The sanctity of the inbox

Why so many sales pitches get ignored and how to fix it.

Ira Ko
December 31, 2024

Refreshed: Dec 31, 2024 | Original: July 10, 2023

Fake news — "Triple touching" a cold prospect does not lead to 3x more sales.

I read a LinkedIn post from an sales influencer evangelizing a “triple touch approach” to cold outbound. When you triple touch a prospect, you ping them on LinkedIn, email, and cell phone—all on the same day.

I don't think you should ever triple touch someone, especially without consent, but that's exactly what's happening on LinkedIn these days.

I’m not an SDR, but in 2024, I sent 500 outbound DMs on behalf of a VP of sales. We were selling to developers, specifically director level engineering leaders. While I was initially met with skepticism around the ROI of high effort LinkedIn DMs, my personalized, deeply-researched approach led to enterprise pipeline that actually closed.

The problem with “triple touch” and other sales hacks is that it degrades the value of the platform. Whenever I encourage founders to pair content with outbound, I’m always met with resistance or skepticism at best.

Founders have seen the bad end of the stick:

Thoughtless, unpersonalized DMs from low-level sales people
Low quality automations set up by marketers, but sent from the CEO
And now increasing amounts of AI-generated garbage

Paired with intense pipeline pressure, these datapoints make it difficult for the marketing leader to convince stakeholders of the investment (if we can’t outbound, what’s the point of content?).

As a marketer, I view each inbox as its own channel, each with its marketing purpose and rules dictated by consumer behavior. I think the reason why most sales messages go unread is because SDRs (and sales leaders) are optimizing for volume vs creating actual value for the customer.

Here’s how I think about writing cold DMs on LinkedIn that actually close:

Buyers are busy. Most executives are overwhelmed and don’t need more reminders. The idea of a “triple touch” fails to understand this and is just annoying.
Buyers view inboxes as to-do lists and prioritize on the dimensions of urgency, trust, and relevance.

Urgency

Urgency — How likely I am to take action after seeing a notification on my phone? This probably differs across generations, but for me, a millennial, it’s:

Voicemail / missed call from contact
iMessage
Voice memo
Phone Call from known contact
Email from known contact
LinkedIn DM
Email from unknown contact
Cold LinkedIn DM

Channel	Do I Know You? (Yes)	Do I Know You? (No)
Voicemail	Top priority	Ignore
iMessage	High priority, depending on the relationship + preview	If a phone number, high priority, but also likely ignore
Voice memo	High priority	Medium priority, suspicious
Phone Call	High priority	Ignore
Email	Depends on sender and subject line	Depends on sender and subject line
LinkedIn DM	Yes, but often swamped	Depends on your profile

Trust

Do I know the sender? If yes, who?

I think salespeople and marketers can earn access to the high urgency inboxes by earning the customer's trust. It's why artists (and some brands) can text blast their fans with an insanely high clickthrough rate.

Relevance

Relevance is where the best marketers and sales people can stand out. For example, a text message telling me my flight is delayed or a phone call telling me my table is highly relevant, but a generic text message cold pitching a B2B product is very low relevant.

My view, a deep understanding of the customer and good timing makes for a relevant message.

On LinkedIn, the cheapest sales tactics often are the ones that go most viral. But focusing on hacks like the triple touch are short-term wise, long-term foolish.

In my view, cold about is about building trust and sending a relevant, well-timed message.

Not all buyers are receptive to buying, but you can tactfully build trust without being too annoying.

Good luck out there.