Should You Send a LinkedIn Message or Email?

InMail messages (and connection requests) are a great way to extend your social selling—but they come with limitations, and the costs can add up quickly. That’s why email still provides the most personalized way to connect with prospects—provided you’re doing your research on LinkedIn, first. 

How do you know if you should use LinkedIn messaging or email? We cover the different ways to message people on Linkedin and when it makes more sense to move your conversation over to email. 

How do I use LinkedIn to talk to prospects? 

There are three ways to send messages to your sales prospects on LinkedIn: 

LinkedIn connection request

A connection request is an invitation to connect on the platform. It’s straightforward, and free to all LinkedIn users. There are some limitations though, like not being able to connect with someone who is completely outside of your network. Additionally, it’s easy to overlook and forget about all of your inbound connection requests because they land in a separate tab in LinkedIn.

Connecting with someone on LinkedIn gives you more reach by showing you everyone they’re connected to as a 2nd degree connection. When you’re a 1st degree connection, you can also share event invitations for conferences, webinars, and meetups.  

LinkedIn messages

Any LinkedIn member can send messages to their connections for free and it’s a great way to start a conversation with someone you want to do business with. Social media messages are a warm way of connecting with a prospect, versus a cold email or phone call. 

Because it’s through the LinkedIn platform, you can be sure that the message was delivered successfully, although you’ll never know if they opened it. To be effective, your messages should be short and ask for their interest in speaking further. Don’t send sales pitches through LinkedIn messaging, they’re too long and can be saved for email conversations later. 

LinkedIn InMails

Inmails are available if you have a premium LinkedIn membership or use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for sales prospecting. They allow you to message someone even if you’re not connected to them or in the same network. LinkedIn claims that InMails are 2.6x more effective than emails alone. 

Long story, short: email vs. LinkedIn messages are both/and, not either/or. 

LinkedIn Messages: When they work, and when they don’t

Benefits

There are plenty of reasons to use LinkedIn messaging and Inmail. LinkedIn saves you the trouble of finding and verifying a prospect’s email address. Plus, your professional history is all available on your profile page, making it easy for your prospect to find out who you are and the value that you provide.

Unlike an email inbox, people expect to receive outreach from strangers on LinkedIn—that’s often why they made their account in the first place. It’s easy to put together your message, partially because there’s a character limit that means you have to keep it short. Your message can’t be longer than 1900 characters, so make sure you’re showing value in a direct, straightforward way. 

Disadvantages

Just like with any social media platform, LinkedIn also suffers from spam messages. This can dissuade users from taking the time to read your message. Thankfully, using InMail helps to differentiate your outreach because it has its own separate inbox. 

No matter how popular the site is, not everyone is active on LinkedIn. Many people choose not to share content or enforce stringent privacy settings. Just because someone has a profile, doesn’t mean it’s the best way to connect with them. 

Targeted prospecting works great on LinkedIn, but there’s no way to send InMails at scale, especially if your outbound sales reps are contacting hundreds of leads a week. Since you’re only allocated a limited number of InMails, it’s not the best return on your money.

Finally, LinkedIn Sales Navigator isn’t cheap. You can choose from three pricing tiers: 

• Core – $99.99/month 
• Advanced – $159.99/month
• Advanced Plus – custom pricing

You should know that you only get 50 InMails allotted per month, regardless of the tier. Aside from messaging, there are plenty of other features like advanced search filters, custom lead lists, alerts, buyer intent signals, and usage reporting that make Sales Navigator worth the cost. 

Emailing: Taking charge of your outbound strategy

LinkedIn is a powerful source of data, but it can only go so far. InMails give you no insight into when and how many times your message has been opened and you’re limited to a low word count. On top of that, the messaging functionality is completely manual with no sales templates or workflows to help make your message extra special.

That’s why switching your conversations over to direct email makes the most sense. Using LinkedIn Sales navigator, it’s easy to export all of your lead lists and upload them into your CRM or outbound emailing platform. 

CRM and prospecting software opens up the door to layers of customization. Not only can you send hundreds, or thousands, of emails without hitting any limits, these tools allow you to use personalization, sales templates, and track the success of your campaigns. 

Combine LinkedIn and email for the best outcome

Using Sales Navigator, you can build lead lists using advanced search features. These lists can be exported into a CSV file, making it super easy to kick off your cold email campaign. In fact, it’s so easy that it only takes three steps to export your leads. 

LinkedIn is a life saver when you’re looking for up-to-date contact information. A lead in your CRM may be useless after one year, but their LinkedIn profile will always be updated to include their current company and role. 

For large sales opportunities, start your prospecting research on LinkedIn first. Review their activity history, posts, published articles, and other key details to give you an idea of who this person is and what problems you can help them solve. 

Like and comment on their posts and send a connection request. Social selling on LinkedIn helps make your email a bit warmer, since your prospect will recognize your name and company from your LinkedIn interactions. 

Supercharge your outbound emails with LinkedIn research

LinkedIn is a great database of up-to-date information about almost any B2B prospect or customer you want to talk to. 

By exporting your lead lists, including email addresses, into your outbound sales tools, you have the right information to write effective cold emails that will get you a conversation. 
If you want advice on how to make your emails more effective, check out this article on how to write a winning sales email subject line.