LinkedIn Connection Request Limit - What to Do Once You’ve Reached Your Limit
Updated: Mar 15, 2022
If you reached your LinkedIn connection request limit, you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s face the facts first.
LinkedIn’s essential purpose is professional networking, not uncontrolled prospecting.
Used by salespeople around the world, the platform wants its users to have the best experience possible, both buyers and sellers. This is where the LinkedIn connection request limit enters the game.
What is the LinkedIn Connection Request Limit?
To ensure users are not spammed, LinkedIn has drawn a set of limits.
Earlier, they had restricted the number of requests you could send out per day. It was somewhere around 70 to 100. That discouraged people from sending out connection requests indiscriminately, but not much.
As a result, LinkedIn further reduced the limits. Today, you can send out no more than 100 connection requests per week. That’s nearly one-seventh of the earlier limit.
And as we understand, there’s more. Not only does LinkedIn cap the number of requests you can send but it also keeps a close watch on your ‘accept ratio’. Its algorithm tracks how many of your requests were actually accepted.
So maybe you got a bit too excited about a company that perfectly matches your ICP and you sent a bunch of connection requests; maybe you’re using the wrong automation tool; maybe you haven’t defined your ideal customer profile as well as you should…
Whatever the reason, you’re here and this is what you can do once you’ve reached your LinkedIn connection request limit.
What to do Once You’ve Reached Your LinkedIn Connection Request Limit
We bring you four things you can do to seize your outreach efforts once you’ve reached your LinkedIn connection request limit. It’s not the end of the world, stay tuned…
1- Create Valuable Content
There’s no doubt that customers expect more for SDRs nowadays.
9/10 B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on purchasing decisions, which is why you should use it to stand out from the rest of the crowd.
You should not only publish things that interest you, but also your target audience. Trends, new developments, stats, polls, testimonies, personal experiences worth sharing are great examples of content you can create/share.
Some general rules to follow are to keep the content simple and easy to read. That way, the majority of LinkedIn users will be able to follow your thoughts easily. While your paragraphs should be short, stick with long-form content when publishing your posts.
LinkedIn encourages this kind of action which is why they came up with the Creator Mode. What kind of sorcery is this, you might ask.
Well, creator mode is a profile setting on your dashboard that can help you grow your reach and influence on LinkedIn. You can turn on creator mode to get access to additional tools and features that help you create content and grow your audience base on LinkedIn.
Once you’ve turned on the Creator Mode, here are some of the things you can expect:
The Connect button on your profile will change to Follow. LinkedIn will display the number of followers you have in your profile introduction.
You can display the topics you post about in your profile introduction as hashtags. This will make it easier for other LinkedIn members to discover your content and follow you.
LinkedIn will highlight your original content on your profile by moving your Featured and Activity sections to be first on your profile.
Would you like to know more about how to take advantage of the Creator Mode on LinkedIn? Gives us a shout!
Ok, maybe you have no one supporting your content creation or you just find it a bit tricky to put into words some of your thoughts…
Re-share posts which resonate with you! Follow some names like Daniel Disney or Kyle Coleman, they have great content and you’d be getting inspiration from the best in the business.
It’s always a good idea to give the posts a little personal touch though, so make sure to write how you feel about the content and ask for your followers to engage with it. You can achieve this by just ending the post with a question, this will encourage an exchange of ideas.
Content is an essential part of social selling. What you publish and share will partly determine whether your prospects regard you as an authority in your space or not.
2- Elevate Your Next Connection Requests
Connecting is much more than just sending a request. It’s one of your early steps in building rapport with your prospects.
Personalizing that connection request message is the perfect first step. Have you been doing it? We’re not talking about changing the prospect’s name and company, real personalization. If not, take some time to plan your next approaches.
Why is it so important to send out personalized messages? You’ll probably experience a higher engagement rate from your prospects. Ultimately, personalizing your LinkedIn messages will help you book more meetings and get your message across.
How to do it?
Introduce yourself – let your prospects know who you are and what company you work for. Information gives power to the person on the other side, and we want them to feel comfortable.
Connect on common ground or compliment their work – you should then show you’ve done your research and personalize your message. Studies reveal a 46% increase in message response rate when there’s a shared interest, skill, or industry group, so if you have any, make sure to mention it. In the absence of similarities between you, choose to send a message with a complimentary tone, praising a specific post/comment.
Make your intentions clear – outline the purpose of your connection request. No bullshit. Being clear about what you intend to get out of the connection is a good way to set the right expectations.
The final result should be a short (you only have 300 characters) and empathetic message with a clear call to action.
If you want to have access to prime LinkedIn message examples, visit our post!
3- Follow up and Engage with Your Prospects
80% of sales require an average of five follow ups to close a deal, however, 44% of sales reps follow up with a prospect only once before giving up. Imagine the sales potential left untouched…
So be the exception and do it! Engage with your prospects regularly by having meaningful follow ups! This is a great way of being memorable.
Set a sequence of touchpoints aligned with the prospect’s feedback, goals, and timeline. LinkedIn messages, an email if pertinent, a few likes and honest comments, maybe even a re-share. These will help you establish a warm connection and build rapport.
According to Forrester, companies that take the time to properly engage and nurture leads improve their sales outreach at a rate of 50% while spending 33% less!
Learn more on this topic on the blog post follow up messages on LinkedIn.
4- Re-evaluate Your Prospecting Strategy
You’ve reached your LinkedIn connection request limit once. That’s ok. But then it happens twice, and three and four times… This can have serious consequences and you can end up with a suspended account. So if this is the case, might be time to re-think your LinkedIn prospecting strategy.
'Do I have a well-defined ICP?'
Defining an ideal customer profile (ICP) can help you identify a good-fit prospect. It helps you with targeting, providing direction, and narrowing down prospective buyer options, which is of great importance when you only have 100 connection requests to send out per week.
The ICP maps out the organizational, technological, demographic, and other characteristics of companies that you’d like to turn into customers and if you want to know more about how to define your ideal customer profile, read our post on the matter.
Quality vs. Quantity
Strike a good balance between quality and quantity. Don’t push your LinkedIn account to the limit and maybe take the time to nurture a potential connection before going for a connection request.
Use a multichannel prospecting approach in your outreach efforts, mixing up email, cold calling, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms.
The right automation tool
Your outbound efforts may benefit from automated LinkedIn messaging, there’s no doubt. When used properly (major alert!!!), it enables you to reach out to more prospects in less time, fueling up your lead generation.
The wrong automation software will spam your audience with bulk messaging and get your LinkedIn account suspended or even blocked.
Look for something that can help you find relevant leads and engage with them, send follow-ups and track success rates. This will ultimately improve your productivity.
Always keep in mind that solid connections and meaningful conversations are a good way to generate leads. This means that personalization is key, so the tool you choose should allow you to focus on that.
Don’t forget, you can get super high response rates on LinkedIn, so don't waste that opportunity by spamming them with email-style formal messages! Choose a tool that lets you send messages at intervals that mimic human actions. 20-25 messages per day is our suggestion.
Bonus tip: Tier your prospect lists as a tactical way of automating. This will allow you to spend more time personalizing the top tier and maybe apply automation on the lower tiers.
This is key… for LinkedIn Connection Request Limit
Who enjoys being spammed? No one… The LinkedIn connection request limit is one of the best things LinkedIn could have done to enhance user experience. Of course it forces SDRs to level up their outreach approaches, but it brings more value to the platform, keeping it healthy.
Ultimately, the answer to “What to Do Once You’ve Reached Your LinkedIn Connection Request Limit?” is making sure it doesn’t happen again!
That’s why we advise you to do:
Have a well-defined ICP
Prioritize quality over quantity
Create content
Personalize your messages
Engage with your prospects and conduct valuable follow ups