LinkedIn has been keeping an eye out for spam behavior and mass requests recently – so much so that a so-called LinkedIn connection limit has been introduced. If you’ve been on top of your outreach game, this can pose a threat to your lead pump. Some hacks described in this article will help you to get around that LinkedIn connection limit without risking your account.
At it is said on the LinkedIn’s website, this limit that is 100 connection per week would allow users to get more meaningful experience and avoid irritating, spammy encounters.
Prior to this update there were no restrictions to the number of requests you could make, by the way, but now the maximum has been set at 100 requests per week.
Though, if you play your cards right (we’ll tell you how!), you can bounce right back to your usual connection amount and acceptance rate, and even end up with a better, more professional and higher quality account than before (that will eventually lead to more conversions).
The new limitations: more about LinkedIn connection limit
According to the recent change, you can send around 100 connection requests per week. Not only that, but LinkedIn has set boundaries on what it perceives as ‘spam activity’, or actions that could be used to exploit the algorithm.
Before the limit was set you were able to send requests & connect with over 100 leads daily, making the limit out to be all the more detrimental to your growth.
Some people believe that as much as it feels like a huge roadblock to your outreach, LinkedIn connection limit and activity monitoring actually serve to make the LinkedIn environment better, spam-free, and prevent scams, bots & spam.
But you know that there is the other side to the story
However, when it comes to sales where every minute of your time is precious, such limits are usually barriers to the healthy lead flow-in. We wouldn’t encourage pumping out mass outreach messages, but with the right attitude and healthy approach to your outreach, unlimited connection requests are what saves you the most valuable asset – your time. Indeed, the more leads you can connect with, the greater the chances of having more of them hooked in. This all can be achieved through sophisticated, personalized messaging! That’s why sales gurus around the globe are exploring different pathways and loopholes where one can easily lean into to maintain unstoppable influx of LinkedIn leads.
By the way, if you want to encounter on a journey that will help you craft unique, personalised and highly-converting messages, dive into our previous article.
And now, let’s jump into some tactics you can employ to get around the LinkedIn connection limit and boost weekly connections. (it’s time to work smart and not hard!).
Methods of overcoming the LinkedIn connection limit
All the methods described below are something that we’ve tried ourselves, so we can walk the talk. We’ve tried out best to create a thorough, prompt overview of each of the methods. They’re all worth trying (with a few exceptions).
Overcome LinkedIn connection limit: Method #1 Send invitations using people’s emails
This is probably one of the easiest way to overcome LinkedIn connection limit. It doesn’t require anything from you except for a small portion of effort. You can do it manually by hovering to LinkedIn > Contacts > Add new contacts and hitting on “Upload file.”
This is where you should shove your CSV file with emails of people who you’d like to connect. LinkedIn will find accounts associated with given emails and send them invitations to connect. There is now way to customize a connection message here, so you’ll have to rely on what LinkedIn offers instead, which is actually pretty basic “I want to invite you to my network.”
Want a full guide to all methods of overcoming LinkedIn connection limit? Here you go:
How to send up to 1000 connections per week legally – Free Guide
- Pros: up to 1000 connection can be sent per week in this way (depends on many factors, but over this number is impossible, we tried), it’s a free method and a very easy one. You can automate it in Closely and scale it up.
- Cons: you cannot personalize a connection message which may affect acceptance rate.
Would we recommend this? Absolutely yes. Moreover, if you go to closelyhq.com and create your account to boost your conversions fantastically, you’ll see that there is a way to AUTOMATE the whole process. Just imagine laying on fresh grass, sipping your cold juice and enjoying your life while the tools does everything for you, literally. Your only hassle is to provide a file with emails, and even if you don’t have one, Closely Explorer will let you buy emails cheaper than anywhere and then send all of the invitations to connect automatically (taking care of your account so nothing can ever happen to it).
Closely Explorer is our database of business contacts with 1,43 million records of fresh contacts around the globe. You can trade your credits for them and enjoy fruitful, effortless LinkedIn outreach. No more ridiculously expensive, freekish tools, heavy with features that no one really needs (except for their price builders). Try it out today for free and see your sales numbers skyrocket.
A brief guide to how to employ Closely Explorer to overcome that LinkedIn connection limit
We can describe to you how to automate this feature within Closely briefly just so you now – this is a brilliant method that ensures you’ll go around that LinkedIn connection limit hassle-free and achieve massive lead flow-in.
First you go to Explorer and type in you input data.
Like, for example, you want to find sales people within the UK. Push that data into the required fields and hit search. The you simply save the result of your search into a CSV file and go to automation.
Now the most interesting part.
Choose the “Invite by email” campaign type when creating your campaign within Closely and shove your file with downloaded emails into the required field over here.
When done, you’re prompted to the field where you should put your messages.
Since it’s an invite-by-email type of campaign, a connection message here will be filled automatically with that one created by LinkedIn.
In contrast to other basic automation tools, this amazing AI-powered automation monster (that Closely is) will let you create amazing, attention-grabbing messages using build-in templates and variables. After your campaign is ready and you hit “Start”, it will be sending connection requests to all those people on LinkedIn from your CSV file. It will find accounts associated with emails from the file and do all the job for you.
This is so far the easiest and most productive method of overcoming that LinkedIn connection limit that we know (and use regularly in our prospecting activities).
Overcome LinkedIn connection limit: Method #2 Try InMails
InMail is LinkedIn’s premium feature that is expensive and, in our opinion, is not worth all the hassle.
Yes, of course, we encourage salespeople to try every possible way out there to bypass the current LinkedIn connection limit. However, for many it’s an unreturned activity.
This feature allows you to message people who you’re not connected with on LinkedIn.
How much does InMail cost?
It depends on your plan.
If you have premium plan, you can visit your subscription page and check how many credits you have. If you’re out of credits and need more, you can purchase additional ones.
- Pros: It lets you message people directly, without limits
- Cons: It’s expensive and spammy. People don’t like direct messages in their inboxes, especially the pitchy ones coming right off the bat. Even if you don’t push your product in the first message, it seems weird and suspicious that a person wants to talk without sending you a connection request first, doesn’t it?
Further Reading: Linkedin InMail vs Message
Anyway, this is one of the existing methods and it works for some people. Of course, you can apply it and measure your results.
Overcome LinkedIn connection limit: Method #3 People from shared groups & events
Not many people now but you can send messages to people from a mutual group or event without asking them to connect first.
It’s quite easy: just head over to any group > members > see all.
See, you can message each one of them even if you’re not connected.
- Pros: It’s free. No limits (be careful though, because too many repetitive actions in a row will raise LinkedIn’s suspicion).
- Cons: Manual, tiresome process that will eat up all your time. No way to automate it (yet).
Overcome LinkedIn connection limit: Method #4 Several accounts
There is always an option that’s called “create multiple accounts”. As you may have guessed, it’s not that simple. First, LinkedIn may detect your activities led from different accounts, in some cases. Second – freshly created accounts end up in ban much faster. So, you have to calculate how much time you’re going to spend to warm up all those new accounts first before you can start reaping benefits.
From our experience, there is actually no reason why you should shift to this method if regular 100 connections + Invite-by-email can work pretty good for you without risking accounts and losing nerve.
So, heading over to pros and cons of this method, we’re going to conclude that:
- Pros: It’s free.
- Cons: It’s tiresome and low in yield. LinkedIn is very strict about bots and it takes a wealth of time to warm up a new account up to having it ready to join your prospecting workflow.
What else decides on the number of limits?
Another thing to remember here, when you’re dealing with current LinkedIn connection limit is that LinkedIn itself can limit your account due to various factors or, vice versa, can grant it additional spare requests to use per month.
Of course, the age of your account and its activities are always taken into consideration, meaning that bot-like, freshly created account won’t be allowed to send more than 100 for sure, while well-established profiles may look a bit more trustful for LinkedIn and thus, be granted slightly more. Below listed are some steps to take to ensure your account matches all criteria and is more favorable to the system’s algorhitms.
1. Optimize your LinkedIn profile to be eligible to overcome the LinkedIn connection limit
Your LinkedIn profile is the core of all prospecting activities. To maximize your chances of sending more connection requests and overcoming the LinkedIn connection limit, you have to work on your profile and make it looks professional, attractive and shiny.
This is your chance to take your account to new heights – both visually (make it look well-thought-out and complete) and numbers-wide.
Here’s how:
- Add a professional profile picture;
- Set a unique & professional background image;
- Write an effective summary;
- Add a hard-hitting, memorable tagline with keywords;
- Include your qualifications and previous work experience;
- Add your education information;
- Mention relevant skills;
- Include your awards and achievements;
- Add licenses & certifications;
- If you have any, there’s an option to add volunteer experience;
- Earn and request recommendations. You can get your connections to write recommendations for you – essentially, these are comments of recognition of your work. These can really make your profile stand out and make people more likely to connect and work with you;
- Get skill endorsements. This is another great way to make your profile more of an appealing choice for future clients.
Great, now your profile is primed & ready. You’re one step closer to increasing your amount of connections and overcoming the LinkedIn connection limit.
Completing your account in the ways described also serves the purpose of improving your connection acceptances, letting you reach more leadgen & marketing goals, not to mention boosted reply rates.
2. Account warmup
To get past the connection limit and prevent your account from getting restricted or banned, you have to warm up your account first. This means starting slow with the number of connections and requests and gradually ramping it up. Closely makes it all for you, automating the whole process.
3. Take advantage of Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator is a premium LinkedIn plan, with advanced features for outreach, campaign management, lead generation and more. A must-have for sales managers.
This is a paid plan that you can get a monthly or an annual subscription for. It’s pricey, but it has the tool sophistication and abundance to show for it (if used correctly).
As a little intro to SalesNav, here’s what you need to know before you get into it to ensure best turnouts:
- Get a clear picture of what each filter does. Applying filters smartly is excellent for audience hyper-targeting.
- Get familiar with Advanced Search. By far the most talked about functionality, and for good reason. It allows you to narrow down your target audience and connect with perfectly matched leads.
- Organize prospects by tagging them. Respond to their needs faster by streamlining the selling process with LinkedIn tags.
4. Put emphasis on your SSI
There’s this nifty LinkedIn metric called the Social-selling index. It shows how effectively you engage with insights, connect with the right people and forge quality relationships. SSI can increase your reach and propel your campaign forward.
It measures:
- How well you establish your professional brand: interact with your audience, create valuable content and engage with insights.
- If you’re good at building relationships: do lots of networking and make high-quality, meaningful connections within your industry.
- If you can find the right people: using the aforementioned advanced search filters on SalesNav (or another tool that matches your needs for this), pinpoint your prospects. Once you’ve done that, stay on top of new insights and use the opportunity to share these with your community – more engagement means higher SSI!
By the way, Maria went though all aforementioned points one-by-one in this video. Spare an hour to watch it all — it’s worth it.
How to avoid LinkedIn restricting your activity
If your activity falls into the ‘suspicious’ category (a large spike in connection requests, frequent and excessive content interactions and other bot-like, spam activity), your account is going to be watched closely for prevalent exploitative actions, your amount of requests and connections will be cut down, and in the worst case you’ll get banned.
If you continue with what LinkedIn deems as suspicious activity, your request limit will keep going lower and lower, and the wiggle room you have between your current restriction and further restrictions will also lessen.
What can be done to prevent these limitations, and how do you revive your account after they’ve been applied?
To avoid the ‘spam’ label on LinkedIn you have to slowly build up the number of connection requests you send daily, without a huge influx right from day 1. Increase requests and activity over time and try to stick to relatively low activity if your account is new or recovering from a ban.
It’s good that with tools like Closely you can just delegate this part of job to the tool and sweep all worries away. Closely totally mimics human behavior in your campaigns and employs warm-up feature to gradually ramp up the number of messages sent for your account’s safety, which not so many tools out there can boast of.
Try Closely For Free – enjoy massive lead flow-in
If you’ve ended up on LinkedIn’s blacklist, it’s best to align your number of new requests sent with the number of connections that have been accepted from your previous batch. This will build up your account’s ‘reputation’ and drag you out of this LinkedIn rut.
Once you’re on the nice list again, it’s safe to pick up activity and start sending more requests.
The safest bet would also be to keep this number within reason – around 20 requests per day is recommended (for start, then you can build it up). Keep track of your insights and put focus on outreach quality in the meantime.
To sum up
LinkedIn has implemented a weekly request limit of around 100. Along with that harsher activity regulations and monitoring it have left the salespeople of LinkedIn fearing account bans and further restrictions that could be detrimental to growth and earnings.
A few ways to avoid the request limits are described in the article, including solutions that also serve the purpose of increasing overall sales, acceptance rates, making your account look more professional and appealing to prospects, and making your profile more favorable to the LinkedIn algorithm.
The key is to make the most out of the tools you have available, gradually build up activity and connection amounts, and focus on outreach campaign performance.
