Connecting on LinkedIn: With or without text?

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Acceptance rate: What does a good rate mean?

Many users are satisfied when around 20% of their inquiries are accepted. That means: Every fifth person clicks on “Accept.” At the same time, this also means that four out of five people do not react or reject.

An acceptance rate of 20% is therefore okay — but offers upward potential.

The effect of messages in networking requests

Experience shows that inquiries without Message often achieve higher acceptance rates. The reason: An empty request appears more neutral and innocuous. Many LinkedIn users are skeptical of contact requests that look like sales in the first sentence.

While you may have a 20% acceptance rate with a message, the value may rise to over 30% without a message — simply because the request looks less “after acquisition.”

Why LinkedIn recommends a message

LinkedIn itself recommends adding a short text. That's 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 text like “We know each other from Messe XY” naturally makes sense.

However, if you strategically connect with new contacts from your target group, for example as part of social selling or lead generation, a neutral, text-free approach is often more effective.

Recommendation from practice

If you want to systematically build up new contacts and your focus is on reach, number of contacts and conversion, it's worth testing with empty requests.

One option is to try both variants in parallel for a few days — e.g. 25 with and 25 without a message — and then compare the acceptance rate.

This gives you a well-founded basis for decision-making based on your own target group.

conclusion

Whether or not you add a message to the request depends heavily on your goal and audience. If you want to establish a lot of new contacts without immediately starting a conversation, the option without a message is often the better choice.

Testing is worthwhile — because the results often differ significantly after just a short period of time.

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