Does LinkedIn cold outreach work?

LinkedIn cold outreach, also known as LinkedIn prospecting, refers to the practice of contacting LinkedIn members you don’t already know in hopes of generating leads and sales. It involves using LinkedIn’s platform to identify potential customers and reaching out to them directly via LinkedIn messages and connection requests.

Cold outreach has become an increasingly popular tactic among sales and marketing professionals in recent years. However, there are differing opinions on whether it’s an effective strategy or not. Here we’ll examine the pros and cons of LinkedIn cold outreach and look at data and insights to determine if it actually works.

The potential benefits of LinkedIn cold outreach

There are several reasons why LinkedIn cold outreach holds appeal for many sales and marketing teams:

• Large audience – With over 740 million members, LinkedIn provides access to a massive group of professionals from all industries and job functions.
• Targeted reaching – Detailed member profiles and advanced search filters make it possible to pinpoint your ideal customer persona on LinkedIn.
• Response rates – While still relatively low, response rates to cold outreach on LinkedIn tend to be higher than other cold traffic sources.
• Established relationships – Many LinkedIn members connect with peers they already know, so you can leverage these networks.
• Trust and authority – There is often greater trust in messaging from credible LinkedIn profiles over unknown senders.
• Cost effective – Sourcing new leads through LinkedIn is typically cheaper than other lead gen alternatives like paid ads.

With these advantages in mind, it’s easy to understand the appeal of LinkedIn cold outreach as a customer acquisition strategy for B2B companies.

The potential downsides

However, there are also a number of reasons why LinkedIn cold outreach may not deliver the desired results:

• Low response rates – Despite higher response rates compared to other cold outreach channels, overall response is still very low. Studies show that connection acceptance hovers around 20% and InMail response rates are around 2-5%.
• Irrelevant targeting – Even with detailed LinkedIn profiles, it can be hard to accurately target prospects. Many messages get sent to members who are not a good fit.
• Annoyed recipients – Cold messages can anger recipients who view them as spammy and invasive.
• Getting banned – LinkedIn aggressively cracks down on suspected spam behavior, including banning accounts. Rules are extensive and violations can happen easily.
• Time investment – Following up and nurturing cold leads requires a hefty time investment for sales teams to see results.
• Scalability challenges – LinkedIn limits the number of connection requests and InMails that can be sent, making high volume outreach difficult.

These challenges can diminish the potential value of investing time and resources into LinkedIn cold outreach.

Response rates data

So do the potential benefits outweigh the possible disadvantages? One way to assess effectiveness is to look at data on response rates.

Here are some key statistics on different LinkedIn cold outreach response benchmarks:

These benchmarks come from various studies by sales engagement and demand generation platforms. The data shows that premium LinkedIn accounts tend to see higher response rates, likely because they appear more credible. But even premium accounts see fairly low response numbers overall.

Some additional stats on LinkedIn cold outreach effectiveness:

• Only 0.33% of cold InMails convert into sales (SalesforLife)
• Prospects that respondents to cold messages convert at a 2.5x higher rate. (Outreach.io)
• 69% of buyers say cold outreach influences their purchasing decision. (Outreach.io)
• 63% of respondents found cold messages irrelevant to their interests. (SalesforLife)

These data points show that while cold LinkedIn outreach might not drive high volumes of conversions directly, it can still influence buyer decisions and nurtured leads often convert at higher rates.

Tips for better results

Is it possible for brands to achieve higher LinkedIn cold outreach success? Here are some tips for improving results:

• Personalize connection requests with a customized message
• Make InMail messages hyper-relevant to the prospect’s interests
• Use concise, benefit-focused copywriting to grab attention
• Segment and target prospects based on role, industry and profile keywords
• Automate campaigns but maintain a human touch
• Experiment with messaging, offer and creativity to optimize conversion
• Focus on value-driven conversaions vs. a hard sales pitch

While response rates may remain low, following best practices can help increase the chance of converting cold LinkedIn outreach to wins.

The role of automation

Automation tools have become popular for scaling LinkedIn outreach efforts. Here are some key automation stats:

• 75% of sales teams now use automated tools for some part of their process (Outreach.io)
• 71% of top performers use automation to follow up with leads (G2)
• Sales reps using automation achieve 45% more qualified leads per month (SalesforLife)

When used strategically, automation can streamline tasks like finding prospects, sending initial messages and following up. This allows sales reps to focus on more personalized communication with promising leads.

Potential risks of over-automating LinkedIn outreach include coming across as robotic, triggering spam warnings and insufficient personalization. Most experts recommend balancing automation with human interaction.

The optimal LinkedIn outreach frequency

Another key question is: how often should you follow up with LinkedIn prospects? Studies on optimal outreach frequency show:

• 80% say receiving 1-5 outreach messages is reasonable before becoming annoyed (SalesforLife)
• Following up 2-4 times sees the highest open and click rates (Outreach.io)
• Conversion rates decrease significantly after 5+ outreach attempts (SalesforLife)
• Waiting 7-14 days between follow-ups is ideal (Outreach.io, SalesforLife)

Based on this data, following up no more than 5 times at 1-2 week intervals appears to strike the right balance between persistence and over-communication.

The LinkedIn outreach learning curve

Mastering effective, high-converting LinkedIn outreach takes considerable time and effort. Here’s an overview of what to expect as you optimize your strategy:

• First month – Test different messages and tactics, expect low response. Identify winning techniques.
• Months 2-4 – Expand efforts, fine-tune messaging and targeting. Response rates improve.
• Months 5-7 – Achieve promising conversion metrics you can replicate at scale.
• Months 8-11 – Continued optimization. Outreach process is 85%+ standardized for efficiency.
• Year 1+ – Highly systemized and automated campaign framework. Focus shifts from quantity to quality of connections.

The benchmarks to aim for are 5%+ InMail response rates and 15%+ connection acceptance rates. Getting there takes significant time and effort.

Is your brand ready to commit?

Not all companies are positioned to succeed with LinkedIn cold outreach due to factors like limited resources, restrictive company policies and lack of expertise. Before diving in, brands should assess:

• Your overall sales process – Is it optimized to convert LinkedIn leads?
• Your company’s brand reputation on LinkedIn
• The quality of your LinkedIn company and individual profiles
• Your ability to create effective campaigns at scale
• Your access to automation tools and training

For companies that can check these boxes, LinkedIn outreach has greater upside. Those lacking in any area should improve their foundation first.

The risk of getting banned

Overly aggressive LinkedIn outreach comes with the risk of being banned. Common reasons include:

• Sending too many messages too fast
• Using misleading or inappropriate messaging
• Scraping LinkedIn data or reverse engineering
• Creating multiple accounts under different aliases
• Automating outreach without sufficient personalization

To minimize risk, thoroughly read LinkedIn’s rules and conservative estimates for limit thresholds. Consult automation tools for best practices and keep personalization levels high.

Does LinkedIn outreach work for sales?

One of the biggest questions is whether LinkedIn cold outreach drives enough quality leads and closed deals to justify the investment required. Sales teams have seen varying levels of success:

There seems to be consensus that LinkedIn outreach works best when:

• Your product can command high prices
• Your target customers are on LinkedIn
• Your sales team has bandwidth for personal outreach
• You sell to enterprise brands
• You are selling a considered purchase

For companies in fast-moving industries selling lower priced offerings, LinkedIn outreach impact is typically muted.

The importance of content and thought leadership

Beyond directly selling, many brands find value in using LinkedIn outreach to attract followers, shares and engagement through thought leadership content.

Statistics show:

• Thought leadership content gets 8x more engagement than direct promotional content on LinkedIn (Socialbakers)
• 76% of B2B buyers are influenced by thought leadership (Edelman)
• Articles generate 3x more clicks than text updates on LinkedIn (Socialbakers)
• Long-form posts generate 2x more comments than short posts (Socialbakers)

By establishing your brand as an industry expert, LinkedIn outreach can drive traffic to your site, boost followers and support future sales efforts.

Content promotion techniques

To maximize reach for LinkedIn content, brands can:

• Promote posts directly within relevant LinkedIn groups
• Share content when individually connecting with prospects
• Ask satisfied customers to organically share and engage with content
• Use eye-catching custom graphic images related to the content
• Encourage team members to actively like, comment and share content

Does LinkedIn outreach work for generating leads?

In addition to sales, LinkedIn outreach is also used by marketing teams aiming to generate more inbound leads. Typical conversion benchmarks include:

• 1-3% connection acceptance rate
• 2-10% reply rate to initial outreach
• 5-15% opt-in or lead capture rate
• 10-30% lead to sales qualified lead

Because lead gen focuses on the top of the funnel vs. closed deals, volume and lower cost per lead takes priority over per lead value. Response rates are also viewed more positively compared to sales.

Lead gen via LinkedIn outreach works best for:

• Driving event sign-ups
• Whitepaper or gated content downloads
• Collecting target account contact info
• Newsletter or email list building

The largest challenge is avoiding low quality leads that stall out and achieving an acceptable CPL.

Key takeaways

To wrap up the key themes surrounding LinkedIn cold outreach effectiveness:

• Response rates are low overall, but can be improved through optimization.
• Conversion metrics typically exceed other cold traffic sources like email.
• Automation balances efficiency with personalization.
• Frequency caps around 5 total outreach attempts see best results.
• Mastering outreach takes considerable time and commitment.
• Thought leadership supports branding beyond hard selling.
• Ideal for considered B2B purchases but less effective for transactional sales.
• Works for demand gen but lower quality than other lead sources.

The final verdict

There is no definitive yes or no answer to whether LinkedIn cold outreach categorically “works” or not. The reality is it depends on these key factors:

• Your industry, target customer profile and offering
• Your sales process effectiveness and reps’ skills
• Your organizational commitment to optimize for the channel
• Your full sales and marketing stack
• Your content strategy and inbound presence

For companies aligning these pieces – and entering with eyes wide open to the challenges – LinkedIn outreach can become a valuable component of a complete B2B customer acquisition strategy.

But for many, the low response rates, need for personalization and risk of getting banned make LinkedIn outreach more trouble than it’s worth. Testing on a small scale first is advised.

With substantial effort and resources, LinkedIn cold outreach can deliver results. But it should be viewed as just one channel in a broader sales and marketing mix.