LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks for the Design Industry (2026)

Key Takeaways

In the design industry, the average LinkedIn connection acceptance rate is 31.3%. Replies to the connection note average 3.0%, and replies to a message after the connection is accepted average 10.5%. Those numbers come from 148,589 connection requests sent by 118 design accounts between May 2025 and April 2026. Against the cross-industry averages of 28.5%, 3.0% and 10.4%, design is above on acceptance and message replies and below on note replies.

Design vs. the platform average

Metric	Design	All industries	Difference	Rank
Connection acceptance	31.3%	28.5%	+2.8 pts	7th of 38
Connection-note reply	3.0%	3.0%	0.0 pts	11th of 38
Message reply after acceptance	10.5%	10.4%	+0.1 pts	22nd of 38

Across the 38 industries with at least 50 sending accounts, acceptance runs from 21.8% (telecommunications) to 36.5% (staffing & recruiting). Note replies run from 1.8% to 6.6%, and message replies from 7.2% to 18.9%.

What the numbers say about design outreach

Designers accept connection requests at 31.3%, which ranks 7th of 38 and sits nearly three points above the cross-industry average. Then they reply to notes at 3.0% and to messages at 10.5%, against platform figures of 3.0% and 10.4%. Those are not approximations. On both reply measures this sector is the platform average.

That makes design the closest industry in the dataset to the overall benchmark, with the difference concentrated entirely in the one measure where it does better. An above-average door with an exactly average conversation behind it.

End to end it converts at about 3.3 per 100 recipients against a cross-industry 3.0, and the whole of that advantage comes from acceptance. Across 118 accounts and 148,589 requests, the reading is that reaching designers is easier than reaching most audiences and persuading them is exactly as hard as persuading anyone.

If your numbers sit below these

The dataset says where an account sits, not why. From what we see in campaigns, three gaps come up most often in this sector, and they point at different problems.

Acceptance under 31.3%. This is the sector’s entire advantage and it ranks 7th of 38. An account below this line is giving up the only thing that makes design outreach convert above average, and the cause is normally the list rather than the note.

Note replies under 3.0%. The sector matches the platform exactly here, which makes it a clean diagnostic: a number below it is below the platform, with no sector effect to account for it.

Message replies under 10.5%. Same again. Design is exactly average on this measure, so any shortfall is about the sequence rather than the audience.

Further reading:

• Improving your LinkedIn Sales Navigator targeting
• Personalising the message request without tripping limits
• The LinkedIn message follow-up formula

Frequently asked questions

What is a good LinkedIn acceptance rate when targeting designers?

31.3% is the sector average, nearly three points above the 28.5% cross-industry figure and 7th of 38 reported industries. Designers accept at an above-average rate, so 31% is par rather than good.

Do designers reply at above-average rates?

No. Design averages 3.0% note replies and 10.5% message replies, against platform figures of 3.0% and 10.4%. It matches the overall benchmark almost exactly on both. The sector’s advantage is entirely at the connection request.

How does design compare with other industries?

It is the closest industry in the dataset to the overall platform average, with acceptance 7th of 38 and both reply measures sitting at the platform figure. End to end about 3.3 in 100 recipients reply to a follow-up, against roughly 3.0 across all industries.

How this data was collected

Design is reported from 118 accounts and 148,589 connection requests sent between May 2025 and April 2026, drawn from the LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 dataset of 13.2 million requests across 13,302 accounts. That report carries the full methodology, along with the breakdowns by sender seniority, company size and month that are not repeated here.

Two things to hold in mind while reading any of these figures. The industry is the sender’s, taken from their company profile, not the recipient’s. And only industries with at least 50 sending accounts are reported at all: below that, a single unusual account moves the average by several points, which is why some of the most extreme numbers in the full appendix are not published here.

Related industry benchmarks

• Marketing & Advertising, 29.4% acceptance and 10.6% message replies
• Accounting, 29.5% acceptance and 12.0% message replies
• Information Technology & Services, 28.4% acceptance and 10.5% message replies
• All industry benchmarks

Grade your own outreach against these numbers

Enter your own acceptance and reply rates and grade your outreach against the design benchmark, plus see where you sit among all 38 reported industries. No signup.

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Data updated 19 August 2026. Refreshed quarterly against the source report.