Rant: Tried doing all my client outreach on LinkedIn DMs instead of email

I used to send cold emails to potential clients and barely got a 2% reply rate. Last month I switched to sending personalized LinkedIn messages to people in my niche (freelance copywriting for saas startups). I kept it short, mentioned one specific thing about their recent post or product launch. Out of 20 messages, I got replies from 8 people and landed 3 paying gigs. The whole thing took me about an hour total over two days. Has anyone else had better luck on LinkedIn vs email?

3 comments

3 Comments

young.nora1mo ago

Hold your horses. 20 messages is such a tiny sample size it's basically useless for drawing any real conclusions. With only 8 replies and 3 gigs, you could have just gotten lucky with the specific people you messaged. Plus, LinkedIn inboxes are getting just as clogged as email these days. Last week I saw someone in my feed complaining about getting 10+ unsolicited DMs a day. You're basically doing the same thing as cold email but on a different platform. Give it three months and your reply rate will probably drop off a cliff once everyone else catches on.

ellis.leo1mo ago

Really happy to hear this worked out for you, it's always nice when a small change makes such a big difference.

harperg761mo ago

Wait, "small change"? That app update took like three hours to download and broke my notification settings, lol. Not exactly small in my book, but glad it worked for you.