LinkedIn Invite Limits – What To Know

Come the new year, LinkedIn is rolling out new limitations to safeguard its platform and make it an even better channel for networking.

We rounded up these new changes, as well as how marketers can leverage for an effective marketing strategy.

What’s new?

LinkedIn has once again experimented with its connection request limits by restricting the maximum number of invites that a user can send out per week. Currently, you can only send 100 invites weekly, or about 20 to 25 daily–and this is regardless of your subscription to Sales Navigator.

As LinkedIn has established from the get-go, it has always prioritized genuine conversations on the platform, so expect that all of these changes will always be geared towards discouraging autopilot strategies.

Here’s what we know so far from people who’ve noticed the new LinkedIn restrictions:

1. LinkedIn accounts perform better when these are warmed up for social selling before you start reaching out to prospects.
2. Acceptance rate for connection requests falls less than 70%.
3. If you reach 700 and above invites, LinkedIn will have you withdraw some of your requests. It must be kept under 700.

Old and new limits are always easy to overcome if you take the right steps to ensure that your profile is optimized.

How to warm up your business account

Better safe than sorry! Warming up your LinkedIn account will help you avoid penalties and inconveniences for lead generation on the platform.

If you send connection requests that gradually increase over time, your limit will slowly increase. This means slow and steady will get you more connection request capabilities per week.

But watch out for negative responses—slow or no replies from other users, invite rejection—these will bring your limit lower.

The best practice is to start by sending 5 requests per day, and slowly move your way up to 10, 15, etc. per week.

You can’t go wrong with LinkedIn InMails

It may be pricier, but LinkedIn InMails will get you replies and call bookings faster than organic strategies and direct messages – it’s an investment, indeed, even for a LinkedIn recruiter.

Out of all prospects, around 50% of these users open their InMails, which is a good number especially for marketers who do cold messaging on the platform. Find a LinkedIn group, LinkedIn members, or an event within your industry (or the industry where you’re searching for leads), and start reaching out to these accounts. One advantage of InMails over a connection request is that you’re not limited to 100 per week, so you can go ahead and maximize your pitch.

Experiment until you can

Nothing can beat trial and error. In lead generation, no two brands and strategies are the same. If you have the time and resources, then gear up for a lot of A/B testing to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

There’s plenty of room to figure out the new LinkedIn limits. And with LinkedIn support, and you might even discover a new strategy for your brand along the way. So have lots of patience and determination, don’t be afraid to experiment.