Which job titles accept LinkedIn connection requests?
The people who sign the cheques accept the least.
Upscale Outreach ·
Board members and partners accept the most, at 59% and 56%. Chief executives, presidents and finance chiefs accept the least, at 35% to 37%.
Outscale benchmarks, from 112,149 prospects reached in real campaigns.
Board members say yes. Chief executives make you work for it.
Across real campaigns, 46% of connection requests were accepted. Split by job title, that ran from 35% to 59%.
- Board member59%
- Partner56%
- Every title together46%
- Chief executive37%
- President37%
- Finance chief35%
The full ranking, by title, country, industry and company size, is in Agency IQ, for your own campaigns.
Board members and partners are paid to know people. Deal flow, introductions, the next board seat. A stranger with a sensible profile might be the next one, so they say yes.
A chief executive, a president or a finance chief lives at the other end of that. Every vendor on earth wants a slot in their diary, and they know it. Every request looks like a pitch, because most of them are. So the door stays shut until there’s a reason to open it.
Founders reply. Chief executives go quiet.
- Founder23%
- Every title together20%
- Chief executive9%
Once messaged, 23% of founders replied. Chief executives: 9%. That’s two and a half times the replies from the founders, and it held inside the same campaigns too.
Founders are building something. They read their own inbox, and they’re curious about anything that might help.
Founder and chief executive are often the same job with a different word on the profile. The word says something. “Founder” is a builder’s word. “Chief Executive Officer” is a line on an org chart, and it often comes with someone guarding the diary.
What to do today
- Judge a title by its replies. Acceptance opens the door. Replies are the conversation.
- Give the hard titles a reason. A mutual connection, a comment on their post, a line about their company. Something that stands apart from the other pitches in their inbox.
- Rank your own titles. Take last quarter’s campaigns and sort the titles by replies. The top three are your real audience.
More in targeting
Does 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 itLinkedIn acceptance rates by country
America and Ireland have heard every pitch before.
Italy, South Africa and Spain are among the warmest for LinkedIn connection requests, at 56% to 67%. The United States and Ireland sit near the bottom, at 26% and 31%.
Read itHow to find your best LinkedIn audience in campaigns you’ve already run
Your best audience was in every campaign. A few replies at a time.
Pool every campaign you’ve already run and compare audiences across all of them, because one campaign is too small to show a winner. Founders matched or beat chief executives on replies campaign after campaign, usually by a handful of replies, and only together did it read 23% against 9%.
Read it