Are you sending out 50-100 connection requests a week through your Linked In account?
Do you know the guidelines for connections and messages on LinkedIn?
The limits on basic accounts and features available have been slowly deprecated or rolled into premium plans lately and Linked In Connection limits are not easy to find.
If you look in Linked In Support articles you get an answer which doesn’t really tell us about weekly limits for invitations.
If you search online, you get a lot of posts written by users but hosted on Linked In and I am not sure if that counts as an official answer but we can start here.
The consensus is that you can send between 80-100 connection requests a week on your basic account. That is on the high side and does come with risks if you don’t have a high connection rate.
Now, If you don’t want to risk a warning, the recommendation is to keep that under 20 a day, four to five days a week.
These are connection requests without a note or message to accompany the request.
If you want to personalize your connection request it gets even trickier and that number ranges from 5-20 a month depending on factors like how many of your invitations accept after reading that personal message.
Bear in mind that these limits can change at any time so be sure to keep an eye out for updates.
If you aren't careful, You could lose the ability to send connection request for 24 hours or worse, so it is best to stay within their guidelines to avoid any risks to your account.
Another thing to keep in mind is that while you have a limited number of custom requests you can send on LinkedIn Basic Accounts, they do tend to have a higher connection rate.
So be sure to save those for your high value targets or the ones you feel you have the best chance of connecting with.
80 connection requests a week if done manually is still not easy and finding that many connections regularly can take a bit of work.
If want to expand your network quickly, consider upgrading to a premium account. Premium accounts allow for higher limits on connection requests and messaging and are currently the only option for sending InMail on LinkedIn due to recent changes.
Additionally, the Sales Navigator account does give you better account-list building capabilities, along with persona filters and access to exclusive features you don’t get with free plans. However, I've found the Sales Navigator interface to be a bit clunky, especially when tracking my campaigns.
Personally, I prefer using a separate tool for campaign management, although it does require transferring contacts between tools, which isn't always fun.
Despite these limitations and challenges, LinkedIn remains an excellent platform for B2B marketing. I think a lot of the new rules have been beneficial, particularly in deterring spam.
This is welcome news for a lot of us. I've seen a pretty big drop in spammy connection requests and messages in recent months.
No more free course offerings every other day from random people in India.
I do value personalized connection requests a bit more , knowing that they come from a limited number of personalized outreach options.
In order to have a successful outreach or connection campaign it is important that your profile and pages are optimized so that you make the most of your connection requests and to make sure you don’t get blocked from sending out more requests due to a poor connection or response rate.
It is important to measure at every stage to make sure you are at or exceeding benchmarks.
Every stage counts and if you aren’t connecting with as many requests as you should be you might need to start with your profile before working on your messaging and marketing material.
Here is an example of my stats which I measure and optimize till I am satisfied with the conversion rates.
For profile connections, you should be looking to achieve a minimum of 15% connection rate on requests you send.
You want to shoot for 20-25% as your target but I have seen some of clients achieve 36% connection rate but that also depends on who you are connecting with and your role etc.
They also change with the different target demographics you go after but you can adjust your profile depending on what your current goals are.
One thing that premium account gives you is visibility into your Social Selling Index which I copied below for you to have a look at. It is made up of a few factors but truthfully. I think your profile and experience have more to do with whether someone will connect with you but LinkedIn says that this does play a factor.
Once you have your connection rate at an acceptable level you can start testing engagement strategies based on your goals.
If your goal is to grow you audience, you are halfway there as your new connections will be automatically turned into followers until they decide to opt out of your feed.
So if your goal is to grow your reach and brand this is already a great way to do that and personally I think sending a “thank you for connecting” follow up the very least you should do after connecting.
One thing I would advise against is to lead right in with a pitch. I saw this referred to as Pitch-Slapping and thought that was the best way to describe it.
When I run a campaign a lot of the people I connect with will start a conversation naturally.
I post regularly about what I do and how I do it and about the various tools and strategies we use.
If the timing on the connection is good then they may just ask you to explain what you do or why you reached out.
It is always good to have a few basic templates worked out that you can personalize but that you can keep at the right lengths.
I have made the mistake too many times in sales of leading in with too much over a succinct response and that can backfire.
It is good to have a lead in offer or landing page ready if you are going after a particular vertical or in my case if you have a particular solution in mind but I really don’t like sending that prematurely.
Really if someone asks, then sure , I am happy to forward that along right away but I first want to find out if there is even a need for the product or service before I waste their time with something that they wont or cant use.
I will be doing a full breakdown of an outreach campaign with stats that I ran over the past 6 months in an upcoming blog post.
For now, don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions about making the most of your Linked In accounts.
Comments