LinkedIn is an amazing social media platform for professionals to find new work opportunities and mingle with potential employers, employees, and business partners. Plus, it’s a goldmine for legitimate B2B contacts.
However, if you’re trying to prospect and close deals through LinkedIn, you’ll have a tough time of it. That’s because, as a social media platform, LinkedIn doesn’t offer tools that make prospecting and selling much easier, such as automation and pipeline management. You’re much better off doing the sales footwork through a reliable customer relationship management (CRM) software.
So, how can you add qualified LinkedIn leads to your CRM?
LinkedIn (as of April 2025) does not offer a universal export-to-CRM feature. Luckily, there are easy methods and tools you can use to make the transition from LinkedIn to your CRM as seamless as possible. Read on to discover how to import your LinkedIn contacts to your CRM!
There are numerous benefits to importing your LinkedIn contacts to your CRM.
Centralizing your customer relationship data: Having your important contacts in one place helps with organization, and ensures you’re not sending multiple mixed messages across different platforms.
Track and nurture leads more effectively: Having a single platform for outreach and sales allows you to be more effective in nurturing relationships.
Improve sales workflows: CRMs have a major advantage over LinkedIn in terms of sales outreach: automation. With a CRM, you can automate pipeline assignment, personalized emails and SMS, to ensure your communications are streamlined.
Better quality analytics and feedback: With CRM analysis tools, like Nutshell Analytics, you can get a bird’s eye view of your sales activity and results to find what’s working and what needs work.
Want to generate more leads? (Of course you do.)
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How to export your LinkedIn contacts to a CSV file
Adding your LinkedIn contacts to your CRM is a two-step process. First, you need to download your LinkedIn connection data as contacts into a CSV file. Then, you import the file to your CRM.
Let’s tackle the first step: Downloading your LinkedIn connections for CRM import.
1. From the LinkedIn homefeed, open the dropdown menu labeled “Me”
2. Click “Settings & Privacy”
3. From the right-hand side menu, click “Data Privacy” then “Get a copy of your data”
4. The Export Your Data window will give you various options for what you’d like to export. Select the checkbox labeled “Want something in particular?” and choose “Connections*”, then click “Request Archive” 5. It may take some time for the file to be ready to download, and you will get a notification email from LinkedIn when it is 6. Once you receive the email, the link inside will direct back to the Export window. From there, click “Download Archive”
7. A zip file will be downloaded to your computer, and inside you’ll find a ‘Connections.csv’ file that you can use to import to your CRM
* If you’re not seeing the “Connections” option, it could be due to a recent update in the LinkedIn platform. In that case, you may need to select the larger data archive option (see image below), then find the ‘Connection.csv’ in your downloaded archive
How to import your LinkedIn CSV File to your CRM
Many popular CRMs – such as Nutshell – have an import tool for CSV files. Here’s how you can import your LinkedIn connections to your Nutshell CRM contacts. For a more detailed look, check out our support page here.
1. Prepare your CRM
Before you start importing your file, you’ll want to add custom fields, tags, and company types that may be part of the import. You want to make sure that the importing process is as smooth a match as possible to your current database.
2. Find the import tool in your CRM
Most CRMs will have an import tool within their settings that you can access. For example, in Nutshell, select Settings found in the bottom left corner.
Then select Data > Import from the left hand menu. Since you’re uploading a CSV file, choose the option Spreadsheet
3. Import your data
Upload your CSV file, and then click Next
You’ll be taken to the next step, Match. The Match tool will attempt to match your CSV file fields to the fields defined in your CRM. For each field mentioned in your CSV file, you can match the value to any field within your People, Companies, and Leads.
You can also choose to not import specific field data by clicking the dropdown button and selecting Don’t Import.
When you’re confident about your matching, select Preview in the top right corner.
In the Preview window, you can update any final changes before you begin the import process. For example, you have the option to skip companies and people that are already in your database, identifying duplicates based on email addresses and names.
You also have the option to create Leads (business opportunities) out of the people and companies you import.
After you’ve made your choices, you’ll see a message below that indicates how many people and companies will be imported to your CRM when you’re done. When you’re happy with what you see, select Begin Import.
When the import is complete, you should see your new data as new or updated contacts in your People, Companies, and Leads lists.
Automating the process with LinkedIn CRM integrations
There are various tools you can use to automate the LinkedIn export and import processes. One popular tool is LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which is designed to optimize your sales process from within LinkedIn to your CRM.
Unfortunately, the tool is limited. The CRM integration feature is only available for the highest product tier of Sales Navigator, Advanced Plus. And the integration only supports Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, and HubSpot. Overall, it’s a pricey and potentially worthless investment if you’re operating from a smaller budget or use a different CRM.
That being said, the continuous back-and-forth of exporting and importing can become a drag and time-waste without proper scheduling. But with the help of CRM integrations, you can make the process much easier. Nutshell offers two amazing integration options for businesses that actively use LinkedIn for prospecting and lead generation.
LinkedIn CRM integration via LinkNut
LinkNut is a Chrome extension that enables users to seamlessly capture LinkedIn contact details and sync them directly into Nutshell, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
LinkNut fetches verified emails for LinkedIn profiles, ensuring accuracy and reducing bounce rates. It’s a great tool investment that saves you up to four hours per week on manual data entry.
All you need to get started is the LinkNut Chrome extension and a Nutshell account.
LinkedIn Ads CRM integration
If you’re running ad campaigns on LinkedIn, you can maximize your investment with a LinkedIn Ads integration. Nutshell’s integration with LinkedIn Ads helps you to automatically create new leads in your CRM from the new leads received through LinkedIn.
Don’t yet have a Nutshell account? Sign up for a two-week free trial. For 14 days, you’ll enjoy all the benefits of a CRM built for business growth, with native end-to-end solutions that combine sales, marketing, and engagement suites in one platform.
To get you started as soon as possible, we even offer white-glove data imports to make the CRM transition much simpler. Contact our team to learn more about how Nutshell can help you achieve your sales goals.
Explore LinkedIn integrations and more!
Nutshell integrates with tons of software, both natively and through Zapier. See if your favorites are on the list.
Tips to keep your LinkedIn CRM data clean and useful
No matter how well you’ve prepared, data imports can get messy. Here are some tips and best practices we recommend to keep your imported data clean and useful.
Use tags and custom fields: These can help you categorize where your contacts came from, allowing a smooth transition when communicating with leads.
Set reminders and workflows to follow up with imported contacts: With multiple pipelines, you can set specific workflow automations to operate for your contacts imported from LinkedIn, allowing you to personalize and tailor your sales message.
Avoid bloating your CRM with low-value contacts: Not every connection on LinkedIn will meet your ICP standards. Conduct regular cleanups of your imported contacts to ensure you’re creating space for more of your ideal leads and prospects.
Common mistakes to avoid with LinkedIn data imports
Here are a few common mistakes people make when importing LinkedIn connections as contacts to their CRMs. For each mistake, we’ve provided some clever solutions and troubleshooting tips.
Importing outdated or irrelevant contacts: LinkedIn is a business social media tool, so ideally, you’re only connected to current and potential business prospects. But since it is a social media, your connections may also include family members, old friends, and other people who do not match your ideal prospect. Unfortunately, LinkedIn exports don’t allow for filtering before you export. Possible solutions include:
Use filters to catch and remove unnecessary connections from your CSV file (Here are tutorials on how to filter in Google Sheets and Excel).
You could also use filters, tags, and other useful contact management features in your CRM to clean up post-import.
Add specific People and Companies to your CRM using a Chrome extension such as LinkNut, which adds LinkedIn profile data to your CRM in one click (eliminating the need to filter through a long list).
Violating LinkedIn’s terms of service: Generally, most LinkedIn users consent to their data being shared with first-level connections when they sign up, so you’re well within your right to import contacts among your connections. However, LinkedIn’s data privacy and user protection laws can get you in trouble when using profile data illegitimately (for example, selling user data to a third party).
The best thing to do is to brush on LinkedIn’s service terms to ensure you’re using data wisely and within their boundaries
Make sure all software involved in the process complies with data protection laws (like GDPR or CCPA)
Not checking for duplicates or incomplete profiles: Some imported contacts may be missing valuable contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses. Others may already exist in your CRM database. Here are a few ways to solve this issue:
Filter out contacts in your CSV file that are missing email addresses or phone numbers (whichever is most important to your sales process) before you begin importing to your CRM
Use the importing process to ignore contacts that already share an email address or phone number with contacts in your database (Nutshell’s handy import tool allows you to do this before importing)
Filter duplicates and incomplete profiles from your CRM after importing
Link your LinkedIn to a CRM built for simplicity and sales effectiveness
We hope you appreciated this guide on all things LinkedIn imports. While some import tools can get clunky and overcomplicated, Nutshell keeps the process as simple and seamless as possible. Our top-class importing tool enables you to connect your LinkedIn data seamlessly and start your sales process ASAP.
Try out Nutshell today for 14 days, free-of-charge. We have all the core CRM features you need, as well as additional sales, marketing, and engagement features to help accelerate your business growth.
