Why You Should Trial Email Verification for LinkedIn Connection Requests
A few months ago, I got this introductory direct message (DM) from a new connection on LinkedIn:
I really appreciated this heads up from someone with digital marketing account management experience going back to 2010 — in other words, someone who walks the talk when it comes to leveraging digital platforms to maximize introductions and relationship building to scale network growth.
I thanked her for letting me know, and added that my email verification “ON” setting on LinkedIn is intentional.
Why I limit LinkedIn connections to people who have my email address
There’s a phrase you’ll see on LinkedIn from time to time from people who complain about brand-new connections jumping immediately toward the sale — or at least to booking a call with them asap. It’s known as a pitch slap, and it gets really annoying, really fast.
To avoid this, I have my account set up like my new connection, screenshotted above, mentioned. You can see that she noted the con of this approach: it might be costing me good new connections.
And she’s right — it definitely is. However, I’ve made the calculation that I’m OK with that because the pro of this decision is that far fewer of the requests that I accept turn around and do this right away. I’d say around 1 in 15 people do this. If I had this setting set as "Everyone on LinkedIn" can send me invitations to connect, I’m guessing the fraction would change to somewhere between 5 and 8 out of every 15 approved new connections pitch slapping me.
I’ve also seen the proliferation of lead-sourcing software that uses AI for both LinkedIn connection requests, and the initial DM to people who accept these requests — which bad actors, who aren’t interested in fostering relationships in a human way, use to jump to the sale for as many new connections as they can. This has factored into my decision to limit LinkedIn connect invites to those who have my email address.
Here’s how to trial this setting change in your LinkedIn account (you can always change it back if you find it restricts your network growth too much)
When logged in to your LinkedIn account:
Click your profile picture
Click Settings & Privacy
Select Data privacy
Under Who can reach you, click Invitations to connect
On the Invitations to connect screen, click on Only people who know your email address or appear in your “Imported Contacts” list
If you make this change on LinkedIn, I’d love hear how it affects both your rate of pitch slaps compared to the "Everyone on LinkedIn can send me invites” setting, and your overall level of zen versus annoyance in using LinkedIn to grow your network. Let me know what you think here.
One more thing…
The LinkedIn DM screenshotted above mentions the Real Connections networking event series. For two years, Laura Livingston has hosted this monthly event series, which I learned about a year ago and have attended ever since.
Real Connections is not only one of my favorite events, but it’s also generated some of the most leads for my Website Analytics service compared to many other networking events I attend. Thus, Real Connections is on my top 10 list of virtual networking events for business leads. To help you start or scale your virtual networking efforts, you can get this list for FREE here.
