What Works Better for Cold Outreach in 2024: Email or LinkedIn Message?

Are LinkedIn messages more effective than cold emails at generating results? Depending on how you intend to prospect.

The effectiveness of emails, LinkedIn messages, and Inmails (Linkedin Premium Messages) for recruitment are compared here, along with how they might be combined for the best outcomes.

What is more beneficial: emails or LinkedIn messages? To evaluate email and LinkedIn messages, consider the following seven characteristics:

1. Open and response rates
2. Follow-up
3. Velocity
4. Deliverability
5. Price
6. Data management
7. Scale

1. Open and response rates

Email reaction rates are typically lower than those of LinkedIn cold messages and Inmails.  Email inboxes are overflowing. The widely acknowledged average for all cold emails is between 1% and 10%. However, it is greatly dependent on your advertising campaign. When an email is highly tailored, some good outreach managers can achieve a 70% response rate.

LinkedIn message response rate

Inboxes on LinkedIn are less clogged. The typical response rate is 5-20%.

LinkedIn email response rate 

InMails outperform emails in terms of response rate, with an average of 10-25%. Because this is a paid LinkedIn function, fewer individuals are sending them. People tend to work on their copywriting more than on a free email because you only have a certain amount each month to send.

2. Follow-up

To receive a response, LinkedIn messages demand fewer follow-ups than emails. Inmails do not allow you to send follow-ups.

Follow-up by email

After the seventh follow-up email, 95% of customers typically respond. It is evident that you receive responses more frequently the more follow-ups you send.

Follow-up on LinkedIn message

Following up on LinkedIn communications is easier. Usually, nearly 90% of the leads respond after 3-4 follow-ups.

Since everyone is aware that "money is in the follow-ups," it is challenging to tell sales representatives that.

3. Velocity

Compared to LinkedIn prospecting, cold emails can reach a greater number of people in a shorter period of time.

Email transmission rate

You can securely send up to 150-200 emails every day using your email account. If you have a fresh email address, you may need to warm it up slightly.

LinkedIn message transmission rate

LinkedIn just reduced the amount of connection requests you can send from 100 per day to 100 per week. This greatly limits your ability to prospect.

Inmail velocity

You can only obtain 50 Inmails credits monthly with a LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription.

It's obvious that your reach plan cannot solely rely on Inmails. You can write far too few messages per day.

4. Deliverability

LinkedIn messages and Inmails have an edge over emails because they are exempt from spam filters.

Email deliverability

Cold emails, as opposed to LinkedIn messages, are delivered right to your targets' primary mailbox.

If your email gets past the spam filter, you can be certain that your prospect will see it. But you must succeed:

Consider this checklist to help you out:

• - Configure DNS Records (DKIM, DMARC, SPF)
• - Work with a trusted provider (like Gmail)
• - Ensure your email list is up to date.
• - Get your mailbox ready.
• - Keep up a high open and reply rate

Linkedin message deliverability

You can only send messages to your first-degree contacts, or those with whom you are previously joined on LinkedIn.

Third-degree connections (those having connections in common) and second-degree connections (people without common connections) cannot receive messages from you on LinkedIn.

It indicates that before sending a LinkedIn message, your connection request must first be confirmed.

Notes can be sent together with connection requests, but:

1. They have a word limit of 300.

2. Requests without notes are accepted at a greater rate.

3. If you take notes, you cannot apply the following hack.

Inmail deliverability

LinkedIn Inmails enable you to deliver messages directly to people's inboxes without initiating a connection request.

It fixes the issue you were having with standard LinkedIn messages.

Additionally, you have the choice of including a subject line in your Inmail, which will be seen in the message preview.

5. Price

Since Inmails are paid messages and you have to pay to search for emails, LinkedIn messaging is the most economical option.

Email price

Finding an email is not free, but sending an email is. You'll probably need to use an email finder if you want to find the email of a potential customer. These resources cost money.

Linkedin message price

You can communicate with anyone on LinkedIn for free, and you don't have to pay to view their profile URL. It is common knowledge.

Inmail price

For Inmails to be sent, credits must be purchased. You need to sign up for one of the premium LinkedIn offerings for it to happen:

1. Sales Navigator (50 inmails per month)
2. Recruiter (150 inmails per month)
3. Premium Career (5 inmails per month)
4. Premium Business (15 inmails per month)

Each deal has a different price. You will probably require LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which costs $99 per month if you are a salesperson.

6. Data management

Compared to Linkedin messages and Inmails, email is more challenging to manage data than those two methods.

Email data management

Finding the appropriate emails is the biggest drawback of cold emailing. An email finder will often find 70% of the emails in a lead list when you upload them.

Out of the 70% of emails discovered, 40% are likely to be valid emails (meaning the email finder is absolutely certain the email exists).

The remaining emails will be designated as catch-alls, indicating that the email finder is not entirely certain that they actually exist.

Additionally, an email is changed when a lead changes companies. As people change employment more frequently, you must routinely update your contact information.

LinkedIn message data management

The fact that the Linkedin URL is public and doesn't change when your lead moves jobs makes managing LinkedIn data much easier. The public LinkedIn URL can be changed by other members, but you can obtain a URL with a fixed ID.

Inmail data management

For Inmails, the same rules apply exactly. Additionally, you can view your Inmail outreach history on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which provides a small advantage.

7. Scale

Given the constraints of LinkedIn, email outreach is far more easily scaled than LinkedIn outreach.

Email scaling

Due to two factors, cold email is fairly simple to scale. The first is that your email account allows you to send between 150 and 200 emails daily.

It means you are permitted to send up to 6000 cold emails every month (including follow-ups; this does not imply that you are permitted to contact 6000 individuals).

You may double the number of emails you can send by simply setting up a second email address if you wish to boost your prospecting potential.

You can handle two email accounts with just one person, so there's no need to construct a false identity like you would while creating a second LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn message scaling

Having numerous LinkedIn profiles will only allow you to scale your prospecting on the social network.

As Linkedin is combating this strategy and will ban your account if they discover you are establishing phony accounts, this is more difficult than email.

Inmail scaling

Scaling Inmails is quite expensive because you have to purchase a sales navigator license for each account you intend to use. Additionally, each of these accounts will only be able to send 50 inmails.

Combine Emails and Linkedin Messages for Better Results

Clearly, there are pros and cons to using emails, LinkedIn messages, and inmails. The greatest sales teams integrate all three channels to achieve the best outcomes because:

1. Emails and LinkedIn messages complement each other

    2. It is possible to automate your multichannel outreach

    3. Linkedin messages and emails adhere to the same guidelines

1. Emails and LinkedIn messages complement each other

Emails, LinkedIn messages, and inmails complement each other really effectively. They enable you to use several platforms to follow up with your prospects.

You must utilize them in the following order:

1. Emails (150 per day)
2. Linkedin Messages (Connection Requests: 100 per week)
3. Inmails (50 per month)

You are reserving your connection request and inmails in this manner for recipients who do not respond to your emails.

Sending 1-2 email follow-ups before sending a connection request or inmail is acceptable. In comparison to single-channel outreach, multimodal outreach typically yields twice as many responses.

2. It is possible to automate your multichannel outreach

Your lead generating process can be automated with the help of multichannel cold outreach technologies like LaGrowthMachine.

You may create multichannel sequences mixing Linkedin, email, and soon Inmails with this application.

The sequence builder in this application is quite strong and visually appealing, which is why I enjoy it. Additionally, it has direct connections to CRMs like Pipedrive and Hubspot.

However, other LinkedIn automation apps like Linkedin Helper or Expandi do automate the sending of inmails.

3. LinkedIn messages and emails adhere to the same guidelines

Personalization, copywriting, and segmentation are the three golden standards that must be followed regardless of the outbound channel you employ to deliver your cold messages if you want to receive responses.

Spam-filled messages are filling up email and LinkedIn inboxes at an alarming rate. To stand out, you must customize your message. It is a convincing example of why it is worthwhile to tailor your message. You can see this message as an illustration:

Why does it work?

We use a hook at the beginning to establish relatability, then we playfully pay it off towards the conclusion. This message is concise, pleasant, and has a clear call to action in just 67 words.

If you send a message that looks like this, there is a far higher likelihood that you will receive a response.

The basic idea is the same: initiate communication by sending a message. Therefore, the same regulations apply. Not that you should always aim for smaller audiences, but segmentation is something you should strive for.

A strong lead-generation campaign includes the following:

1. The appropriate message
2. Sent to the right recipients
3. Delivered at the right moment

You will meet people effortlessly if you follow these three rules. The days of intrusive mass prospecting are gone. To get decent outcomes, segmentation is essential.