The honest answer is 'it depends on the buyer,' but the data points somewhere more useful than that. For buyers under 35, a LinkedIn connection request before the first email consistently lifts reply rates. It reads as a soft introduction rather than a cold pitch.

For more senior buyers, particularly outside tech, email first tends to perform better. LinkedIn messages from strangers read as noise to a VP who gets forty a week; a well-researched email in their actual inbox gets more attention.

The best-performing sequences we run don't pick one. They layer both, spaced a few days apart, with each channel reinforcing the same specific, researched point rather than repeating a generic pitch twice.