Cold Email vs LinkedIn Message: What’s More Effective For Outbound Outreach?

Are you confused about choosing the best channel for your outbound outreach?

Undoubtedly, in the B2B industry, cold emails and LinkedIn messages are the most preferred outbound outreach channels.

But which outreach strategy will help you get the maximum results with your outbound outreach?

If you’re also facing the dilemma of cold email vs. LinkedIn messages, you’ve come to the right place.

Because you’ll find the answer in this blog!

We’ve compared both outbound outreach channels: cold email and LinkedIn messages.

We’ve included their pros, cons, benchmark metrics, and what you can expect to help you choose the best strategy and meet your outreach goals.

Key Insight: To get the most out of your outreach in 2024, we recommend using both!

Keep reading till the end.

Cold Email vs LinkedIn Message – Table of Contents

• TL; DR – Cold Email vs LinkedIn Message
• Why Cold Email For Outbound Outreach?
• Why LinkedIn Messages For Outbound Outreach?
• Cold Email + LinkedIn Message = Most Effective Outbound Outreach
• Key Takeaways
• FAQs

TL; DR – Cold Email vs LinkedIn Message

Before we jump directly into the blog, go through this comparison table to understand the key differences between Cold Emails and LinkedIn Messages:

Key Takeaway: 

• You should choose cold email as your outbound outreach strategy if you want to reach out to a large number of targeted prospects at scale and generate many leads.
• You can choose LinkedIn messaging as your outbound outreach strategy if you want to connect with thought leaders, contact professionals using mutual connections, or conduct limited prospecting.

Why Cold Email For Outbound Outreach?

Cold email is the most preferred for outbound outreach. Do you know why? 

That’s because it helps achieve three goals at once:

• Introducing the business
• Drive engagement
• Get more leads

On top of all, cold emailing has benefits like cost-effectiveness and higher scalability.

Pros and Cons of Cold Email For Outbound Outreach

Now that you know what you can expect from cold email outreach, let’s explore its pros and cons.

Cold Emailing Benchmarks

Following are the benchmarks for open conversion, and response rates for cold email for outbound outreach:

PS – All these statistics might vary depending on the target audience from different industries (SEO agencies, healthcare, consulting firms, Staffing & recruiting agencies, etc.)

Best Practices for Making Cold Email Outreach Work  

Cold emailing is the most prevalent outbound outreach channel, meaning everyone pitches their products and services over email.

A cold email is an opportunity to position your business offering in the minds of your target audience, with whom you might have had zero interaction until now.

So, how will you ensure your cold email doesn’t land in your recipient’s spam folder to get more conversions?

Below, we have revealed the best practices for cold email outreach to work wonders for lead generation.

1. Craft a Compelling Subject Line 

Your subject line decides whether the recipient will open your email. Hence, it should be captivating and outstanding, piquing the reader’s curiosity in seconds.

Ideally, the subject line should be 6 to 8 words with clarity and value.

Using cold email automation software like Saleshandy allows you to use features like merge tags and variable merge tags.

With these customizing features, you can create a compelling subject line with relevant details of the recipients to target your email with better credibility.

2. Personalize email body content

Your email sounds more genuine when you write about the recipient’s personal details or business information.

Mentioning their recent accomplishments or mutual interests will also make your email relevant and remarkable.

So, always personalize your cold emails before sending them to the prospects.

Using cold email automation software like Saleshandy allows you to utilize features like merge tags and Spintax.

These personalization tools help you create subject lines and email copies that are both relevant and unique.

With these features, you can create multiple variants and conduct A/B testing to determine which emails perform best and which have lower engagement.

This allows you to adjust the rest of your campaign accordingly for better results.

3. Write a value-driven message and not sales-driven

Your first email should not be about selling your product or services. Instead, it should focus on giving away meaningful resources or sharing value.

The entire message should be in a professional tone with minimal spammy words and an overall short length.

The content guide feature on Saleshandy’s cold email outbound outreach software helps you write cold emails confidently.

It has parameters like subject length, word count, personalization score, linking score, and spamminess check to allow your cold email message to catch the attention.

4. Plan a follow-up sequence

Most prospects engage with an agency after the second or third follow-up, not the initial email.

Hence, it would be best to have a planned follow-up strategy before launching your cold email campaign.

Remember, you must be patient while following up and still consistently giving value in each email.

Using a tool like Saleshandy can help you automate scheduling follow-up emails after legitimate intervals of days and weeks.

While you are engaged in other significant communication, the cold email tool follows up with your prospect to ensure you do not lose a single lead from your pipeline.

5. Track and analyze the campaign

An expert marketer doesn’t fail to track the cold email campaign’s performance.

It gives a clear idea of how well the recipients receive the emails, the scope of improvement, and what should be avoided in the follow-up emails and the next campaign.

Using cold automation software for cold email tracking provides real-time data on the recipient’s behavior in reports and charts.

Saleshandy’s analytics show you various metrics, including open, reply, contact, and unsubscribe rate, along with the positive and negative sentiments of the recipients.

Why LinkedIn Messages For Outbound Outreach?

LinkedIn is the most preferred medium for marketers to use for outreach and social selling. Over 65% of marketers affirm that their LinkedIn usage will grow year after year. 

That’s because everything happens on one platform – sending connection requests, sending the first message, pitching, following up, and grabbing the lead.

Moreover, there are multiple ways you can generate leads from LinkedIn:

• Direct message
• InMail
• Create content to establish a personal brand and get inbound leads
• Join groups to network and get contacts

All these options make LinkedIn an equally important channel against cold email for outbound outreach.

Pros and Cons of LinkedIn Messages for Outbound Outreach

Let’s quickly discuss the pros and cons of a LinkedIn message outreach.

LinkedIn Messaging Benchmarks  

Below are the benchmarks for LinkedIn messages for cold outbound outreach:

Best Practices for Making LinkedIn Message Outreach Work

LinkedIn is a popular channel for outbound outreach, meaning everyone has been sending messages to their prospects.

Furthermore, LinkedIn is not only a job portal but also a platform for professional networking, lead generation, cold outreach, sales prospecting, collaborating, and more.

In this case, then how will you stand out?

To help you, we have revealed the best practices you can implement to make your LinkedIn message outreach work wonders.

1. Always Send a Connection request With a Personal Note

If your LinkedIn connection request does not include a personal note, you are solely responsible for your low acceptance rate.

A connection without note doesn’t motivate most recipients, who are leaders and founders.

Mention why you are interested in connecting with the recipient. To grab the prospect’s attention, add a personal detail regarding the prospect’s featured post, role change, or recent achievement.

2. Personalize the Message

Once your connection request is accepted, the next step is to communicate further with the prospect.

Having said that, your first message is crucial, so put a lot of thought into crafting it.

Be relevant about the value you are offering or pitching the solution to the recipient’s pain point.

Keep your message between 100 and 120 words to make it short, crisp, and impactful.

Break your message into small sentences or sections to give the recipient breathing space. Remember to highlight the main concerns straight away!

3. Have a Follow-up Strategy

Most marketers lose after sending the connection request or the first message.

But there’s more than that. Taking follow-ups from the prospect is vital to successful LinkedIn outbound outreach.

It would help if you had a follow-up strategy planned before sending the connection request.

Send 2 to 3 follow-up messages after your initial message in an equal time gap.

Do not overwhelm your recipient by sending too many LinkedIn messages in a few days. Keep adding a new value point with each follow-up message to establish credibility.

4. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

Your prospect will visit your profile immediately after being convinced by the initial or follow-up messages.

Therefore, you should keep your LinkedIn profile up to date and present all the information in an appealing way.

When your outreach message and the information on your profile contradict each other, the prospect will never convert.

So make sure whatever value you are promising to offer to the prospect reflects on your personal profile or the company’s profile page.

Cold Email + LinkedIn Message = Most Effective Outbound Outreach

Until now, you and I have discussed cold emails vs. LinkedIn messages.

But what if we explore the possibilities of cold emails “AND” LinkedIn messages? Yes, you read that right.

Combining both channels can help you overcome the connection request restrictions. It means your prospect outreach will become limitless.

Secondly, you can automate these two channels using a cold outreach tool like Saleshandy to increase the chances of campaign success with analytics and reports.

Lastly, you can benefit by enjoying a 2x response rate as you can reach the same prospect with two channels. It will show your genuine interest in them.

Here’s the stepwise approach to it:

Step 1: Send a Connection Request to Start a Conversation If Accepted

Start with sending a connection request to your prospect on LinkedIn. 

Remember, always send a connection request on LinkedIn with a personal note to increase the chances of acceptance. 

Once your request is accepted, send a unique and personalized message after thoroughly reviewing your prospect’s profile and business to stand out.

Your first message should have everything your prospect is looking for:

1. Your quick introduction
2. Your pitch (not too salesy though)
3. The pain point
4. The solution
5. Social proof

Doing this will ensure the prospect that you have landed in their inbox with a purpose, have something to offer valuable, and you respect their time.

Step 2: Land Into InMail If Your Connection Request isn’t Accepted

If your connection request is still pending within a few days, take this step: Land in your prospect’s InMail.

You might be wondering what the difference is between LinkedIn messages and InMail.

So here’s a quick explanation of LinkedIn message vs InMail:

• The LinkedIn message is the message you send to your connection directly in their inbox.
• The LinkedIn InMail is a premium feature that allows you to land in anyone’s inbox, even if they aren’t your connection.

As you don’t know the prospect, keep your tone professional, message to the point, and approach not much about marketing.

Usually, your landing as InMail is enough to convince the prospect of your authenticity.

However, a few times, you might fail to follow the above parameters and, as a result, fail to get the lead. 

Step 3: Use a Cold Outreach Tool and Send a Cold Email to Your Prospect

I love step three the most. It will save you from the low response rates of a cold LinkedIn message or InMail outreach. It’s pretty simple.

You have to use a cold automation tool like Saleshandy to find your prospect’s email address through LinkedIn and send a cold email.

Here’s the stepwise process shown in the images:

1. Create your account in Saleshandy

2. Go to the Lead Finder feature through the dashboard

3. Select the Social Link option from the menu

4. Paste the LinkedIn profile URL of your prospect

5. Saleshandy will fetch all your prospect’s data including email addresses in a few seconds.

6. Use that email address to send cold emails for outbound outreach. 

7. Schedule 2-3 follow up emails using the sequencing feature.

8. You’re all set! 

Key Takeaways

• While exploring cold email vs. LinkedIn message, we learned it is actually cold email “AND” LinkedIn message.
• To make your outbound outreach a 100% success, you should test and implement both channels with full potential.
• Cold email outreach works best when the campaign goals are wider reach and audience engagement through personalization.
• LinkedIn message outreach works best when you know the prospect, want to create an impression, and enjoy higher open rates.
• Implementing both channels with outbound outreach automation software like Saleshandy would have a more significant long-term impact.

FAQs

1. What’s Better: A Cold Email or a Cold Message on LinkedIn?

Between cold emailing and LinkedIn messaging, the best channel for your B2B outreach relies on your campaign goals and target audience. 

A cold email is ideal for:

• Campaigns to reach an audience of thousands
• Hyper-personalized message
• Tracking and analysis

Whereas LinkedIn messaging is suitable for:

• A direct approach to the decision-maker
• Niche audience 
• Higher response rate expectations

2. Is Cold Emailing Still Prevalent?

Yes, if done right. Cold emails are the most preferred cold outreach method, with an average open rate of 20-25% and an average conversion rate of 2-5%. A cold email works wonders when it is:

• Relevant
• Highly-personalized
• Targeted & segmented well
• Followed up at the right time

3. Can Combining Cold Emails and LinkedIn Messages Improve Outbound Outreach Effectiveness?

Indeed! You can boost cold outreach effectiveness by combining cold emails and LinkedIn messages. It helps you in:

• Wider reach
• Enhanced visibility
• Optimized engagement via multi-channel approach
• Kickstart conversations with leaders and founders

4. Can I Use Both Cold Emails and LinkedIn Messages in the Same Campaign?

Of course. Using cold email and LinkedIn messages in the same campaign can double your reach, boost your engagement, and allow A/B testing for better optimization of the entire campaign.

However, to use these two channels in the same campaign, you should:

• Segment audience for both channels differently
• Write unique and personalized messages for both channels
• Track the performance of both the channels and change strategy after an interval

5. How Do I Decide Between Using Cold Email or LinkedIn Messaging for My B2B Outbound Outreach Strategy?

To decide between cold emailing and LinkedIn messaging for your cold outreach strategy, you have to ask yourself:

• What are my target audience’s preferences?
• Is my target audience more active on LinkedIn or email?
• What would be my messaging style?
• What campaign goals do I want to achieve? (education, awareness, conversion, meetings, etc.)
• What are my response rate expectations?
• How many resources do I have? And at what level do I wish to spend it?