Why we send LinkedIn connection requests with no note

Short answer: we leave the connection request blank. In our first client's first month, blank invites to cold decision-makers were accepted 33% of the time. The conversation starts with the first message after they accept, and that's where we put the effort.

This isn't a claim that notes never work. It's what we do, why, and what it got us.

What the numbers were

In the first month of our first client's campaign, one LinkedIn account sent 161 connection requests, all without a note. Of the 141 we'd checked by the end of the month, 47 were accepted: 33%.

People usually report roughly 20–40% for cold B2B invites, so 33% is at the healthy end. To be clear about the limits of this: it's one account, one month, and we didn't run a version with notes alongside it. So we can't say a blank invite beats a note. We can say a blank invite didn't hold us back.

Why we leave it empty

A connection request has one job: getting accepted. When someone sees your invite, they glance at your photo, headline and company and decide whether you look like someone worth knowing. A note doesn't change much of that, and a bad one makes it worse.

Most notes are pitches in disguise. "Hi Anna, I help agencies like yours scale their pipeline, would love to connect!" Everyone on LinkedIn has seen hundreds of these. A pitch in the note tells the person what the next message will be, before they've said yes.

A blank invite commits you to nothing. It reads as "this person might be relevant to my network," which is true. You haven't asked for anything yet, so there's nothing to turn down.

Free accounts barely get notes anyway. LinkedIn gives free accounts only a small monthly allowance of personalised notes. A process that depends on notes stops working when that allowance runs out. A process built on blank invites doesn't.

What actually gets the invite accepted

If the note isn't doing the work, something else has to. In our experience it's these three:

1. Sending to people who fit. Leads that don't match the client's ideal customer get filtered out before anyone is contacted. Someone who can see why you'd want to connect usually accepts. Someone who can't usually doesn't. More on that in why lead fit matters more than message copy.
2. A profile that explains itself. Your headline and the top of your profile are your note. If they say clearly who you help and how, the invite doesn't need extra words.
3. Being familiar before the invite lands. Our client's account left 43 thoughtful comments on prospects' posts over the month. We can't put a number on it, but a name someone has already seen under their own post is not a stranger's name.

Where the conversation starts

The effort goes into the first message after they accept. That message thanks them for connecting, says in one plain sentence what you do, and asks one easy question. It doesn't ask for a call or a demo. We wrote about it separately in don't pitch in the first LinkedIn message.

In the same month, 13 of the 51 people who got that first message replied (25%), 8 of them positively, and none negatively.

When a note might still make sense

We wouldn't be dogmatic about it. A note can help when there's a genuine, specific shared context the person would want to know about, like "we met at the Hamburg agency meetup last week." That's a reason to connect, not a pitch. If you have one, use it. If the best you can write is a generic compliment or a disguised sales line, leave the note empty.

How NudgeLink does it

NudgeLink sends every connection request blank, spread across working hours in the account's own timezone. Leads are scored against your ideal customer profile before any invite goes out. Once someone accepts, the first message is written for that specific person from their profile and activity. Because the invite said nothing, that message introduces you plainly before it asks anything. If you're curious how safe volumes work alongside this, see how many connection requests per day is safe.