Social Selling vs Email Outreach: A Comparison

The Channel Debate

Ask ten sales professionals whether email or social selling is more effective and you will get ten different answers. The truth is that both channels have unique strengths and weaknesses, and the best results come from using them together strategically.

Let us compare them head to head so you can decide how to allocate your time and effort.

Email Outreach: Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

• Scalable: you can reach hundreds of prospects per day
• Direct: lands in their primary inbox
• Measurable: easy to track opens, clicks, and replies
• Persistent: stays in their inbox until they deal with it

Weaknesses:

• Crowded: average professionals receive 100+ emails daily
• Spam filters: deliverability is increasingly challenging
• Impersonal: hard to build rapport through email alone

Social Selling: Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

• Relationship-building: engage with their content before reaching out
• Visibility: your profile and activity build credibility over time
• Less crowded: LinkedIn InMail gets fewer messages than email
• Context: you can see their interests, activity, and connections

Weaknesses:

• Time-intensive: genuine engagement takes effort
• Less scalable: you cannot mass-automate relationship building
• Platform-dependent: algorithm changes can reduce visibility

The Best Approach: Combine Both

The highest-performing sales teams do not choose one or the other. They use both channels in a coordinated sequence:

1. Use Easy Email Finder to find prospect email addresses and business details
2. Send a personalized email as your first touchpoint
3. Connect on LinkedIn the same day or next day with a note referencing your email
4. Engage with their LinkedIn content over the next week
5. Follow up via email with additional value
6. Continue alternating channels throughout your cadence

When to Lean on Email

Email is better when you are targeting small business owners who may not be active on LinkedIn, when you need to reach a large number of prospects quickly, or when your value proposition is straightforward and can be communicated concisely.

When to Lean on Social

Social selling is better for high-value enterprise deals, industries where LinkedIn is widely used, and when you need to build relationships with multiple stakeholders at the same company.

For most B2B sales teams, starting with a targeted email list from Easy Email Finder and layering social selling on top is the winning formula.