LinkedIn Weekly Invitation Limit

What You Need to Know

Any current LinkedIn user must come to terms with a few facts.First of all, as of now, a basic (free) LinkedIn account gets restricted or even banned for any high activity. By high activity, we mean something as minor as multiple profile views or searches.LinkedIn has made it impossible for a basic user to build a network or even generate leads—whether manually or using automation tools.So, unless you don’t actually need to be active on LinkedIn, just forget the free account…Next, if you want unlimited profile views, page visits, searches, and many other features that ensure quality targeting, you’ll need to upgrade to Premium or Sales Navigator (there’s a reason why these plans are so popular with sales teams 😉).Finally, LinkedIn has limited weekly invitations to about 100 per account.So don’t take it personally — in the second part of this article, you’ll learn how to bypass that 😉Everyone who properly prepared to sell on LinkedIn—optimized their profile, targeted the right prospects, and followed a smart strategy—has succeeded and will continue to generate leads, despite LinkedIn’s new restrictions.LinkedIn just wants to stop spammers and ensure high-quality networking. And honestly, so do you.

The Mystery of the “Direct Invitation” Option

The “Direct Invitation” feature on LinkedIn was designed for connecting with people you know outside of LinkedIn. Therefore, it requires you to have their personal email addresses.In other words, instead of finding their profile and clicking “Connect,” you contact them via the online form below.If you enter an email they use for their LinkedIn account, they’ll receive a notification directly on the platform with your connection request. If you use a different email, they’ll get it as a regular email.In both cases, these invitations don’t count toward LinkedIn’s weekly invitation limit.

How (and Why) the “Direct Invitation” Option Is (Mis)Used

Whether you reach out to your prospects manually or with an automation tool, the only (ethical) way to collect personal emails is to first connect with them on LinkedIn — provided that info is public.If you’re already connected to someone on LinkedIn, the “Direct Invitation” isn’t needed: if their email is public, you’ll see it.The only case where this option makes sense is when you personally know the person and they’ve shared their email with you.Let’s say you’ve hit your weekly 100-invite limit, or for some reason your connection requests are pending. Some tools offer the following option:Using email finder and verifier tools, you can collect prospects’ emails without needing to connect on LinkedIn.Once you have them, you insert them in LinkedIn’s “Direct Invitation” and a message like the one above lands in your prospect’s work inbox or shows up as a notification on LinkedIn.Sounds okay, right? But…

What’s Wrong with “Bypassing LinkedIn’s Weekly Invitation Limit”

If it’s not sent to the email connected to their LinkedIn account, your invitation is worthless.Let’s say you send a LinkedIn Direct Invitation to someone’s business email. But it’s not the one tied to their LinkedIn account.

1. They’ll receive an email with an image and message suggesting to connect.
2. They must click “Join to see the invitation,” which leads to LinkedIn’s login page.
3. Since it’s not the email used for login, they’ll need to enter the other email and password. Once logged in, there’s no pending invite.

The user has to go back to their inbox, check your name, search you on LinkedIn, and send a normal connection request. And even worse, they’ll use up one of their weekly invite limits.How many people would go through all that? You already know the answer!So don’t believe the hype around how simple this workaround is. Sure, your account might send a few invites (a very small % of scraped emails are tied to LinkedIn profiles), but without personalization, your chances of turning that into a lead are about the same as sending a message in a bottle. 😉Worse, you might miss real opportunities, because those same people could’ve been engaged properly on LinkedIn using proven personalized outreach strategies!

Some Tools Use GDPR-Noncompliant Methods

Some lead generation platforms claim they can extract personal emails on LinkedIn even if the person is not a 1st-degree connection.How is that possible?These tools store data collected by users and build a database that is then shared with others.Giving other users access to data scraped from someone else’s account is 100% not GDPR-compliant. While enforcement is rare, it’s still a shady practice.Keep that in mind before adopting a “whatever it takes” mindset. Plus, this method is generally inefficient, as LinkedIn offers many ways for users to protect their data.

LinkedIn Will Ban This Option Eventually

And yes, it’s already started with suspended accounts:Honestly… you didn’t really think LinkedIn wouldn’t punish accounts sending dozens or even hundreds of invites through “direct invitation,” especially when most of them fail due to using emails not tied to LinkedIn accounts, right?Like anything users complain about or that threatens LinkedIn’s core as a networking platform, it will be shut down sooner or later.Now more than ever, LinkedIn prioritizes the quality of connections over quantity.In short: we strongly doubt that LinkedIn will tolerate this kind of limit abuse and alternative methods of reaching out to prospects that annoy rather than motivate them to connect.

LeadIn bypasses LinkedIn, but not its restrictions

When we use the expression “bypass LinkedIn“, we refer to LeadIn’s multichannel approach, its smart sequences, and their ability to find alternate paths to your prospects.The smart sequences react to user behavior and choose the most direct way to reach out to them.LeadIn’s ability to combine LinkedIn and email outreach, to discover and verify business emails, and to detect if a profile is open to free InMails, allows for multichannel contact with great efficiency.Each LeadIn feature is a step in the smart sequence, not a separate action or something you need to do beforehand (it’s the #1 all-in-one tool!).Let’s see how “bypass LinkedIn” works with a simple example.As you can see, we start with a simple connection request.If the prospect connects with you, the sequence continues with message #1, then message #2.If for some reason your connection request remains pending or gets declined, the sequence proceeds with email discovery and verification for your prospect. Then, you can continue sending emails. If LeadIn doesn’t find a verified email, the sequence continues with the “follow” step on their LinkedIn profile (which reminds them you tried to reach out!).This is a very simple smart sequence. See here how advanced smart sequences can get.Feeling less frustrated with LinkedIn’s weekly invite limit?We hope so.Remember, this restriction is somewhat in your favor—it will push you to improve your targeting and campaign quality.It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.And if we told you that we were (like everyone) frustrated when this limit was announced, but in reality, we’ve never generated as many leads as we do today? 😎

Time to level up your prospecting campaigns

Like most users, you can probably send only 100 invites per week, that is about 20–25 connection requests per day.Some people have reported getting this limit with or without LinkedIn Sales Navigator. However, having Sales Navigator and a warmed-up LinkedIn account helps, as we’ll see later.It’s hard to tell how this new invite algorithm works or what exactly triggers it.But we can assume LinkedIn wants more people to connect only with those they personally know.So even if you follow best LinkedIn outreach practices, LinkedIn can STILL limit your connection requests.Many are unsure what this means for the future of lead generation on LinkedIn, as connecting is usually step 1 of any prospecting campaign.To help you adapt to the new LinkedIn limit and get back to autopilot lead generation, here’s what we’ll cover today:

1. New LinkedIn limits: Re-optimize your account and campaigns for the invite cap
2. Top 3 LinkedIn campaign strategies to increase acceptance rate
3. How to bypass the new LinkedIn invite limit (what you should actually do)

New LinkedIn limits: Re-optimizing your account and campaigns for the weekly invite cap

When in doubt, restart from scratch.Here are a few common patterns from users whose accounts were affected by the new LinkedIn invite algorithm:

• Connection acceptance rate was below 70% on average.
• The LinkedIn account wasn’t properly warmed or the profile wasn’t optimized for social selling. See how to boost your LinkedIn SSI based on the 4 pillars of social selling.
• Too many pending connection requests—you must withdraw those. We recommend keeping your pending requests under 700, and remove them if they go over.
• Or something else. Check these metrics to measure your campaign performance if something still feels off.

Here’s the thing:Even if you follow the top 6 LinkedIn engagement strategies, LinkedIn might still limit your outreach.So it’s better to take a step back and re-optimize your campaigns to catch anything you might be missing.Let’s start from the top.

Getting the most from your LinkedIn profile

All LinkedIn outreach campaigns start with your profile.By now, you probably know it needs to be optimized for your target audience so prospects can instantly tell:

1. What you do.
2. Why they should connect with you.
3. How your offer or solution helps them.

But is your LinkedIn profile fully optimized?We reviewed profiles from top to bottom to optimize every single section.We found 11 profile sections we recommend optimizing to show your LinkedIn account is real and relevant to your audience:

1. LinkedIn URL
2. Background photo (banner)
3. Profile picture
4. Headline
5. LinkedIn Summary
6. Work experience
7. Education
8. Licenses and certifications
9. Skills and endorsements
10. Recommendations
11. Interests

See how to improve each section in our full LinkedIn profile tips article.As people keep creating new accounts to bypass LinkedIn’s new limit, it’s crucial to optimize all sections to show you’re a real, qualified person.Once your profile is optimized, your account is next!

“Warming up” your LinkedIn account

Even if your LinkedIn account is old and previously warmed up, we recommend warming it again, just in case.Since we don’t know exactly what triggers LinkedIn’s new limit, it’s safer to be cautious. That includes re-warming your LinkedIn account.If you slowly increase the number of connection requests sent daily, LinkedIn might let you go past the 100 invites/week cap.But if you get more negative signals (low acceptance rate, few replies, etc.), LinkedIn may apply the limit faster.You’ll need to follow your gut and adapt your outreach campaigns accordingly. Luckily, A/B testing helps identify top-performing campaigns.Good news! With LeadIn, LinkedIn warming is enabled by default and runs automatically for 15 days, gradually increasing your account’s activity:The warm-up increases your daily limits by 2–3 every 1–3 days. You can exit warm-up mode by exceeding that activity threshold (not recommended for obvious reasons!).In any case, with LinkedIn’s new limit, we recommend closely monitoring your performance metrics—track your acceptance rate and campaign analytics.

Connection request limit – Activity restriction

Based on what we currently understand, here’s how LinkedIn’s new limit works:If LinkedIn detects suspicious activity from your account, it will monitor you more closely.So if your account is subject to a weekly limit and continues suspicious activity, LinkedIn is more likely to add further restrictions.Then, the number of invites you can send before another temporary ban becomes smaller and smaller.In other words: the more you spam, the longer the punishment.You should always limit your connection requests to the number of accepted requests, once you’ve hit LinkedIn’s activity suspension.For example, let’s say you send 20 connection requests and LinkedIn limits your outreach. When someone accepts your request, you can then send one additional connection request.If you’ve already reached the LinkedIn connection request limit, the number of requests you can send is equal to the number of people who’ve accepted your request since the temporary restriction.Always try to stay below the new limit LinkedIn has set for you.Once LinkedIn sees that you’re behaving correctly, you’ll be able to slowly increase the number of requests you send. Max out at around 20 connection requests, 5 days a week. We also recommend you pause outreach activity over the weekends.Of course, this should be done while closely monitoring your campaigns.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

While LinkedIn Sales Navigator won’t protect you from the new connection limits, it does help with better targeting, profile visits, and ultimately, a higher acceptance rate.Another thing to consider is your monthly people search usage.If you’ve used up your free searches with a basic account, LinkedIn will likely assume you’re using the platform to recruit or generate leads.Your search limit is based on your activity on LinkedIn.According to LinkedIn, activities that indicate recruiting or lead generation include:

• Viewing a large number of profiles that aren’t 1st-degree connections.
• Searching for specific companies or employees of a specific company.
• Searching for 3rd-degree connections outside your network.

A warning will appear if you’re nearing your monthly free search limit, and your usage resets at midnight on the 1st of each month.So in short: Sales Navigator can enhance your prospecting campaigns and improve your acceptance rate, but you can STILL be blocked by LinkedIn’s new filter.However, Sales Navigator does improve your campaign targeting. And if you reach the right people with the right messages, your acceptance and reply rates will go up.If LinkedIn thinks your account activity is legitimate and you’re getting a lot of replies, then you’re probably not spamming anyone. As a result, you’re less likely to get flagged by LinkedIn’s new limit.Check out 15+ cold message templates for LinkedIn you can download and use to boost your reply rate to over 40% (later in this article)!Now, if you’re wondering what other ways you can increase your connection acceptance rate, consider these LinkedIn outreach campaigns that have been tested and proven to work.

Top 3 LinkedIn Campaigns to Increase Your Connection Acceptance Rate

We’ve tried dozens of LinkedIn outreach and lead generation strategies.So, if you’re unsure where to start, try one of these three campaigns designed to boost your acceptance rate.

1. Facebook Group Scraping Strategy

This is a classic outreach strategy we tested heavily back in 2020—and it still works like a charm today.The reason it still works so well is because it’s based on a simple rapport-building technique: finding common ground.In this case, a Facebook group.Here’s how it works, and how we got 76% acceptance and over 40% reply rates:

1. Find a Facebook group where your target audience gathers (e.g. marketing groups, competitor user groups, etc.)
2. Use Phantombuster’s Facebook Group Extractor to extract members.
3. Use Phantombuster’s LinkedIn URL Finder to get the LinkedIn profiles of group members.
4. Use LeadIn to connect and engage with your prospects.

Read the full growth-hack guide for more detail and the exact templates we used.

2. Content Retargeting Outreach Strategy

This is another strategy built around shared interest with your prospect.Specifically, we’re going to extract and reach out to people who have engaged with a specific LinkedIn post.That means in your message you can mention that you also follow the same influencer and enjoy the same type of content.Here’s how we achieved 76% acceptance rate and a 35% follow-up reply rate with this multi-channel outreach strategy:

1. Find a LinkedIn post with a high engagement rate.
2. Copy the post URL from LinkedIn.
3. Log in to LeadIn. Create a new campaign, select “Post engagement,” and paste the copied link.
4. Create your sequence and write your messages/emails to reach out to your prospect list by referencing the post or content category.

You can find the complete guide to this growth hack and message templates for this prospecting strategy.

3. Hyper-personalization with dynamic images and GIFs to boost replies

Using dynamic GIFs is a guaranteed way to increase your reply rate.While most LinkedIn follow-ups fail due to their salesy tone, dynamic GIFs help you stand out in your prospects’ inbox and give them a reason to respond.Here’s how we achieved a +70% acceptance rate and 56% response rate (!) with this strategy:

1. Identify leads matching your ICP using Sales Navigator.
2. Create a campaign by importing those leads (copy/paste the Sales Navigator search URL) into LeadIn and build your sequence with messages and emails.
3. Click “Add Image” in your messages and/or emails, and upload an image or GIF. Pro tip: You can turn an iPhone photo into a GIF with the Lively app. Customize your image/GIF directly in LeadIn by adding your prospect’s first name, LinkedIn photo, or company logo.
4. Launch your campaign — that’s it! Your dynamic images/GIFs will now appear in messages, InMails, and emails.

Read the full guide on this hyper-personalized LinkedIn and email prospecting hack to set up your system.

Avoiding the New LinkedIn Connection Limit (What You Should Do)

Until now, the campaigns above focused on increasing your connection and response rates.But that’s not the only way to bypass LinkedIn’s new limits.Next, we’ll take a big-picture approach to lead generation and show you other prospecting campaigns that completely avoid the new connection limit.

• I reached out to 1,370 prospects with this campaign using free LinkedIn InMails and emails to their business addresses.
• 76% accepted my connection request or InMail, and 35% replied.
• Over 70 demos were booked from this campaign alone (so far!).

According to LinkedIn, more than 50% of prospects open InMails. If you don’t share a mutual connection with a lead, a well-crafted and personalized InMail gives you a great chance to start a conversation.With a Premium or Sales Navigator account, you can send up to 800 free (open) InMails per month to profiles that are also open.We recommend starting slowly and ramping up to 25 open InMails per day. Just set it in your account’s “Settings” section:Here’s how we consistently generate dozens of demos weekly using automated free InMails:

1. Extract the audience of a LinkedIn event where your target audience is attending.
2. Create a campaign in LeadIn and add prospects using the “LinkedIn Search” option and the event’s LinkedIn URL.
3. Create your sequence and add an “IF Free InMail” step to filter for open accounts, then add and write one or more InMails.
4. Finish the sequence and start sending LinkedIn InMails — bypassing the 100 connection request limit.

Because you’re using InMails instead of (or alongside) connection requests, you don’t need to worry about LinkedIn’s 100 weekly connection limit!For more info, read our full guide on messaging, InMail, and email prospecting for LinkedIn events.What’s next?What happens from here?From now on, we highly recommend running A/B tests to discover what works best for bypassing LinkedIn’s new limits — based on the tips and guides above.UPDATE: LeadIn includes built-in A/B testing with up to 5 variants for each message, email, or InMail. No need to create multiple sequences and compare manually!If LinkedIn releases more info on this new restriction, we’ll share updates and the latest growth hacks that actually work!To recap, here are key LinkedIn connection limit questions:Is there a limit to how many invitations you can send on LinkedIn? Yes. Most users are limited to 100 invitations per week under the new rule. Previously, the limit was based on your invitation acceptance rate.What is the LinkedIn connection limit? You can have up to 30,000 1st-degree connections. LinkedIn recommends connecting only with people you personally know or can offer value to.What is the monthly search limit on LinkedIn? This is the number of people searches you can perform with a basic account. Your limit resets on the 1st of each month. To avoid the cap, upgrade to LinkedIn Premium.

What happens when you hit 5,000 connections on LinkedIn?

Nothing! Having more than 5,000 connections simply means you have a larger network and more opportunities. The max is 30,000 connections.—Ready to take action? Start your 14-day free trial with LeadIn and begin generating leads on autopilot — the multichannel way!