To use a reputable provider like Gmail
- Maintain a good open rate and reply rate
- Keep a clean email list
Stand out in the flooded inbox
Our inbox is flooded with cold emails daily, making it harder to stand out. Therefore, if you want to use cold email as your main lead generation channel, you need to become good at copywriting and send personalized messages if you want to get results.
Pros and Cons of LinkedIn message
Pros of LinkedIn message
No deliverability issues
Sending a LinkedIn message is simpler than sending an email. No spam filters and no need to find emails. When you send a message through LinkedIn, you are 100% sure that your prospect will receive it.
LinkedIn message response rate is higher
LinkedIn inboxes are less flooded than email inboxes; hence there are more chances to stand out from the crowd. That is why LinkedIn messages have a high open rate and reply rate.
Prospects can view your LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn messages appear more human as there is a picture next to your message. If your prospect wants to know more about you, they can click on your profile picture to check your LinkedIn profile.
Cons of LinkedIn message
First, you need to send a connection request
You can send a LinkedIn message when you have a first-degree connection, meaning you both need to be connected on LinkedIn. You cannot send messages to 2nd and 3rd-degree connections. So, you need to send them a connection request before sending a message. You can send notes to your connection request. Please note that the note is limited to 300 characters, so write accordingly.
Pros and Cons of LinkedIn InMail message
Pros of LinkedIn InMail message
InMail allows you to send messages to people who are not connected on LinkedIn
LinkedIn InMail is a premium feature that allows you to send messages directly to people’s inboxes even if you are not connected with them on the platform. It helps you solve the problem you face with a standard LinkedIn message.
InMail open and reply rates are higher than in emails
The average email open rate is 22%, while the InMail average is 57.5%. Similarly, the email response rate is 1 to 10%, whereas the InMail response rate is 10-25%.
Cons of LinkedIn InMail messages
You get a limited number of InMails per month
You need to buy InMail credits to send them, and for that, you need to subscribe to one of the premium plans as mentioned below:
- Premium Career – 5 InMails per month
- Sales Navigator – 50 InMails per month
- Recruiter – 150 InMails per month
- Premium Business – 15 InMails per month
You can carry InMail credits for up to 90 days; after that, they disappear. If you have a Sales Navigator plan, you can stack up to 150 InMails. It is noticeable that the number of messages you can send is too low. Therefore, you cannot rely on only InMail for your outreach strategy.
You cannot follow up on InMails
LinkedIn doesn’t allow InMail follow-up to avoid spam, which means you get only one chance to get a reply from your first InMail message.
Key Takeaways
Email, LinkedIn messages and InMails work very well together. You need to use them according to their capacity:
- 150 emails per day
- 100 LinkedIn messages per week
- 50 InMails per month
This way, you can save your connection request and InMails from people who don’t reply. Before you send a connection request or an InMail, you can send up to 2-3 email follow-ups. This allows you to use a different platform to follow up with your prospect. It is important to note that multichannel outreach generates an average of 2x more replies than a single channel outreach. Therefore both used in a perfect balance can make your business successful.
