The biggest debate in the history of Linkedin outreach: is it best to send a blank invitation or to add a message to maximize accepted requests? We have done a lot of tests, and our recommendation will be counterintuitive to what you hear.
Curious? Read on!
Table of contents :
Understanding what can affect your acceptance on LinkedIn
Several criteria are going to impact your acceptance rate, not only the message in the invitation but also :
First of all, is your profile optimized to build trust?
If you haven’t already, do read our article on “How to optimize your profile on LinkedIn?”
Who sends the invitation?
If it’s a C-Level Profil (CEO, Founder, etc), you’ll have a higher rate of acceptance than an SDR for instance. Obviously, because people are more sensitive to C-Level/higher seniority people exchanging with them.
This also means that you must pay attention to match the level of people outreaching with their target audience. Sending an intern/first-year SDR to prospect a C-Level will have an extremely low probability of ever working. You must be appreciative of your prospect’s time and match connection-level appropriately.
And believe it or not, but when the sender is a woman, the rate will be higher than a similar male profile. We’ll get into that later on.
Who are you sending the invitation to?
Know your audience - here are a few questions that you should ask yourself to refine your approach :
Are they very active on LinkedIn?
If so, they will probably beware of no-connection requests and vague messages. Either because they’ve been fooled before and now are careful, or because they also use that same technic.
Remember, you want to build trust. And to do so, be upfront, honest, and appreciative of people’s time
Are they highly prospected after?
If this is an audience that receives many requests and emails per day, you can be sure they won’t give you any attention except if you’re able to catch it quickly. And by quickly, we mean in a split of a second.
Anything vague such as “LinkedIn recommended me your profile. Let’s connect.” or sending blog hoping they’ll read it (while we all know they want - most people don’t have the time) because you’re scared of actually be truthful about your prospection will work poorly. Trust us.
Be upfront, honest and appreciative of people’s time.
Depending on your audience, your acceptance rate will vary.
Let’s take a concrete example: you’re contacting Founders or CEOs in the Start-Up / Scale Up world. In this case, I advise you to add a very personalized and direct note. They know Linkedin, they’re aware that it's a channel used for outreach. And they know that a blank invitation coming from someone random hides a lot of prospection DMs once accepted.
So they probably filter invitations and will more likely accept :
People working in the same field with the same hierarchy level
People that will bring them value with their content or their expertise
So you’ll better share your expertise and share your value as soon as you can!
Another case scenario: if you’re contacting an audience less aware of Linkedin usages, your acceptance rate probably won’t vary that much whether you add a message or not.
They probably accept everyone because their beliefs are often the bigger the network, the better.
Okay, they are basically no best practice - how do I know what to do?
Become the king of A/B testing and learn to know each audience you want to target :
Create an audience A and an audience B: same personas, same industry, same company size - it’s important that your audience is the same along with the test, otherwise, you’ll get skewed results. Those audiences must contain 300 leads each at the minimum so the statistics are reliable and the trends are sure.
For the audience, A send a blank invitation. For audience B, write a personalized and quite direct message to explain why you’re contacting this person.
Generic notes like “Hi I’d love to connect” are not considered proper messages.Compare the stats and learn!
You can also test which identities perform best (CEO or SDR for instance).
Drum roll … let’s end that debate!
At LGM, we did a hell of an A/B testing
The Test - Verifying should be input a message or not.
We used a very salesy/honest sequence with a twist on the connexion request :
Audience A - No Message
Audience B - Honest Sales Message: A very direct and honest message as follows, in French, which would translate to :
“Hello {{firstname}},
{{identity.companyName}} assist marketing leaders in selecting the best agencies to work with, according to scope and budget.
From Webdesign to Ads Campaigns, clients such as {{famous brands in their sector}} trust us with their marketing needs.
Do you have projects that require an agency?”
Very transparent and direct, geared towards a clear CTA
Audience C - Vague Message: a slightly personalized message without any clear context and CTA.
“Hello {{firtsname}}, I’m responsible for companies {{industry of the target}} at {{identify.companyName}}. I’d like to connect with you”
The Audience - Marketing Managers / Brand Directors / CMO
We took 9.000 leads working as Marketing Managers / Brand Directors / CMO and split them into different audiences from big corporates. We made sure they were matching the same persona/company segments
The KPIs: Acceptance Rate & Call-booked rated
We are monitoring both the Acceptance rate as well a qualified booked rate. This is where most people fail in their tests. The acceptance rate is a KPI of minor importance.
If what you want is to book calls, then you should aim your strategy to optimize qualified calls booked. Not Acceptance rate
What did we learn?
The acceptance rate for audience A (no message): 31%
The acceptance rate for audience B (Honest Sales Message ): 29 %
The acceptance rate for audience B (Vague Message); 32%
First, we noticed that the difference between the two is not that big!
But we did not stop there: we are convinced that the acceptance rate is not the ultimate KPI you should track: it does not say much about conversion: did you get any reply? Have you booked calls, meetings? Have you closed?
And since LGM is connected to your CRM, we can track that data down the funnel :)
We measured the stats at the bottom of the outbound funnel: qualified calls booked. Logically, here the trend reversed :
Audience A: 3,77 % of qualified calls booked
Audience B: 6,62 % of qualified calls booked
Audience C: 5,1% of qualified calls booked.
Suffice to say, it proves two things :
Not putting a message got us to lose a lot of opportunity from people that perceived it as suspicious. We were not fooling them, on the contrary
Being transparent got way more leads.3 points higher for audience B in terms of qualified calls booked. This is the difference between a barely surviving company and a growing one.
The note in the message of Audience B has played the role of a filter: only people that saw an interest in the offer accepted the invitation, then were interested enough by the other messages and DMs sent and finally went further and accepted a call.
🤝 Quite of a win/win situation: you talk with people that are interested in your products/services, they don’t waste your time and neither do you, trying to convince people that don’t want/need to work with you.
And remember: know your audience. In this case, we were targeting highly sought-after prospects from salespeople. They receive tons of messages daily and are very conscious of their time. We had a lot of feedback from the sales team that they got qualified calls with people more senior than usual because of the transparency of the approach - which senior people relate to.
You know what to do now 😉
BONUS - Other funny stats :
We were using the profile of three people :
Founder & CEO - Male
Country Manager - Male
Brand Manager - Female
Gender and seniority have an impact. It’s an unfair world we live in :)