LinkydyMost LinkedIn campaigns are lost before the first invite goes out: a headline written for recruiters, a 2,000-person list nobody vetted, no follow-up plan, no numbers. This checklist is the fix.
It covers 32 checks in four phases — profile, list building, cadence, measurement. Run it top to bottom before you send invite #1. Budget 60–90 minutes for the first pass; every later campaign takes about 15. If a box stays unchecked, you have found the exact thing that will cap your acceptance rate — fix it now, not after 300 invites. This is the same order a working LinkedIn outreach strategy follows: who sees you, who you target, what you send, what you learn.
Phase 1 — Profile ready (8 checks)
Every prospect who gets your invite looks at your profile before deciding. It converts or it leaks.
- ☐ Headline rewritten for buyers, not recruiters — what you do for whom (“I help SaaS CFOs cut churn reporting to 1 day”), not “Account Executive | SaaS | Quota Crusher”.
- ☐ Custom banner uploaded (1584×396 px) that states your value proposition in one line — not the default blue gradient.
- ☐ Photo is a recent headshot: face fills roughly 60% of the frame, plain background, no group-photo crop.
- ☐ Featured section holds exactly one lead asset — a case study, teardown, or calculator a prospect would actually open — not your last three posts.
- ☐ About section carries the pitch in its first 3 lines — that is all anyone sees before “…see more”. Problem, outcome, proof.
- ☐ Custom profile URL claimed: your profile → “Edit public profile & URL” (top right) → set /in/yourname.
- ☐ “Open to work” ring removed if you are selling — it reads as job-hunting, not helping.
- ☐ Full pass done with the LinkedIn profile checklist for sales — it goes section by section with examples.
Phase 2 — ICP & list building (8 checks)
A tight list of 150 beats a loose list of 2,000 on every metric that matters.
- ☐ One ICP per campaign: one title cluster, one industry, one geography. “Heads of Sales at 50–200-person SaaS companies in DACH” — not “decision makers”.
- ☐ Search filters written down before you open LinkedIn: exact title keywords, industry, geography (plus headcount and seniority if you have Sales Navigator).
- ☐ List capped at 100–300 prospects. If the search returns 2,000, your ICP is too broad — add a filter, split the campaign.
- ☐ Existing customers excluded — nothing burns trust like pitching someone who already pays you.
- ☐ Competitors and their employees excluded from the list.
- ☐ Activity check done: each profile posted, commented, or reacted within the last 90 days where you can verify it. Dormant accounts never accept.
- ☐ Lead list columns agreed before collecting: name, title, company, profile URL, email, phone, status. Steal the layout from the B2B lead list template.
- ☐ Deduplicated against every previous campaign — nobody on this list has been invited by you before.
Phase 3 — Outreach cadence (9 checks)
What you send, how fast, and when you stop. This is where accounts get restricted — and where restraint wins.
- ☐ Invite note written and under 300 characters — LinkedIn cuts it there anyway. One relevance hook, one sentence, no link.
- ☐ No pitch in the invite note. The note earns the accept; the pitch comes later. Working examples: connection request templates.
- ☐ Daily cap set to 20 invites or fewer for the first two weeks — and your account is warmed (weeks of normal activity, not freshly created).
- ☐ Weekly ceiling respected: LinkedIn caps invites at roughly 100–200 per week. Details and safe ramp-up numbers: LinkedIn connection request limits.
- ☐ Pending invites older than 3 weeks withdrawn: My Network → Manage → Sent → Withdraw. Hundreds of stale pendings are a restriction signal.
- ☐ First message drafted so it goes out within 24 hours of an accept — that window is when reply rates peak. Start from the cold outreach message templates.
- ☐ Follow-up cadence fixed in advance: day 0 (thanks + question), day 3, day 7, day 14. Each message adds something new — no “just bumping this”.
- ☐ Break-up message written for day 14 — and the sequence hard-stops after it. No message #6.
- ☐ Sending window limited to business hours in the prospect's timezone; weekends off.
Phase 4 — Measure & iterate (7 checks)
Without numbers you are not running a campaign, you are sending mail. Seven checks that make week 2 better than week 1.
- ☐ Acceptance rate tracked from day 1: accepts ÷ invites sent. Aim above 30% on a cold list; below 20% means stop and fix the list or the note.
- ☐ Reply rate tracked: replies ÷ first messages sent. 5–15% is normal for cold outreach — do not panic at 8%.
- ☐ Week-1 baseline written down before you change anything. You cannot judge a tweak without a “before”.
- ☐ One variable changed at a time — new invite note or new ICP segment, never both in the same week.
- ☐ Weekly review booked: 30 minutes, same day each week, walking every lead's status — invited, accepted, messaged, replied, dead.
- ☐ Non-responders pruned after the break-up message — out of the active pipeline, not deleted, so future campaigns can dedupe against them.
- ☐ Every objection and notable reply logged as a note on the lead card. Ten campaigns from now, this log is your best messaging research.
Put it to work with Linkydy
You can run this checklist with a spreadsheet and willpower. Linkydy just removes the parts people skip.
Phase 3 is enforced, not remembered: the extension applies daily caps and human-like pacing to every connection request, message, reaction, and comment — from your own browser session, so there is no password sharing and no datacenter IP. See how the outreach automation works under the hood, and why the browser-session approach is the safe one in is LinkedIn automation safe.
Phase 4 becomes automatic: every lead carries a status and notes, so the weekly review is reading a list, not reconstructing one. One-click CSV export (name, title, company, profile URL, email, phone, status) gives you the review sheet — or hands the finished list to your CRM.
FAQ
How many connection requests can I safely send per day?
On a warmed-up account, stay at or under 20 invites per day for the first two weeks of a campaign. LinkedIn enforces a rolling ceiling of roughly 100–200 invites per week depending on account age, SSI, and past behavior — new or restricted accounts get less. Ramping slowly and pausing on weekends keeps you well under it. Linkydy enforces daily caps and human-like delays automatically, so a queue can never blow past the limit.
What is a good acceptance rate for cold LinkedIn outreach?
Above 30% is good for cold outreach to people who have never heard of you; 40%+ usually means a tight list and a relevant invite note. If you are below 20%, stop sending and fix the inputs: the list is too broad, the profile does not match the pitch, or the note reads like spam. Reply rates of 5–15% on the first message after accept are normal.
Do I still need this checklist if I use an automation tool?
Yes — more than ever. A tool executes phase 3 (the cadence) for you, but it cannot fix a weak profile, a lazy list, or missing measurement. Automating outreach on top of an unchecked profile and a 2,000-person list just gets you ignored faster. Run phases 1, 2, and 4 yourself; let a tool like Linkydy handle the sending caps, pacing, and status tracking.