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

I read a LinkedIn post from a sales influencer evangelizing what he calls the "triple touch" approach.

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 these days.

Whenever I tell CEOs they need to pair their LinkedIn marketing with outbound DMs, they're always skeptical. They show me hundreds of messages from overly aggressive salespeople and point out to me that the messages are all unread.

But as a marketer, I view each inbox as its own channel, each with its marketing purpose and rules dictated by consumer behavior.

In 2024, I ghostDM’d 500 engineering directors at the top banks on behalf of one of my clients, a VP of Sales. Of 500 connection requests, 10 prospects (2%) met with the VP of Sales and 2 of these deals ended in closed won (20%).

All the deals that ended in closed won involved some level of relevance (the customer had a problem that aligned with the timing of our message) and trust (the customer had already previously seen one of our posts on LinkedIn).

Here’s how I think about SDR work in the context of marketing and what I think led to our success.

As a marketer, I view each inbox as its own channel, each with its marketing purpose and rules dictated by consumer behavior.

Buyers are busy and exponentially so for executive and executives in large organizations. Thus the idea of a “tripe touch” in this context misunderstands customer behavior entirely. Most executives are overwhelmed with their to-do lists and don’t need more reminders.

As a founder myself, I tend to view my inboxes as to-do lists and I prioritize my inbound messages along these axes:

Trust — Do I know the sender? If yes, who is it? Are they friends or generally value-additive people?

Urgency — I think of urgency as 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

Importance is where the best marketers and sales people can stand out. In my mind, importance equates to value and relevance. For example, a text message telling me my flight is delayed or a phone call telling me my table is ready is of very high importance. Whereas a generic text message cold pitching a B2B product seems out of place—because it's very unimportant.

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A generic text message cold pitching a B2B product seems out of place, because it's very unimportant.

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.

On LinkedIn, the cheapest sales tactics often are the ones that go most viral. But focusing on channel alone misses the point.

Channels are just tools. They all work, but are most effective when they’re used for the problem they were designed to solve.

As a buyer myself, I want you to treat my inboxes with respect. Don't call me if you don't know me, especially if it's not urgent or important.

It’s not about the “triple touch”, it’s about building trust and sending a valuable, relevant message.

Good luck.