LinkedIn outreach benchmarks from HeyLead's own campaigns
Last updated 29 September 2026
What LinkedIn outreach returns when an agent runs it at a human pace, measured on HeyLead's own campaigns: 1,545 invitations between 7 August and 29 September 2026 across 2 workspaces. About one in four people accepted, one in three accepted people answered the opening message, and the median acceptance took a little over a day. Small numbers, mostly our own accounts, read straight from the database. Every figure below carries its n.
The numbers
| Measure | Value | n |
|---|---|---|
| Invitations sent | 1,545 | 2 workspaces, 7 Aug to 29 Sep 2026 |
| Accepted, whole cohort | 303 (19.6%) | 1,545 invitations |
| Accepted, invitations at least 14 days old | 244 (23.3%) | 1,048 invitations |
| Replied after accepting, at least 14 days old | 57 (5.4% of invited, 23.4% of accepted) | 1,048 invited, 244 accepted |
| Opening messages sent to accepted people | 167 | 303 accepted |
| Replies to those opening messages | 59 (35.3%) | 167 openers |
| Median time from invitation to acceptance | 29.8 hours | 303 accepted |
| Median time from invitation to first reply | 2.2 days | 63 replies |
| Meetings booked through HeyLead's booking step | 0 | 1,048 invitations at least 14 days old |
How it was measured
One read-only query against HeyLead's hosted database on 29 September 2026, over every invitation the cloud scheduler sent since 7 August 2026.
An invitation counts as accepted when LinkedIn reported the connection; a reply counts once, on the first inbound message from that person.
The 14-day rows exclude invitations younger than two weeks, because most acceptances arrive inside that window and the whole-cohort rate is dragged down by September's fresh sends.
The script is in the site's repository, scripts/benchmarks/pull.py, and the page is held to its output by a test.
What to read into it, and what not to
- Two workspaces sent these invitations: the maker's own and one other, one LinkedIn seat each. This is a report on our campaigns, not a market average.
- The campaigns sold a developer tool to founders and engineers. A recruiting or job-search campaign will read differently.
- No meeting was recorded through the booking step. Conversations that moved to email or a calendar link outside HeyLead are not counted.
- Every invitation went with a note, and every opening message was written in the voice of the sender's own LinkedIn posts; the numbers say nothing about blank invitations or templates.
What moved the numbers
Pace, first. HeyLead sends from your own LinkedIn account at a human pace: at most 20 invitations a day and 100 a week on a free LinkedIn account (more on Premium or Sales Navigator), Monday to Friday 08:00 to 22:00 in your time zone, minutes apart. It backs off when LinkedIn pushes back and resumes on its own. You can pause any campaign at any time. Then the fit check: people outside the ideal customer profile are skipped before an invitation is planned, so the acceptance rate is measured on people the profile chose, not on a list. HeyLead is an AI agent for LinkedIn outreach: it finds the right people, writes to them in the voice of your own LinkedIn posts, follows up, and handles replies. It runs from Claude Code, Cursor, any MCP client or a web dashboard.
Questions people ask
What is a good LinkedIn connection request acceptance rate?
On these campaigns, 23.3% of invitations at least 14 days old were accepted (n = 1,048, 7 August to 29 September 2026). Treat it as one dated data point from two workspaces, not a target.
What reply rate should I expect on LinkedIn cold messages?
Here, 35.3% of opening messages to newly accepted people got an answer (n = 167). Those messages went to people who had just accepted an invitation with a note, written in the sender's own voice.
How long does it take for a LinkedIn connection request to be accepted?
The median on these campaigns was 29.8 hours (n = 303). Most acceptances that were going to happen arrived within two weeks.
Will these numbers be updated?
Yes, from the same query, with the new n and date on this page, once more workspaces have sent enough to move them.
HeyLead is not affiliated with LinkedIn. It reaches LinkedIn through Unipile, which is also not affiliated.