Step 4: Reach out · topic 4 of 5

Time your messages and follow up

Clients often ask me about the best time to send outreach. The research on this is thin, and the effects it finds are small. A clear, specific message sent on a Thursday afternoon is likely to do better than a vague one sent at the "perfect" time.

This page is about networking messages. For following up on an application or an interview, see follow up after you apply or interview.

What the evidence says about timing

LinkedIn's 2022 analysis of recruiter InMails found Monday was the best day to send, "but just barely": messages sent from Sunday to Thursday all landed within about 1% of the average response rate, while Friday was 4% below average and Saturday 8% below ^[1]. An earlier LinkedIn analysis, from 2016, found no best time of day at all ^[2].

Email software companies have published their own studies. HubSpot's 2015 report, for example, picked Tuesday at 11 a.m. Eastern as the best time to send sales emails ^[3]. Other vendors reach different answers, and most of these studies are old and based on sales email, so I wouldn't lean on any one of them.

A sensible default

1. Send on a weekday, ideally Tuesday to Thursday. I like these days because people are past Monday's catch-up and not yet winding down for the weekend. That's my preference, not a researched rule.
2. Aim for early morning in the recipient's time zone, roughly 8 to 10 a.m., before the day's meetings fill up. Late afternoon is a reasonable second choice.
3. For LinkedIn messages, I suggest early morning or around lunchtime, when people tend to have a few minutes between meetings. That's my experience, not a study.
4. Use schedule send in your email app so you can write when it suits you and deliver when it suits them.

How to follow up

If there's no reply after three working days, it's fine to write to a second person at the same company. That's part of the follow-up routine in Steve Dalton's "2-Hour Job Search", which Duke University's career center describes ^[4]. If you've heard nothing from the first person after 4 to 7 working days, send one short follow-up. Reply in the same thread so they have the context, and add something new:

• Share an article or idea related to their work.
• Give a short update on your side, such as a project you've finished.
• Ask a narrower question that's easy to answer.

Hi Daniel, following up on my note below. I saw your team's post about the new customer portal, and it reminded me of a handover checklist that worked well for us at a similar stage. I can send it over if it's useful. If a quick call isn't possible right now, no problem.

A second follow-up a week or two later is fine. After that, I'd stop and spend the energy on someone new. You can always write again in a few months if something changes, such as a new role being posted.

If your connection request is still pending

If you sent a LinkedIn connection request and it hasn't been accepted, there's no thread to follow up in. Leave the request where it is. If you withdraw it, LinkedIn won't let you invite the same person again for a while ^[5]. Follow up by email instead if you can, or write to a second person on the same team.

Keep follow-ups short

Keep each follow-up shorter than the first message. That's my experience; LinkedIn's data on first messages also favors short ones, with InMails under 400 characters getting the best response rates ^[6].

Silence isn't a verdict

In my experience, when someone doesn't reply to a networking message, it's usually about their week, not about you. Messages get buried, and plenty of people mean to reply and forget. Sometimes it is a no that nobody sent. That's why two follow-ups and then moving on is the rule: it protects your energy either way. The page on confidence in a long search goes into this.