So LinkedIn has limited the capacity of what you can do for the next couple of days? Let's deep dive into why it happened and how you can fix that!
Table of contents :
What are these weekly limits?
Weekly limits are restrictions LinkedIn can set on your account when the overall experience you've generated isn't up to their standard.
As mentioned in the article (we strongly suggest you read it), LinkedIn has "various restrictions in place to protect its overall member experience and ensure that LinkedIn remains a trusted space for all our members."
LinkedIn adjusts what a user can do based on the quality of its interaction on LinkedIn, monitoring metrics such as :
the profile’s Social Selling Index
your acceptance rate
your reply rate
If you’ve hit the limits, it’s probably that one of those three metrics is too poor and LinkedIn is judging that you are not providing a good experience on the platform.
If you're new to LinkedIn prospection, it can also be that LinkedIn is judging the sudden spike in activity suspicious. It's a good practice to ramp up slowly - read our guidelines on adapting your LinkedIn Limits
Are there different limits with Standard Linkedin and Sales Navigator?
The party is over for free users on LinkedIn. Up until October 2023, there was no difference in terms of volume/limits between a free account on LinkedIn, and a paid one.
Namely, all accounts had the same quota on connection request
150-250 connection requests are allowed per week.
If you added a note, no impact on the quota
The note was limited to 300 characters
Now, LinkedIn free accounts are subjected to different restrictions :
150-250 connection requests / Week - WITHOUT NOTES
10 Connection Request / MONTH - WITH NOTES.
Yes, you read that right, per month!
Connection requests with notes are limited to 200 characters. Not 300 characters anymore.
As mentioned by Linkedin in the screenshot, this is a restriction to LinkedIn free accounts
We've reached out to LinkedIn which has confirmed the change :
What does this mean for your prospecting strategy? Let's see the implications.
What are my strategic options if I want to remain on the Free LinkedIn?
If you have a tight budget, upgrading might not be an option. You have two options then :
When crafting your sequence, make sure not to include a note anymore.
This way, you will not be affected by the recent change and will still be able to connect with 150-200 new people a week.
If you chose to include a note, you should consider upgrading to a Premium or Sales Navigator
And given that sending a connection request with a note tends to increase conversion rates, you should definitely think about upgrading!
Let's look at the upgrade option together!
Why should I upgrade to a LinkedIn Premium account (35€/month)?
As mentioned earlier, sending a connection request with a note tends to yield a better conversion rate, so you'll probably end up upgrading.
The good news is that it's not very expensive to unlock the old limits of 150-250 connection requests per week with a note.
Considering you can almost double your opportunity rate, it's definitely worth the 35€/months!
But you should even go as far as considering upgrading to the Sales Navigator plan
LGM Best Practice: When should you upgrade to a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Account (75€/month)?
At La Growth Machine, we've always recommended that any of our users upgrade to a Sales Navigator account. And much before the recent changes around the connection request limits.
Upgrading to the Sales Navigator plan will not only :
Allow you to benefit from the higher restriction of 150-250 connection requests with a note per week, as enabled with the Premium Plan
But allow enable to source leads directly from Sales Navigator. And as data shows, segmentation is the key part of any good strategy.
And Sales Navigator is the best tool out there to build a strong segmentation strategy! By using Sales Navigator Right, you can easily generate +30% reply rate sequences.
Dedicated Sales Navigator Training
It's an advanced platform that requires a bit of training, but of course, we've got you covered.
How does La Growth Machine react to the limits?
Whenever receive a limit notification from LinkedIn, we slow down its LinkedIn actions for 24h following LinkedIn's recommendations.
Why try again 24 hours later, and not wait until the next week?
We've noticed that, even though LinkedIn mentions Weekly restrictions, they can be lifted at any time if you have new acceptations or connection requests coming in (not you sending them!). This is why La Growth Machine attempts again 24 hours later.
How to lift the restrictions and make sure it never happens again?
Here are solutions for you to consider to increase your volume capacity on LinkedIn :
Better segmentation: LinkedIn monitors your acceptance rate and reply rate. To improve these metrics, work on building better lists of prospects by narrowing your targeting and double-checking the list before adding them to a campaign.
Lower volume: if you’ve set daily limits above La Growth Machine’s recommended values, maybe you’re going too fast.”
For more information on suggested limits, read our guidelines on adapting your LinkedIn Limits
I've noticed I can send more Connection Requests using LGM than manually or via other tools, why is that?
What should I do?
It’s all about the volume you need to achieve :
Below 100-120 new leads/week/identity: you may consider adding a note since data shows that being transparent and direct by pitching early in the connection rate, though often considered as sellsy, yields a higher qualified call rate than without any message.
By putting a note, you’ll be able to pitch 100% of the leads that have a LinkedIn profile, instead of only the ones that accept you on LinkedIn. Since the average connection rate is 30%, that gives you 3x more reach than by not pitching at all.
Albeit you’ll have to do it in 300 characters, which is difficult, but worth it endeavor!
Between 120-200 new leads/week/identity: you may reach LinkedIn’s weekly limits periodically. Given the higher conversation rate using direct and transparent notes, you may consider keeping the notes though not all leads will be contacted in a given week.
You may also consider using Evaboot’s automatic cleaning of Sales Navigator search results. Data shows that 30% of search results don’t match the given query. This means you’re wasting 30% of your quota on people that aren’t right for you!
More than 200 new leads/week/identity: If despite using Evaboot’s automatic cleaning Sales Navigator search results you still end up with more than 200 matched leads to contact/week/identity, you may consider a sequence that will use Emails as the main channel and LinkedIn as a fallback.
If you use LinkedIn-first sequences, you’ll risk creating a bottleneck around the connection requests when hitting your weekly limits.
By using Email-first sequences, since you can send 200-300 emails/day, you won’t create any bottleneck. And connection requests being used as a fallback down the road, there is a high chance – with a decent reply rate, that you will not be sending hundreds of connection requests a week.
But don’t forget, a high-volume strategy rarely payoffs as data show!
If you’re still under the belief that high-volume strategies (i.e. blasting out to thousands of leads per month) work – you couldn’t be more wrong! You should read our guide on how to generate +30% reply rate sequences with careful segmentation & copywriting!