I've been doing cold outreach on LinkedIn for about 2 years and the response rates have absolutely tanked in the past 6 months. I used to get around 25-30% response rate with personalized messages, now I'm lucky if I get 10%.
As someone who gets on average 15 cold outreaches per day - I'm swamped, I ignore all of them, it feels scammy, and I hate being pestered with randomness.
I get so many strictly because I have founder and CEO in my job title. And I'd guess 50% are offers to either build an app or apply AI.
My favorite are the ones telling me they can publish my book - which means they've never looked at my bio which clearly states one of my companies is in publishing.
I think if you want to look at a root cause of why your engagement is down you might look to how much your thoughtless automation is up.
Noise creates signal overwhelm.
Not just you. I think LinkedIn changed something in their algorithm or detection system because I've noticed the same drop. Also people's inboxes are probably getting hammered way more than before
Do you think cold outreach on LinkedIn still works at all or should we just accept it's dying and move to other channels?
Switched to video messages last month and acceptance rate jumped 15%. people are curious enough to click play. takes more time tho
It’s way harder to stand out now. I’ve been solely using Signal based outreach to leads who have been active in the last 72 hours.
Interacting with competitors posts, influencers, attending events, etc.
I use ProspectZero to detect the signals and start conversations. Reply rates have been way higher since.
Yeah I noticed the same drop lately. Maybe your lists are outdated or too broad now. You could try switching tools to get fresher and more accurate leads from different platforms to boost your outreach quality.
maybe the problem is that your product isn't differentiated enough? if you had something truly unique people would respond regardless of how saturated LinkedIn is. just saying
It just became too much to respond to… i found myself overwhelmed and stopped responding…
I stopped doing cold outreach entirely and just focus on inbound now. way better quality leads and my sanity is intact.
I've noticed the same trend with LinkedIn outreach lately. The landscape has really shifted, and prospects have definitely gotten more selective about what they respond to. What helped me a bit is changing up my approach, less templated stuff and more genuine engagement. I started focusing more on commenting thoughtfully on target prospects’ posts before reaching out, so when my message lands it's not totally cold. Video messages and audio snippets also stand out way more compared to plain text, even if you keep the message super short and relevant.
Another thing that made a difference was experimenting outside of LinkedIn itself. Sometimes Twitter or even email follow ups after a LinkedIn connection worked better for breaking through the noise. It definitely seems like the usual "personalized" messages just aren't cutting it anymore when everyone's inbox is flooded.
On another note, I'm actually working on something in this space, a platform for deploying AI powered sales agents that handle hyper personalized outreach based on real time data, not just static templates. If you’re open to trying out early tools that use more advanced personalization at scale, check out the waiting list at https://salespire.io/ . Would love feedback from people who really know the pain points here.
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I've been absolutely obsessed with short form content for the last two years. Like people have staged actual interventions about my health level of obsessed. I'm talking 11-14 hour days breaking down what separates successful videos from failures, experimenting with different hook variations, rewriting scripts until my brain hurts, testing every editing approach I could possibly get my hands on. Why this level of obsession? Because I'm absolutely certain short form video is the backbone of everything right now. Growing followers, selling anything, generating opportunities, creating brands from nothing. Every part of it depends on whether you can hold someone's attention for 30 seconds. But here's what nearly made me quit entirely: despite the constant daily grind, nothing was hitting. I'd pour 7-8 hours into crafting one video only to watch it crash at 300 views. Tried every tactic from every person claiming to have figured it out. Bought their courses. Applied their "proven" methods. Still going nowhere. I seriously started thinking maybe I'm just not the type of person who can make this work. Like maybe there's some fundamental ability I'm completely lacking. Then something clicked. I'm grinding constantly, but I'm operating completely blind. I don't actually know what's broken. I'm essentially just trying random things hoping something eventually works. So I stopped hunting for some mythical viral code and started analyzing actual data. Analyzed my last 50 videos second by second, documented every retention drop, and discovered 5 consistent patterns that were systematically killing my performance: 1. **Vague mysterious hooks are totally invisible** "This will transform you..." gets scrolled past every time. But "I used resistance bands for 55 days and my shoulder mobility actually decreased" stops people mid scroll. Specific concrete details destroy vague teasing without exception. 2. **Seconds 5-7 are where everything gets decided** Most viewers leave between 4-7 seconds if you haven't proven it's worth watching. I was creating slow buildups like a complete amateur. Now my strongest visual or most compelling number arrives exactly at second 5. That's where the hook that genuinely holds people. 3. **Any gap beyond 1 second absolutely kills your retention** Tracked this obsessively, anything past 1.2 seconds makes people think the video stopped. What feels like natural comfortable pacing to you reads as complete dead time to someone scrolling. Cut significantly tighter than feels normal. 4. **Visual variety is absolutely critical** If nothing changes on screen for more than 3 seconds, attention vanishes without warning. I started constantly rotating camera angles, cutting to b-roll, moving text placement, literally anything to maintain constant visual movement. Went from losing 50% at the halfway mark to keeping 70%. 5. **Rewatch rate is dramatically more important than most people realize** Videos people watch more than once get pushed exponentially harder by the algorithm. Started planting subtle details that aren't obvious first viewing, editing faster, adding elements worth discovering on rewatch. Rewatch percentage jumped from 8% to 31% and reach went completely through the roof. Honestly the biggest shift was abandoning all guesswork and actually measuring what was happening at every second. Came across this one app that goes way beyond showing where people drop off, it literally tells you why and exactly how to correct it. That's when everything transformed. Went from averaging 300 views to hitting 18k in about 4 weeks. Regular analytics show you people are leaving. This one shows the exact second, the actual reason, and what to adjust before your next post. If you're uploading consistently but stuck below 1k views, your content isn't the problem. You just don't know what's genuinely working versus what you assume is working. Listen, I'm sharing this because breaking through was honestly one of the hardest things I've tackled. I really wish someone had just explained exactly what needed fixing when I was stuck there. Would have saved months of confusion and doubt. So that's what I'm doing now for anyone who needs it.