LinkedIn was right when they said “Recruiters typically see up to 50% higher response rates  when using both LinkedIn InMail and emails…” Of course, they said this when they were promoting the bundling of the Connectifier into their LinkedIn Recruiter. There was a link to an official LinkedIn page that had this quote but they took it down, so we found an alternative source.

Now that LinkedIn has sunsetted Connectifier, we don’t hear much about how emails (and personal emails in particular) will help increase your response rate.

But the logic is still there. If you already have tons of InMail, go ahead and use it. Knowing that 99% of recruiters are also using LinkedIn Recruiter, you would surely increase your response rate by using emails as well. 

Let’s also note that ~22-30% of tech people are not on LinkedIn. StackOverflow study found out that 22% of developers have NEVER created an account with LinkedIn. Our internal data revealed that at least 10% tech profiles on LinkedIn are abandoned. Why would anyone limit their tech sourcing to LinkedIn InMail?

Do the InMail vs Email Challenge: Send an equal amount of emails to people on both InMail and email (you can and should send out 2-3 emails to a person). This isn’t cheating since LinkedIn sends InMail reminders to you.  See what kind of results you get? Doesn’t matter if InMail or email gets you more responses: either way, you win as your total response rate increases.