When it comes to making that first connection with a potential client or networking contact, many people wonder whether it’s better to reach out via email or LinkedIn. Both approaches have their pros and cons, so let’s take a look at some of the key factors to consider when deciding which method is best.
Accessibility
One of the main advantages of email is that just about everyone has an email address these days. Email is universal and accessible. In contrast, not everyone uses LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn, there are over 740 million members worldwide, but that still pales in comparison to the 5 billion email users globally. So if you want to maximize your chances of reaching someone, email casts a wider net.
However, when it comes to reaching the right person, LinkedIn has the edge. With email, you may not have the exact or preferred email address for your intended recipient. But on LinkedIn, you can easily find and directly message the right individual thanks to member profiles. So LinkedIn helps ensure you’re contacting the decision maker or influencer you want to connect with.
Establishing Credibility
When reaching out cold via email, you have virtually no credibility or social proof. The recipient has likely never heard of you. However, with LinkedIn, they can click through to view your profile and see your connections, recommendations, skills, experience, and more. So LinkedIn gives you a chance to showcase social proof and credibility.
Additionally, receiving an email from someone you don’t know can come across as intrusive or seem scammy. But a LinkedIn message feels more natural in the context of a professional networking site. The recipient may be more inclined to view your message in a positive light.
Personalization
With email, personalization options are limited—you can customize the subject line and greeting but not much else. However, LinkedIn allows you to establish common ground and appeal to shared connections. For example, you can reference belonging to the same LinkedIn Groups or having mutual connections.
Seeing those elements helps the recipient relate to you more. It makes you feel less like a stranger reaching out randomly. LinkedIn messaging therefore enables more personalization to increase open and response rates.
Relationship Building
Both email and LinkedIn can help kickstart relationships, but LinkedIn accelerates the relationship building process. After connecting via LinkedIn, you can nurture the relationship over time by engaging with the person’s content, commenting on updates, liking posts, joining the same groups, and more.
With email, you’re starting from scratch each time without the benefit of an ongoing social platform. To continue engaging, you’d have to keep emailing back and forth manually versus letting a platform like LinkedIn facilitate ongoing interactions.
Communication Style
Email tends to lend itself better to formal communications. You likely compose more thoughtful, polished messages knowing they require the recipient’s full attention. LinkedIn messaging often feels more casual like a social media platform. Quick messages with abbreviated language are common.
Consider which communication style best matches your goals. If you want a serious tone to discuss a business proposal, email may be preferable. For a friendly networking approach, LinkedIn messaging aligns well.
Response Rates
When it comes to response rates, studies generally show better results with LinkedIn. For example, Mailshake found cold emails had a response rate of around 2%, while LinkedIn messages garnered 32%.
That significant difference likely stems from the credibility and personalization advantages of LinkedIn mentioned earlier. LinkedIn helps you come across as more familiar versus an unknown outsider. You have a better chance of piquing interest and getting a response.
Sales Prospecting
If your outreach focuses on sales prospecting, both email and LinkedIn have pros and cons. With email, you can cast a wider net and use email tools to automate sending of tailored emails at scale. However, low response rates may mean wasting a lot of time. LinkedIn has higher response rates but doesn’t work as well for mass outreach.
Weigh your goals – quality versus quantity of outreach. For niche, targeted sales prospecting, LinkedIn performs well. For broader campaigns, email may be a better foundational channel supplemented by LinkedIn.
Long-Term Nurturing
As mentioned previously, LinkedIn makes it easier to nurture relationships over time. Once connected, you can continue to engage through LinkedIn long after the initial outreach. With email, you’d have to force those ongoing touchpoints manually.
So if your priority is establishing lasting connections – not just that initial contact – LinkedIn provides a built-in nurturing advantage with its network effects.
Multimedia Content
Want to include images, videos, presentations, PDFs, or other multimedia content in your outreach? Email has the edge here with greater flexibility and file size allowances. LinkedIn messaging limits you to text-based communication without ability to attach files or embed visuals.
If demonstrating your services with multimedia collateral, email would allow including relevant samples as part of your pitch. LinkedIn outreach consists only of words – no sights or sounds.
Data and Targeting
LinkedIn provides robust data and targeting capabilities to identify your ideal prospects and customers. You can target by location, job title, company, skills, interests, Groups, and more. This allows you to be highly selective with your outreach.
With email, you may be relying on generic company databases without as much visibility into individuals. It makes targeted outreach more scattershot guessing who might be the right fit. LinkedIn removes much of that guesswork.
Conclusion
In summary, here are some best practices on when to use each approach:
- Use email for:
- Broad-based prospecting at scale
- Establishing a more formal tone
- Sending multimedia collateral
- Use LinkedIn for:
- Targeted outreach to ideal prospects
- Personalized relationship-building
- Ongoing nurturing after connecting
The best approach may be to combine both methods – use LinkedIn to identify and connect with priority prospects, then develop those relationships over email and LinkedIn messaging over time. Test a mix of outreach strategies and see what works best for your business goals.
