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ABM on LinkedIn Are We Getting Personal Enough

ABM on LinkedIn: Are We Getting Personal Enough?

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is all the rage in B2B Marketing circles, especially for companies with long, complex sales cycles like those in tech. Yet despite all the talk of hyper-targeted advertising, it’s easy to overlook the single most important aspect of LinkedIn: people. If your ABM campaign on LinkedIn is focused solely on ads and mass messaging, you could be missing the chance to build genuine relationships with the professionals at your target accounts.

In this article, we’ll highlight the importance of Profile-Based Marketing (PBM) as part of your ABM strategy by asking a critical question: Are we really getting personal enough on LinkedIn? 

We’ll discuss how personalisation (or lack thereof) plays out in connection requests, highlight some early observations, and invite you to help shape our upcoming LinkedIn Outreach Handbook.

Why LinkedIn + ABM?

Profile-Based Marketing on LinkedIn helps overcome some of the main challenges in enterprise selling.

  1. Longer Sales Cycles & Multiple Decision-Makers
    • Enterprise selling such as B2B Tech deals usually involve numerous stakeholders, directors, VPs, budget approvers, and technical influencers. LinkedIn makes it possible to find and engage each relevant contact under one “digital roof.”

  2. Reach Beyond Corporate Pages
    • While company pages are important, we’ve found that personal profiles often have a farther reach. Connection requests, DMs, and even simple post engagements can create a more human-to-human feel. Your corporate page is just one page, you can have many personal pages acting for you on LinkedIn and for ABM, that personal touch can set you apart.

  3. Relationship-First Approach
    • LinkedIn is not just a channel to blast ads; it’s a place to start conversations, build trust, and nurture leads over time. In our experience, the best ABM efforts on LinkedIn focus on people connecting with people, a hallmark of what we call “Profile-Based Marketing.”

Personalisation: The Great Debate

It’s almost cliché to say “personalisation is everything”, but is it really delivering what everyone expects on LinkedIn? Let’s break down the common approaches:

  • Generic Connect Requests: A simple “I’d like to add you to my network” or a blank invitation with no personal note. It’s quick, easy, and if the recipient is fairly open-networked, you might still get a decent acceptance rate.  Non-premium or Sales Navigator users are being forced into blank connection requests as they only have a limited number of requests that can be sent without a message.  Sometimes this is as few as 5 or 10 per month.

     

  • Personalised Invites: A short message referencing a mutual connection, shared interest, or something about their profile. Some argue it shows professionalism and increases acceptance rates, but does it?

Early Observations (Not Hard Data…Yet)

Although we’re currently collecting fresh data for our Q2 research paper, we have anecdotal insights from previous projects at Pitch121:

  • Pre-Connect Engagement: In past experiments, a simple “like” on a prospect’s post before sending a connect request boosted Connection Acceptance Rates (CAR) by around 10%. That may not sound massive, but in enterprise deals where each relationship matters, 10% can be significant, and difference between a decision maker seeing your posts and having an inbox conversation or not.

  • Colleagues Connecting First: We’ve seen acceptance rates jump as high as 80% when a prospect sees that a senior exec from the same firm is already connected to them or has engaged with them. This indicates a “warmth” factor that personalisation alone might not achieve.

  • Premium vs. Free: Non-premium users can only send a limited number of personalised messages. If your ABM approach relies on custom notes, that constraint might push you toward upgrading or might force you to be very selective with invites.

Ultimately, we want to confirm these trends with robust research and hard data, not just standout campaigns or anecdotes, or assumptions on what our data showed previously is the same today.

That’s part of why we’re launching the LinkedIn Outreach Handbook—and you can help shape the final findings (more on that below).

Help us shape the LinkedIn Outreach Handbook

Take part in our research

Is Personalisation Overrated—or Underrated?

On one hand, we’ve seen success with a thoughtful, brief intro that references a shared interest or connection. It establishes context and shows you’ve done your homework. On the other, some senders over compensate or explain their connection to the degree that it makes a skeptical prospect decline the request.   

  1. The Case For Personalisation
    • Relevance: A tailored note referencing a common group, recent post, or mutual colleague can pique interest.
    • Trust-Building: It feels more genuine and can open the door to a conversation sooner, rather than waiting to prove your authenticity after they’ve accepted.
  2. The Argument Against
    • Time & Scale: If you’re targeting a wide set of influencers across multiple accounts, writing detailed personal notes can be time-consuming—or limited if you’re on a free account.
    • Message Saturation: Some recipients gloss over personal notes because they expect them to be generic templates.

So, are we overthinking personalisation or underestimating its impact? 

Our current stance: If you do it well (making it truly relevant, not just a rehashed template), it tends to pay off. But if you’re only half-committed, it may not be worth the effort. That’s exactly the sort of nuance our Q1 polls aim to uncover.

Call for Research Participation

To move from anecdote to evidence, we need your input. Throughout Q1, we’re running polls on our website and LinkedIn posts asking questions like:

  • Do you prefer receiving a connection request with or without a message?
  • What’s your stance on sending generic invites vs. heavily personalised ones?


We’ll compile these insights to help your Profile-Based Marketing campaigns and outreach.  

Our LinkedIn Outreach Handbook, set to publish in Q2. From acceptance rates and best practices to whether upgrading to Sales Navigator pays off, we’ll use real data to clarify the personalisation debate.

Share Your LinkedIn Outreach Experience

Every response helps refine the bigger picture of LinkedIn outreach.
Have Your Say

Practical Tips (For Now)

While we wait to confirm best practices with fresh data, here are some immediate suggestions to consider if you’re ramping up your ABM on LinkedIn:

  1. Relevance Over Length
    • If you’re personalising an invite, make sure it’s about the recipient, not you. A short line referencing their role, company update, or a recent post can suffice. You don’t need to write a novel.
  2. Warm Up First
    • A “like” or quick comment on their content prior to connecting can preempt the awkwardness of a cold invite. It also shows you’re paying attention, not just picking them from a list.
  3. Don’t Pitch Immediately
    • Whether you add a personal note or not, jumping straight into a sales pitch often backfires. Focus on building rapport and trust first.
  4. Leverage Mutual Connections
    • If a senior exec in your organisation is already connected, mention it or better yet, have them introduce you. This can skyrocket your acceptance rate.
  5. Pilot a Mix
    • If your team is divided on whether personalisation is worth the effort, run a simple A/B test. Split your prospect list in half.  One group gets a short personal note, the other gets a generic request, then measure acceptance rates.

The ABM landscape on LinkedIn is evolving. It’s no longer just about plugging in ad spend or blanketing potential buyers with generic invites; it’s about forging human connections in a digital sphere. But how personal do we actually need to get? That’s the question we intend to answer through our Q1 polls and the upcoming LinkedIn Outreach Handbook.

If you’d like to stay in the loop on poll results and early findings, sign up for our monthly Pitch121 newsletter. We’ll keep you posted on everything from acceptance rates to the hidden benefits of consistent pre-connect engagement.

Until then, remember: people buy from people—especially on LinkedIn. So if you’re only thinking in terms of ad impressions and cookie-cutter outreach, you may be missing out on the platform’s real power: building authentic, one-to-one relationships with the folks who matter most to your ABM strategy. 

Until then, remember: people buy from people—especially on LinkedIn. So if you’re only thinking in terms of ad impressions and cookie-cutter outreach, you may be missing out on the platform’s real power: building authentic, one-to-one relationships with the folks who matter most to your ABM strategy. 

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Help Us Move from Anecdote to Evidence

We’re collecting real data on LinkedIn outreach—what works, what doesn’t, and why. 
Your input will shape our LinkedIn Outreach Handbook.

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