What matters most for LinkedIn acceptance rates?
Who you ask, then who’s asking. Gender barely registers.
Upscale Outreach ·
The prospect’s job title, then their market, then the sender’s profile. Compared like for like, a typical job title moved acceptance 8.5% either way, a market 6.7%, a profile 5.4% and the sender’s gender 0.7%.
Outscale benchmarks, from 112,991 prospects reached in real campaigns.
Four suspects, one yardstick
Everyone has a theory about acceptance rates. The headline. The photo. The market. Whether a man or a woman is asking. So we put four of them side by side, each compared like for like.
Job titles and markets were compared inside the same campaign: same profile, same offer, same message. Profiles were compared with colleagues sending for the same client into the same market. Gender, within the same client. For each, we measured how far a typical one moved acceptance away from its like-for-like average, either way.
- The prospect’s job title8.5%
- The prospect’s market6.7%
- The sender’s profile5.4%
- The sender’s gender0.7%
Who you ask comes first
Job title moved acceptance most, 8.5% either way. Market came next, at 6.7%. Both are decided before a single request goes out, when somebody builds the list. Which ones do best is in our benchmarks for job titles and countries.
Who’s asking comes a close third
The sender’s profile, the name, photo and headline a prospect sees, moved acceptance 5.4%. Close behind the market. Two colleagues sending for the same client into the same market differed by up to 37%.
And that’s colleagues, who share a company and usually a style. Across LinkedIn, profiles differ far more than that.
Gender barely registers
The sender’s gender moved acceptance 0.7%. The story behind that is in do women get more LinkedIn accepts and replies than men?
Why the profile gets the attention
The profile is the part you can see. You can rewrite a headline over coffee and swap a photo by lunch. The list feels like admin.
But the prospect’s first question is “is this for me?” Their title and market answered it before they looked at your photo.
What to do today
- Fix the list first. Job title and market move acceptance most, and both are settled before you send.
- Then polish the profile. It came a close third. Write the headline for the people on your list.
- Stop worrying about gender. It barely moved the dial.
More in targeting
LinkedIn reply rates by country
In Italy and France, connecting is manners. Talking is business.
Italy and France accept LinkedIn connection requests readily, at 60% and 54%, then only 15% reply once messaged. Malaysia is the other way round: an ordinary 40% accept, then 28% reply, so it earns more conversations per request than either.
Read itDo women get more LinkedIn accepts and replies than men?
The face on the profile gets the credit. The list does the work.
On the raw numbers, yes: women’s connection requests were accepted 42% of the time, men’s 37%. But sending for the same clients, women and men were accepted at the same rate, and women kept only a small edge on replies, about 7%.
Read itWhich job titles accept LinkedIn connection requests?
The people who sign the cheques accept the least.
Board members and partners accept the most, at 59% and 56%. Chief executives, presidents and finance chiefs accept the least, at 35% to 37%.
Read itDoes company size change LinkedIn reply rates?
Small companies talk. Big ones go quiet.
Yes. 24% of people at companies of 1 to 10 replied once messaged, about one and a half times the 15% at companies of over 1,000. Both accepted connection requests at much the same rate.
Read it