How many messages does it take to book a meeting on LinkedIn?
Two book most meetings. Five book nearly all.
Upscale Outreach ·
Put five in the sequence. The first two messages started 79% of meetings, and messages three to five another 19%. Counting every message the seller sent, sequence and answers, 58% of meetings took two or fewer.
Outscale benchmarks, from 115,160 prospects reached in real campaigns.
Which message started the meeting
- Message 145%
- Message 234%
- Message 39.2%
- Message 47.7%
- Message 52.2%
- Message 6 or later2.2%
The first two messages started 79% of meetings. Messages three to five added another 19%. Past five, too few sequences ran on to say.
The later messages still earn their place
Counted from the thread alone, messages one and two started about 5 meetings per 1,000 people sent them, and messages three to five about 2. Those are floors. On the accounts where we can see the calendar too, 60% of meetings were booked straight from a link, with no reply first, so they never show up in the thread. Either way, a later message books less, and it still books.
People miss a message. They mean to answer and don’t. A stranger takes a second or third nudge to feel familiar. And the seller stops early, because each follow-up feels like pestering. It rarely is: see how many follow-up messages should you send on LinkedIn.
All in, usually two
- One or two58%
- Three or four24%
- Five or six12%
- Seven or more5.7%
Counting every message the seller sent, 58% of meetings took two or fewer, and 83% four or fewer. Once a prospect replies, it moves fast: half of the meetings that followed a reply were booked within a day of it. More in how fast should you reply to a LinkedIn message.
Keep answering the maybes
The sequence starts the conversation. Persistence finishes it. Of the meetings that followed a reply, 42% took two or more answers from the seller first. Somebody kept the thread alive.
Yet more than 4 in 10 replies worth answering never got a single message back. The ones that did were about twice as likely to end in a meeting. Every maybe left sitting is a meeting nobody asked for. More in how many LinkedIn replies go unanswered.
We checked the calendars
On the accounts where we can see the calendar, link bookings included, the first two messages started 89% of meetings. Same pattern as the threads: the first two do most of the work.
What to do today
- Build five messages. The first two do most of the work. Three to five add about a fifth more.
- Put your best ask in the first two. That’s where most meetings start.
- Answer every maybe, and keep answering. Four in ten meetings after a reply took two or more answers.
More in messages and sequences
Is there a best time of year for LinkedIn outreach?
The holiday slump lives in the sender’s diary.
No. Across two years of real campaigns, messages sent in August got replies at 8.1%, the same as the average month, and December’s at 9.6%. Against each campaign’s own average, every month landed within 11%.
Read itHow long do LinkedIn prospects take to reply?
The no’s come fast. The maybes take their time.
Within hours: the median reply came 4 hours after our message, 72% within a day and 95% within a week. But the fastest are the most negative: 40% of replies inside the first hour were a plain no, against 24% of those that took over a week.
Read itHow long should you wait between LinkedIn follow-ups?
Anything from a day to a month. Past that, you’re a stranger again.
Anything from a day to four weeks. Compared within the same campaign and step, every gap in that range landed within 12% of the campaign’s usual reply rate. Wait more than a month and replies fell by 19%.
Read itWhat day and time get the most LinkedIn replies?
Whenever they’re awake. The day barely matters.
Barely any day or hour stands out. In the prospect’s own time and compared within the same campaigns, every weekday landed within 6% of the usual reply rate, Monday the slowest. The one time that cost replies was overnight: messages landing between midnight and 7am got 12% fewer.
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