Cold email or LinkedIn: which channel should you start with?
Reply rates, deliverability, and the segment where each channel quietly outperforms the other.
The right answer is almost always 'both, sequenced'. But if you have to pick one to start, the deciding factor is whether you can find a work email for your ICP without paying enrichment tools $2 per contact.
For engineering leaders at seed-stage startups, work emails are trivial to find and inboxes are quiet. Email wins. For heads of sales at 500-person companies, work emails are gated, inboxes are noise, and LinkedIn DMs get read on a phone at 9pm. LinkedIn wins.
Reply rates in our data: cold email averages 2.4% booked-meeting rate at a well-qualified list. LinkedIn averages 4.1% but requires 3-5x the account infrastructure to scale.
The teams that beat both averages sequence: LinkedIn connect, wait 3 days, email, wait 5 days, LinkedIn message referencing the email. The channels reinforce each other. Neither alone matches the combination.