If you run HubSpot and prospect on LinkedIn, you've probably noticed they ignore each other. HubSpot's first party LinkedIn integration hangs off Sales Navigator, and no seat means no LinkedIn data in HubSpot, full stop. Even with a seat, the thing you do fifty times a day, reading a profile and getting that person into HubSpot, still takes more clicks than it should.
So this is the practical version. We'll look at what HubSpot connects to out of the box, then at wiring LinkedIn to HubSpot with a Chrome extension, so that saving a profile, checking for duplicates and logging the next step all happen right on the LinkedIn page. A few extensions can do this. We make one of them, Ln2CRM, so that's the one the setup below uses as its example.
A quick note on scope. Is your real question whether to keep paying for a Sales Navigator Advanced Plus seat you already have? That's a money decision with real numbers behind it, and it has its own page: what HubSpot's Sales Navigator integration costs now. Here we stick to how the integration itself works.
What HubSpot's own LinkedIn integration covers
HubSpot touches LinkedIn in three places, and knowing what each one is actually for saves you from bolting on something you don't need:
- The Sales Navigator widget. Inside a Contact or Company record, HubSpot can show a Sales Navigator panel with icebreakers, shared connections and related leads. It only appears on records that already exist in HubSpot, though, and it needs a Sales Navigator seat as well as a Sales Hub tier that supports it.
- LinkedIn Ads. HubSpot pulls in LinkedIn Ads campaign reporting and Lead Gen Form submissions, which is handy if you run paid campaigns and beside the point if you prospect by hand.
- The HubSpot Sales Chrome extension. Despite the name, it lives in Gmail and Outlook rather than on LinkedIn, so you won't see any HubSpot data on a profile page with it.
Set up LinkedIn to HubSpot in about ten minutes
Since this is the how to page, let's start with setup. All it takes is a browser install and one OAuth approval, and the only configuration step that really matters is the LinkedIn URL property covered in the next section.
- Install Ln2CRM from the Chrome Web Store, and its icon shows up in your toolbar.
- Connect HubSpot. It's standard HubSpot OAuth, so connecting is a matter of approving the scopes once, and nobody needs admin access for it.
- Create the LinkedIn URL properties in HubSpot, which you only do once. The next section explains them, and they're the single biggest reason matching stays clean.
- Pick your default save behavior. Should saving someone from LinkedIn create a Contact and a Deal, or only a Contact? And which lifecycle stage should new people start in? You set that once and can still change it for any single record.
- Open a LinkedIn profile. The extension shows possible matches, recent activity and the create buttons, and your first Contact is one click away.
The one HubSpot property that stops duplicates
Why the LinkedIn URL? Because for outbound it's a better matching signal than email, since you usually save a profile long before you have anyone's email. These custom properties go in once, under Settings, Properties in HubSpot:
- On Contact: "LinkedIn Profile URL", a single line text property
- On Company: "LinkedIn Company URL", also single line text
- On Company: check that HubSpot's built in "Website domain" is filled in, because it's the fallback when there's no LinkedIn URL
With those in place, matching stops being guesswork. If a Contact with that LinkedIn URL already exists, you see the match before a create button ever appears. Over a year, that's the difference between a tidy HubSpot portal and one full of LinkedIn duplicates nobody wants to merge.
Why LinkedIn URL beats email matching
Email is a great identifier once you have it, but LinkedIn prospecting usually starts well before that point. Matching on domain puts people in the right company, yet it can't tell two colleagues apart. A LinkedIn URL can. It belongs to one person and survives job changes, and that's why we'd make it the main key for anything that starts on LinkedIn.
Importing LinkedIn contacts into HubSpot: file import vs one at a time
There is a file route, and it's worth knowing where it stops working. LinkedIn's data export (Settings, Data privacy, Get a copy of your data) hands you a Connections.csv covering everyone you're connected to. What it usually lacks is an email, because only people who opted to share theirs come with one, and that's rarely many. HubSpot's import tool will happily load the file anyway. If you want the export explained column by column, see how to export LinkedIn contacts.
Where it bites is the second import. HubSpot recognises existing contacts by email, and with that column mostly blank, the same people come back in as fresh records. There's a softer problem too: the file holds everyone you've ever connected with, old classmates included, so someone has to clean it up before it's worth importing at all.
Honestly, we'd skip the file for day to day work. Saving people one at a time, at the moment they become relevant, avoids both problems, because Ln2CRM looks the person up by the LinkedIn URL property before anything is created. Save the same person twice? You get their existing record back, not a twin. That property is the one from the section above.
Contact, Company, or Deal: what a LinkedIn save should create
HubSpot's object model is pretty clear, so the real question is what a single LinkedIn save should create for your team:
- Contact first. A Contact gets created and associated with its Company by domain, with no Deal yet, which suits early research.
- Contact plus Deal. Both are created in one go, for when the qualifying has already happened.
- Company enrichment only. An existing Company picks up its LinkedIn URL and any missing fields, with no Contact involved, which is handy when you're mapping out an account.
Lifecycle stage is worth a thought as well. Ln2CRM can start new Contacts as Leads or Subscribers, and we'd keep MQL and SQL for people who've actually earned them, otherwise your lifecycle reports slowly fill up with folks nobody really qualified.
Logging follow ups from the LinkedIn tab
Creating the record isn't what brings in revenue, though. Following up consistently does, so in Ln2CRM logging the next step is part of the profile itself:
- A HubSpot Task with a due date, an owner and a type, whether that's a call, an email or a to do
- A Note with whatever context came out of the LinkedIn conversation
- A Note you say out loud rather than type, tidied up by AI first if you like
- The LinkedIn chat itself, synced into HubSpot. Your first sync drops it in as one tidy note, and after that new messages turn up as new notes, whenever you click or on their own.
- Nobody has to pick the Contact, Company or Deal each time, since it all ends up on the right one.
One habit we'd recommend is keeping notes to three short lines. Why you got in touch, what they said back, what happens next and when. Handovers get easier, and so do HubSpot reports.
Saving LinkedIn company pages as HubSpot companies
And company pages? Same idea. A badge beside the company name says whether HubSpot already knows it, and if it doesn't, one click turns the page's About section into a Company record. It's worth keeping the page URL in a LinkedIn Company URL property too, because company names clash far more often than you'd expect, and two different firms called Nordic Labs is not a rare sight.
How Ln2CRM compares to other LinkedIn HubSpot tools
Quite a few Chrome extensions save LinkedIn profiles to HubSpot. Here's our honest take on the field:
| Tool | Primary focus | HubSpot history on LinkedIn | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ln2CRM | Match first sync, email finder, AI copilot | Yes | Yes |
| Hublead | HubSpot first sync | Partial | Limited |
| Surfe | Multi CRM plus email finder | Partial | Limited |
| LinkMatch | Quick save into CRM | No | Trial only |
| Native HubSpot plus Sales Nav | In record widget | Yes (HubSpot side) | No (paid stack) |
Looking for install steps and the full list of supported HubSpot objects? They're on the LinkedIn HubSpot integration page.
Comparing Ln2CRM with the competitor that's built only for HubSpot? Our side by side Ln2CRM vs Hublead goes through it. On a different CRM? There are matching guides for Pipedrive and Zoho CRM, and how a CRM extension changes LinkedIn prospecting zooms out to the bigger picture.
Security and permissions
Ln2CRM connects to HubSpot through standard OAuth with scoped access. The CRM calls run on our server against HubSpot's API, which keeps your credentials out of the browser and off LinkedIn's pages, and revoking access takes a moment under HubSpot, Settings, Connected Apps. Does anything run behind your back? No. Every action starts with a sales person clicking something, and we don't scrape profiles nobody opened.