LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks for Information Technology & Services (2026)

Key Takeaways

In information technology and services, the average LinkedIn connection acceptance rate is 28.4%. Replies to the connection note average 2.6%, and replies to a message after the connection is accepted average 10.5%. Those numbers come from 1,731,259 connection requests sent by 1,825 information technology and services accounts between May 2025 and April 2026. Against the cross-industry averages of 28.5%, 3.0% and 10.4%, information technology and services is above on message replies and below on acceptance and note replies.

Information Technology & Services vs. the platform average

Metric	Information Technology & Services	All industries	Difference	Rank
Connection acceptance	28.4%	28.5%	-0.1 pts	16th of 38
Connection-note reply	2.6%	3.0%	-0.4 pts	21st of 38
Message reply after acceptance	10.5%	10.4%	+0.1 pts	23rd 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 IT and services outreach

IT and services is, on these numbers, almost exactly the platform. Acceptance of 28.4% against a cross-industry 28.5%, note replies of 2.6% against 3.0%, message replies of 10.5% against 10.4%. Of the 38 reported industries it is the second closest to the overall average, and the closest one measured on a large sample: 1,825 accounts and 1.73 million requests, second only to software.

That makes this page more useful as a reference point than as a competitive edge. When somebody quotes a LinkedIn benchmark without naming an industry, this is roughly the industry they are describing. It is also the least distorted of the big samples: the gap between its best and worst ranking is 7 places, against 17 for software and 29 for professional training.

There is a second reading worth having. IT and services sits within a fraction of a point of internet companies on all three measures, and the two together account for 2,155 sending accounts. Two large, nominally different tech categories behaving identically is evidence that industry is a weaker predictor of outreach performance than it is usually treated as, at least inside technology.

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 28.4%. There is no sector allowance to claim here, because the sector is the average. A number below this is below the platform, and the usual cause is a list built on company attributes without a reason for the specific person to care.

Note replies under 2.6%. This sector is already below the 3.0% platform figure on notes, so a number under it is genuinely low rather than merely sector-typical. Worth testing whether the note is doing any work at all before spending more effort on writing it.

Message replies under 10.5%. This is the one measure where IT and services matches the platform exactly, which makes it the cleanest diagnostic on the page. A number below it is not an industry effect, because there is no industry effect here to hide behind.

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 connection acceptance rate in IT and services?

28.4%, which is within a tenth of a point of the 28.5% cross-industry average. Anything meaningfully above 30% is strong for this sector and anything under 25% suggests a targeting problem.

Why is IT and services so close to the overall average?

It is the second largest sample in the dataset at 1,825 accounts and 1.73 million requests, and large samples pull toward the mean. It is also the second closest industry to the platform average across all three measures, and the closest one measured on a sample this size.

Does the industry someone works in actually change outreach results?

Sometimes substantially. Acceptance across the 38 reported industries runs from 21.8% to 36.5%. But IT and services and internet companies sit within a fraction of a point of each other on all three measures across 2,155 accounts, so inside technology the industry label predicts very little.

How this data was collected

Information Technology & Services is reported from 1,825 accounts and 1,731,259 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

• Internet, 28.2% acceptance and 10.0% message replies
• Marketing & Advertising, 29.4% acceptance and 10.6% message replies
• Real Estate, 28.4% acceptance and 11.8% 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 information technology and services 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.