Spear, the new name for Samplead, published a ranking of nine outbound trigger types across 177,629 trigger based LinkedIn connection requests sent by more than 90 teams between 1 October 2025 and 31 August 2026, using anonymized platform data with internal and test accounts excluded. Podcast and interview triggers performed best, with 46% acceptance, an 18% reply rate and 4.6 times the positive replies of company news triggers. Acceptance on LinkedIn activity triggers fell from 44% within 7 days to 31% after 60 days.
It is one of the few trigger studies in the category that states its sample, period and exclusions, so teams can weigh which signals are worth paying for and how fast to act on them. The figures come from the vendor's own platform rather than an independent audit.