LinkedIn adds a face and a track record to a name in an inbox. A profile visit, a connection request, a comment on their post, then a short message: each touch is visible, and together they turn a stranger into someone vaguely familiar.
It is rate-limited, so it cannot carry volume, and it punishes automation that looks like automation. Used as the second channel in a sequence, it lifts email reply rates; used alone at scale, it gets accounts restricted.