How to Bypass LinkedIn Connection Request Limit

Lead generation is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of sales, without which you can’t make sales or succeed in any business. There are several ways to go about lead generation. One of the most popular ones is LinkedIn outreach. The LinkedIn lead generation landscape has seen a lot of changes in the last four years. The latest is the LinkedIn connection request limit.

In this article, we will explain what the LinkedIn connection request limit means, answer the question: how many connection requests can I send on LinkedIn? and most importantly, show you effective ways to bypass this limitation.

Let’s begin.

As a LinkedIn user, you send connection requests to other users you want to network with. When these users accept your connection requests,  they become your 1st-degree connection, which means you can now send them direct messages.

LinkedIn has, however, put a cap on how many such requests you can send on the platform per time, otherwise known as the connection request limit. The thing is, LinkedIn has seen the immense revenue potential of outbound prospecting within the platform and wants users to pay for the opportunity.

Now that you know that there is a limitation on connection requests, how many of them can you send?

This limitation is still relatively new. Before June 2021, you could send roughly 100 connection requests daily. That is to say, you could send up to 700 connection requests per week. Now, all that has changed.

From 100 connection requests per day, it has thinned to 100 per week. If you prioritize Linked outreach, you can see why this is a huge cut. Limits like this can greatly reduce your revenue, especially if you don't know what to do.

Thankfully, with this article and some of your creative effort, you will know what to do to get around this limit.

This number is not fixed as LinkedIn implements a weekly limitation, not a daily one. How you distribute it for optimum results is up to you. You can choose to send a daily average of up to 15 connection requests or send everything at once. 

That being, let's see the ways you can bypass this limitation.

Before we go ahead and list the ways to bypass this limit, you will need two tools:

●    LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

●    Spylead. 

Here are five ways to get around this new limit and, at the same time, get more out of LinkedIn.

Although a bit grey-hat and often overlooked, it’s the first method to bypass the LinkedIn connection request limit. This is especially useful if you don’t have a LinkedIn Sales Navigator (although you should have it if you’re taking this seriously). This way, you have as many connection requests as the number of LinkedIn accounts you open. You can do it manually or opt for automation. Remember to avoid spamming. 

The whole point of sending out multiple LinkedIn connection requests is so you can directly contact prospects. With the Open Profile feature, you don’t have to connect with other users before you can send them direct messages. 

Open Profile is a premium feature that lets anyone on LinkedIn contact premium users for free, even if they are not in the sender’s 1st-degree connections. Once you identify these accounts, you can skip sending connection requests and move on straight to contacting them. You will be able to send virtually unlimited messages. This is, however, done when you have a LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

The great thing about LinkedIn Open Profiles is that LinkedIn users that have them enabled expect to receive cold outreach, which makes them more receptive to your message.

While the Open Profile feature allows you to send messages to ONLY premium users who enabled the feature, the LinkedIn InMails lets you contact just about any LinkedIn account. This is great news because InMail messaging can increase your cold outreach response rates by up to 300%. That’s not all. You are three times more likely to get a response from a 2nd or 3rd-degree connection if you use LinkedIn InMail when compared to the usual cold emailing.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator gets you 50 InMails per month. That’s 50 people you don’t have to send connection requests before sending them messages. Read our previous article here to learn how you can send unlimited InMail.

Since you can send InMails to 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections, they can be even more effective than LinkedIn Connection Requests.

This is more of a long-term solution.

When you had access to 100 connections per week, you could afford to throw some around and connect with random people. But with the new 100-per-day development, you have to be more deliberate with whom you target.

No more blasting out hundreds of connection requests with generic messages. What you need now are:

●    Selective prospecting.

●    Personalized messaging.

●    Relationship building.

First things first, optimize your LinkedIn profile. Then use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to improve the precision of your lead. From your search, thoroughly vet and send connection requests to only valuable connections that seem like good fits.

In addition to these aforementioned methods, you can email your prospects directly. But first, you have to get the email addresses of your prospects. Which begs the question, how do you seamlessly export the email addresses of your prospect from LinkedIn?

The answer is simple, use Spylead!

In addition to scraping emails, Spylead also extracts other relevant information that you can use to customize your email campaigns. For how to use Spylead to find and extract email addresses from LinkedIn profiles, read our article here.

From all indications, LinkedIn will continue its crusade to increase limits and make it more difficult for users who favor organic outbound prospecting. If you are one of such users, you must take creative measures like the ones in this article, to stay ahead of LinkedIn and improve your lead generation. Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the connection request limit and learn the effective ways you get around it.

Have fun learning and growing your business with LinkedIn!