If you're tired of the copy-paste grind, this guide's for you. Exporting LinkedIn contacts into your CRM should be simple, but anyone who's tried knows it's a mess of browser plugins, spreadsheets, and frustration. Kaspr claims to make this easy—let's see how to actually pull it off, avoid the common headaches, and get your contacts where you need them.
What You Need (and What You Don’t)
Before you start, make sure you have:
- A LinkedIn account (obviously)
- A Kaspr account (Kaspr)
- Access to your CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, etc.)
- Permissions to add or import contacts into your CRM
You don’t need to pay for LinkedIn Sales Navigator (though it helps for bigger lists), or mess with complex Zapier setups unless you want to automate further.
Pro tip: If your CRM has strict import rules or custom fields, check that first. Otherwise, you’ll spend more time cleaning up data after the export.
Step 1: Set Up Kaspr and the Chrome Extension
Kaspr is a Chrome extension that lets you pull contact info from LinkedIn profiles—emails, phone numbers, all that good stuff. The extension is basically required for this workflow.
- Go to the Chrome Web Store and add the Kaspr extension.
- Log in to your Kaspr account through the extension.
- Make sure you’re logged into LinkedIn in the same browser.
What works: The extension is straightforward. If it’s not showing up on LinkedIn, try disabling other extensions or restart your browser.
What doesn’t: Firefox users—sorry, you’re out of luck for now.
Step 2: Find LinkedIn Contacts to Export
Decide if you want to export:
- Single contacts: Open a LinkedIn profile, and you’ll see the Kaspr widget pop up.
- Bulk contacts: Use LinkedIn search or Sales Navigator to pull up lists of people. Kaspr can scrape info from these lists in batches.
Things to ignore: Don’t bother trying to export more than a few hundred contacts at once. LinkedIn will throttle you, Kaspr will slow down, and you’ll probably hit your daily limit.
Pro tip: If you’re targeting specific roles or companies, use LinkedIn’s filters before starting the export. Garbage in, garbage out.
Step 3: Extract Contact Info with Kaspr
- On each LinkedIn profile (or list), click the Kaspr widget.
- For individual profiles, hit the button to reveal and save their contact info.
- For lists, select the contacts you want and start the extraction.
Kaspr will pull whatever info it can find: email, phone, company, job title, etc. The accuracy varies—expect some blanks or outdated emails, especially if the person’s not active.
What works: Kaspr is good at finding emails for people who’ve been around in the business world a while. Less luck with recent grads or people who lock down their profiles.
What doesn’t: Don’t expect 100% hit rates. If Kaspr can’t find an email, it won’t make one up (thankfully).
Step 4: Export Data from Kaspr
Once you’ve built your list inside Kaspr:
- Go to your Kaspr dashboard (either in the extension or their web app).
- Select the contacts you’ve just extracted.
- Hit “Export.” You’ll usually get a CSV file.
Pro tip: Download your CSV right away. Kaspr sometimes limits how long they store extracted contacts, and you don’t want to redo your work.
What to ignore: Kaspr offers some integrations, but unless your CRM is on their (short) official list, the CSV export is more reliable.
Step 5: Clean Your Data (Don’t Skip This)
Before firing that CSV into your CRM, open it up and check:
- Are there duplicate contacts?
- Are job titles or company names in weird formats?
- Are essential fields (email, name) missing?
Clean up anything that looks off. This takes 5-10 minutes but saves you hours of fixing junk data later.
Pro tip: If you’re dealing with dozens of contacts, Excel’s “Remove Duplicates” and “Text to Columns” are your best friends.
What to ignore: Don’t try to fill in missing emails or phone numbers with guesses. Bad data is worse than no data.
Step 6: Import Into Your CRM
Every CRM is a little different, but the basics are:
- Go to your CRM’s import tool.
- Upload the cleaned CSV.
- Map the fields (make sure “First Name,” “Last Name,” “Email,” etc., line up with what your CRM expects).
- Start the import.
What works: Most CRMs will flag duplicates or errors, so pay attention to those warnings.
What doesn’t: If your CRM requires unique fields (like email), anyone missing that info will be skipped. Don’t sweat it—just focus on the records that go through.
Pro tip: Import a handful first as a test. If everything looks good, do the rest.
Step 7: Automate (Optional, but Worth It If You’re Doing This Regularly)
If you find yourself doing this weekly, look into:
- Kaspr’s native CRM integrations (limited, but worth checking)
- Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat) for connecting Kaspr to more CRMs
- CRM-specific browser plugins
But honestly, for most people, downloading a CSV and importing is fast enough. Automate only if it’s truly saving you time—not because you think you “should.”
Honest Pros and Cons
What works: - Kaspr is faster and less clunky than most alternatives, especially for small batches. - The Chrome extension is dead simple to use. - No need to mess with LinkedIn’s clumsy “Download your data” tool.
What doesn’t: - You can’t magically get emails for everyone—expect gaps. - Bulk exports have limits (both from Kaspr and LinkedIn’s side). - Data accuracy is only as good as what’s on LinkedIn.
What to ignore: - Don’t get sucked into scraping thousands of contacts at once. You’ll get blocked or banned, and the data quality tanks fast. - Don’t rely on automated enrichment to fill in missing fields—double-check anything critical.
Wrapping Up: Keep It Simple, Stay Sane
The fastest way to move LinkedIn contacts into your CRM is to keep it simple: find the right people, use Kaspr to pull the data, clean it up, and import the CSV. If you run into snags, don’t overcomplicate things—fix the basics first. Once you’ve done it a couple of times, it’s a 10-minute job.
Don’t worry about being perfect. Just get your contacts in, and tweak your process as you go. If you hit any weird edge cases, chances are you’re not alone—someone else has already posted about it in the Kaspr help docs or forums.
Good luck, and don’t let data busywork slow you down.