LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks for Marketing & Advertising (2026)

Key Takeaways

In marketing and advertising, the average LinkedIn connection acceptance rate is 29.4%. Replies to the connection note average 2.4%, and replies to a message after the connection is accepted average 10.6%. Those numbers come from 1,038,187 connection requests sent by 1,115 marketing and advertising accounts between May 2025 and April 2026. Against the cross-industry averages of 28.5%, 3.0% and 10.4%, marketing and advertising is above on acceptance and message replies and below on note replies.

Marketing & Advertising vs. the platform average

Metric	Marketing & Advertising	All industries	Difference	Rank
Connection acceptance	29.4%	28.5%	+0.9 pts	12th of 38
Connection-note reply	2.4%	3.0%	-0.6 pts	28th of 38
Message reply after acceptance	10.6%	10.4%	+0.2 pts	21st 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 marketing and advertising outreach

Marketing and advertising accepts connections readily and ignores the note. Acceptance of 29.4% ranks 12th of 38 and sits a point above the cross-industry average. Note replies of 2.4% rank 28th and sit well below it. That 16-place gap between the two is one of the widest in the large samples, and it is the single most characteristic thing about this sector.

The obvious reading is that marketers recognise the shape of what they are being sent. This is an industry of 1,115 sending accounts in this dataset, the third largest, which means the people receiving these requests are frequently people who run the same play themselves. A connection note reads differently to somebody who writes connection notes for a living.

Message replies of 10.6% land just above the 10.4% average, so the conversation after acceptance is normal. The whole of the sector’s disadvantage is concentrated in the note. End to end, about 3.1 in 100 recipients reply to a follow-up, which is slightly better than the cross-industry 3.0 despite the note performing badly.

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 29.4%. This sector accepts at above the platform rate, so falling below it is a real signal rather than sector noise. Marketing job titles are among the easiest to over-target, and a list built on title alone will be full of people who accept nothing.

Note replies well under 2.4%. The sector floor here is already low. If the note is doing nothing, the honest test is to send some requests without one and compare acceptance, rather than rewriting the note a fourth time.

Message replies under 10.6%. This is where marketing and advertising is actually normal, so a shortfall here is not explained by the audience being marketers. It usually means the first message asks for a meeting before it has given a reason for one.

Further reading:

• Improving your LinkedIn Sales Navigator targeting
• Personalising the message request without tripping limits
• The LinkedIn message follow-up formula
• LinkedIn Outreach for Lead Gen Agencies
• How To Start a Lead Generation Agency in 2026

Frequently asked questions

What is a good connection acceptance rate when targeting marketers?

29.4% is the average for marketing and advertising accounts, about a point above the 28.5% cross-industry figure. Marketers accept at an above-average rate, so 29% is par rather than good.

Do marketers reply to LinkedIn connection notes?

Less than most. Marketing and advertising averages 2.4% note replies, 28th of 38 reported industries, against a cross-industry average of 3.0%. Acceptance is above average and note replies are well below it, which is the widest split of any large sample in the dataset.

How does marketing and advertising compare with other industries?

It is the third largest sample at 1,115 accounts. Acceptance ranks 12th of 38, message replies 21st, and note replies 28th. End to end, roughly 3.1 in 100 recipients reply to a follow-up, marginally above the cross-industry figure of about 3.0.

How this data was collected

Marketing & Advertising is reported from 1,115 accounts and 1,038,187 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

• Information Technology & Services, 28.4% acceptance and 10.5% message replies
• Internet, 28.2% acceptance and 10.0% message replies
• Accounting, 29.5% acceptance and 12.0% 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 marketing and advertising 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.