Contact List Template and Formatter for LinkedIn Ads

How to use the contact list template formatter for LinkedIn

LinkedIn gives you a blank LinkedIn contact list template and asks you to fill it in without changing a single header. This tool fills it for you from a HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify or Excel export, following LinkedIn's Upload company and contact targeting lists and contact list targeting help pages. Your contacts never leave your computer.

1. Add your export. Drop in the CSV or Excel file, or paste rows from a spreadsheet. Click Try sample data to see a test run first.
2. Check the matched columns. Headers like Email Address, Company Name, Country/Region or billing_first_name are matched for you. If your CRM has one “Name” column, map it as the full name and we split it.
3. Pick plain or hashed emails. Plain is fine for the Campaign Manager upload. Choose SHA-256 if your company policy says personal data must be hashed before it leaves your system.
4. Read the problem list. Each rejected row says why: no match key, a broken address, an MD5 hash, a name over LinkedIn's length limit, a country we could not read.
5. Download the CSV. The file keeps LinkedIn's seven headers in the original order, saved as UTF-8 so accents in names survive.

What goes in each column

The length limits come from LinkedIn's Matched Audiences API guide. The help pages give none, so long values are flagged, not cut.

How to upload the contact list in Campaign Manager

1. In Campaign Manager, open Plan and then Audiences.
2. Click Create audience and choose Matched Audience.
3. Pick Company / Contact and click Next.
4. Name the audience, set List type to Contact list and click Select list to choose the downloaded CSV.
5. Click Agree & Upload. Building the audience can take up to 48 hours.

Each audience holds one list. If the tool split your file into parts, create one matched audience per part. Also note that LinkedIn does not let you combine a contact list with member interests and traits targeting in the same ad set.

Common LinkedIn contact list errors and fixes

Upload error after editing the template

Renaming firstname to “First Name” or deleting the empty googleaid column counts as a changed header, and LinkedIn says that causes an upload error. Extra columns such as “Phone” are not part of the template either. Start from the downloaded CSV and only edit the rows below the header.

LinkedIn contact list less than 300 members

The upload worked, but fewer than 300 people matched. The audience stays gray until it reaches 300 members. Bigger lists fix this faster than anything else; that is why LinkedIn suggests 10,000 or more emails.

Hashed names or companies

Some data tools hash every column. LinkedIn accepts a hash only in email. A hashed first name or company cannot match anyone, so the tool empties those cells and tells you which rows they were on.

Broken accents and special characters

Names like Zoë or Müller turn into odd symbols when Excel saves in an older encoding. LinkedIn asks for UTF-8 when a list has special characters. Our download is always UTF-8. If you open it in Excel, save it again as “CSV UTF-8”.

List over 300,000 records or 20 MB

LinkedIn caps one list at 300,000 records or 20 MB. The tool splits a bigger list into parts under both limits, so nothing is lost. Each part becomes its own audience.

Rows with a first name only

Without an email, LinkedIn needs both first and last name. Rows like “Hana, Adventure Works” are left out, because a first name and a company are not enough to find one person.