How to Get 30% Reply Rates on LinkedIn DMs

I get over 30% replies on LinkedIn DMs. That is not a typo. And I do it by doing the opposite of the 100+ weekly pitches that land in my inbox.

I have sent 5M+ outbound messages building ColdIQ to $6.5M+ ARR. I run a 33-person company. Answering DMs now costs me more time than running campaigns.

I can only imagine what outreach looks like for execs at large organizations.

But here is the thing: I know that executives check their inbox. And many of them reply. The difference between getting a response and getting ignored comes down to a few patterns I see repeated every single week.

Here is how I decide whether to respond to a DM, and how I rebuilt our own LinkedIn outreach because of it.

1. Offer Free Work Before Asking for Anything

The DMs that get my attention fastest are the ones that lead with value instead of a pitch.

Some people send a free landing page rewrite. Others send samples of work they have already done. No ask or an annoying pitch, just a real proof of competence delivered directly to the inbox.

When I applied this to our own outreach, I ran prospecting campaigns and pitched free custom lead lists. The result was more positive replies than we could handle.

The principle is straightforward: imagine your prospect is already a paying client. What is the first thing you would do for them? Do that work upfront and send it over. The prospect did not ask for it, which is exactly why it works. It removes the risk of engaging with a stranger and demonstrates capability in a way no pitch deck can.

This approach takes more effort per message, but the reply rate makes the math work in your favor.

With a combination of enrichment tools and Clay, we built workflows that generate these custom lead lists at scale for outreach campaigns.

You can find verified contact data for your target accounts here, for free:

Email Finder Tool

2. Ask to Be Referred, Not for a Meeting

This is one of the most underrated plays in LinkedIn outreach.

If someone sends me a message based on a current initiative at ColdIQ and asks who is in charge of that initiative, I will gladly refer them. It shows they did their homework, and it gives me an easy action to take.

The structure is simple:

→ Identify a company initiative through public signals (job postings, press releases, product launches)

→ Research who leads that initiative

→ Send a DM referencing the initiative and asking for a referral to the right person

You can automate this entire play using Clay. Combine intent signals with a lookup that retrieves the leader or manager in a specific department, and you have a scalable version of a highly personal approach.

Based on tools like PredictLeads and Common Room, we built a mini tool to track these buying signals automatically.

If you want to see which companies are actively researching solutions in your space right now, you can do it for free here:

Intent Signals Tool

3. Never Ask for Time on the First Touchpoint

Meetings are my personal hell. I fight every day to eliminate as many of them as possible. If someone is "just asking for 15 minutes of my time" to pick my brain, I will not answer. Neither will the executives receiving those same DMs.

The first touchpoint is not the place to ask for a calendar commitment. It is the place to earn the right to a second touchpoint. Lead with value, insight, or a referral request. Prove that a conversation would be worth their time before asking them to invest it.

Think about it from the recipient's perspective. They receive dozens of DMs per week, each asking for 15 minutes. That adds up to hours of calls with strangers who may or may not have something relevant to say. The bar for getting a "yes" on a cold meeting request is extremely high.

Instead, make the first message so useful that they want to reply. The meeting will come later, once trust is established.

4. Build Your Personal Brand First

Here is an unfair truth in cold outreach: who sends a message matters even more than what the message says.

If you are a well-known executive, the reply rate goes up significantly. I saw this firsthand as I grew my LinkedIn to 60K+ followers. The exact same message would perform better without changing a single word. It wasn't about a new angle or different CTA, just a bigger name behind it.

This creates a compounding advantage. Content builds visibility. Visibility builds credibility. Credibility makes every outreach message land differently. The prospect opens a DM, sees a familiar face and a large following, and gives the message more attention than they would give an unknown sender.

If you sell B2B products, building your brand on LinkedIn is not optional. It is the highest-leverage investment you can make in your outreach performance. Every post you publish makes every DM you send more effective.

We use Taplio for content ideation and scheduling. Consistency matters more than any individual post.

5. Share Insights, Not Generic Offers

The best "free work" is not deliverables. It is insights.

I send technical audits of prospects' platforms. A 5-minute analysis, 3 specific optimization opportunities, no strings attached. Something like: "Your checkout flow has a 23% drop-off at payment verification. Here are 2 quick fixes."

It takes 10 minutes. It shows immediate value. It demonstrates expertise without asking for anything.

The distinction matters. A generic "free consultation" is something everyone offers. A specific, actionable insight that the prospect would normally pay for is rare. Solving prospects' issues before they pay you a dime is the fastest way to gain their trust.

The key is specificity. The more precise your insight, the more it feels like real expertise rather than a sales tactic. Pull data from their website, their product, their public metrics. Show them something they did not know about their own business.

When you can do this at scale, you need a system to research prospects quickly. Clay combined with enrichment tools like Prospeo and FullEnrich lets you gather the data you need to craft specific insights for each prospect.

6. Skip Generic Templated Outreach on LinkedIn

The only way to make impersonal, generic outreach work is to send at massive volume. Millions of messages. LinkedIn does not allow that kind of volume.

So if you are running generic templates on LinkedIn, you are getting the worst of both worlds: low personalization and low volume. You would be better off doing that by email, where at least the scale can compensate for the lack of relevance. Or better yet, skip generic outreach entirely and invest that time into the approaches above.

LinkedIn is a high-touch channel. The reply rates are higher than email, but only when the messages deserve replies. A connection request followed by an immediate pitch template performs worse than no outreach at all because it burns the contact permanently.

Use LinkedIn for what it does best: personalized, research-backed messages sent to a smaller, highly targeted list. Use Instantly or lemlist for scaled email outreach, and reserve LinkedIn via Expandi for the messages that need a human touch.

7. Consider Video and Voice Notes

I listen to voice notes and watch video DMs. It annoys some people, but if they are well done, they grab attention.

The format itself signals effort. A 30-second video where someone references my company by name and mentions a specific challenge we face is impossible to ignore. It cannot be mass-produced, and the recipient knows it.

Voice notes work for a similar reason. They feel personal in a way that text cannot replicate. The tone of voice, the casual delivery, the absence of corporate polish all signal that a real person took time to record something specific.

The risk is that poorly executed video or voice outreach backfires. A generic video that could have been sent to anyone feels even more intrusive than a text pitch. The effort is only rewarded when the content is genuinely tailored.

If you are going to try this channel, commit to the personalization. Research the prospect, reference something specific, and keep it under 60 seconds.

8. Putting It All Together

The pattern across every DM type that works is the same: give before you ask.

→ Free work demonstrates capability without requiring trust

→ Referral requests show research and give the prospect an easy action

→ Specific insights prove expertise without a sales pitch

→ Personal brand makes every message land with more weight

→ Video and voice notes signal effort that text cannot match

The DM types that fail all share the opposite pattern: they ask for time, attention, or a meeting without earning it first. They treat LinkedIn like a volume channel when it is a trust channel.

I built ColdIQ to $6.5M+ ARR by sending 5M+ outbound messages. The ones that worked on LinkedIn were never the scaled templates. They were the messages that made the recipient feel like someone had taken 10 minutes to understand their business before hitting send.

Start with one approach from this list. Test it for 30 days. Measure the reply rate. Then add the next.