Connecting on LinkedIn: With or without a message?
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Acceptance rate: What counts as a good rate?
Many users are satisfied when around 20% of their requests are accepted. That means: one in five people clicks “Accept”. At the same time, it also means that four out of five people do not respond or decline.
An acceptance rate of 20% is therefore okay – but there is room for improvement.
The impact of messages in connection requests
Experience shows that requests without a message often achieve higher acceptance rates. The reason: a blank request appears more neutral and less intrusive. Many LinkedIn users are sceptical of connection requests that sound sales-focused from the very first sentence.
While your acceptance rate may be around 20% with a message, it can rise to over 30% without one – simply because the request looks less like outreach.
Why LinkedIn recommends adding a message
LinkedIn itself recommends adding a short message. This is because LinkedIn assumes that you primarily connect with people you already know – such as colleagues, acquaintances or business partners.
In this case, a short personal message such as “We know each other from trade fair XY” naturally makes sense.
However, if you are strategically connecting with new contacts from your target audience, for example as part of Social Selling or lead generation, a neutral approach without a message is often more effective.
A practical recommendation
If you want to systematically build new contacts and your focus is on reach, number of contacts and conversion, it is worth testing blank requests.
One option is to try both versions in parallel for a few days – for example, 25 with a message and 25 without – and then compare the acceptance rates.
This gives you a sound basis for making a decision based on your own target audience.
If you’re testing the option with a message, you need text that fits in the short note. You’ll find examples organised by goal in our 25 connection request templates.
With or without a message? Recruiters and job applicants need to decide that for themselves, too. If you're a recruiter contacting a developer, your request will be one of many like it. If you're an applicant contacting the hiring manager of a team you'd like to join, you don't want to look like you're sending mass messages. Both should test what works rather than follow a rule of thumb. In CompLeadly, you decide for each workflow whether a connection request includes a personal message or goes out without one. A search you've set up in LinkedIn, Sales Navigator or Recruiter Lite (separate licence required) determines which profiles receive a request. Anyone who accepts gets your first message; anyone who doesn't respond gets a follow-up a few days later. You can compare the acceptance rates of both options using per-workflow statistics, available from Premium. More on reaching out to candidates: Recruiting with CompLeadly.
Conclusion
Whether you add a message to the request or not depends heavily on your goal and target audience. If you want to build many new contacts without starting a conversation straight away, the version without a message is often the better choice.
Testing is worthwhile – because you will often see a clear difference in the results after a short time.
shows you how it works and where to find your code in the app.
shows you how it works and where to find your code in the app.
