CRM integrations

LinkedIn Sales Navigator integrated with your CRM provides a mutual benefit. Read on to understand how LinkedIn Sales Navigator connects to your CRM, the data we rely on, and the ways that data is used.

How we connect to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce

LinkedIn Sales Navigator connects to your CRM either through a system administrator or service account and relies on bulk APIs by Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce. For some features, we may also rely on OAuth authentication for users who exist in both your CRM and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. All connections use secure protocols to encrypt data both in transit and at rest.

What data we rely on and how it’s used

To ensure the best experience for users, Sales Navigator downloads the following data from your CRM:

  • Contacts and Leads:  used to match CRM leads to people profiles in Sales Navigator
  • Accounts:  used to match CRM contacts to companies in LinkedIn Sales Navigator
  • Opportunities:  used to filter Accounts and Contacts to import into LinkedIn Sales Navigator by selecting only those that are related to open Opportunities whose stage is past the stage selected in CRM sync preferences
  • Users and User Roles:  used to map CRM users to Sales Navigator Users and enforce access and visibility. The data is also used to infer the organizational hierarchy for usage/value reporting purpose. Sales Navigator can inherit the security that you have established in your CRM; enforcing that users cannot see data in Sales Navigator that they would not already have access to in the CRM. This is an important feature that ensures that the right people have the right access.

Imported CRM data is used to quickly sync relevant Accounts, Contacts and Leads. In addition, the imported CRM data is used to improve the relevance of LinkedIn Sales Navigator features on behalf of the end user (ex: lead recommendations, insights and Social Selling Index).

To save your users time, Sales Navigator can write the following data back to your CRM: InMails, Messages, Notes. With your approval, LinkedIn may also use your imported CRM data to analyze and provide you with custom “ROI” reporting. These reports are provided to help you understand the influence LinkedIn/Sales Navigator has on deals in your pipeline, the value of those deals, and how efficiently your sales professionals are able to close them.

IThe imported CRM data is kept confidential for each customer and customers maintain control of their CRM data. CRM integrations can be disabled at any time and CRM data purged from LinkedIn databases. This purging process is accomplished through the user interface by any Admin user.

Supporting documents


How we connect to HubSpot's Smart CRM

The CRM Sync (& Activity Writeback) is a bi-directional data flow that relies on secure, dedicated APIs (SMSC) between Sales Navigator (LinkedIn) and your CRM. Data is encrypted in transit between CRM Partners Salesforce and LinkedIn, relying on TLS over dedicated APIs. Integrating CRM platforms utilizes LinkedIn’s Enterprise Authentication and Authorization flows to create a secure OAuth connection.

What data we rely on and how it’s used

SMSC enabled CRM Partners send Opportunity, Contact, Account, Lead, and User data from the CRM to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This data is processed to identify matching people and companies that exist in both LinkedIn and within your CRM. Matches are based on a scoring model that uses a variety of criteria including names, contact information, and geographic information.

Imported data is stored securely within a LinkedIn database:

  • Matched Records: matched CRM Accounts and Leads/Contacts will have the “CRM” badge/link displayed.
  • CRM Badge: users will see a “CRM” badge within LinkedIn Sales Navigator for all records (CRM Accounts, Contacts, and Leads). Clicking this badge saves users time by taking them immediately to the corresponding CRM record in Salesforce. The “CRM Badge” badge is displayed for all LinkedIn Sales Navigator users, even if they do not have permission to view the matching object within the CRM (permissions limit access in CRM).
  • Unmatched Records: CRM records not matched will not show a CRM badge, but users can manually create matches from within the CRM using the Embedded Profile (Display Widget) integration — matches made in this fashion will be stored and visible to all users on the LinkedIn Sales Navigator contract.
  • Incorrect Matches: if incorrect matches are found, then users can manually re-match to the correct LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lead/Account from within the CRM, on an individual basis, using the Embedded Profile (Display Widgets) integration — this match will be stored for all users on the contract. Users may also re-match Accounts from LinkedIn Sales Navigator Account Lists, by clicking on “Rematch Account” and searching for the correct CRM Account. Match rates for all data are reported in aggregate within the LinkedIn Sales Navigator administrator console.

Supporting documents

CRM Security and implementation white-paper for HubSpot's Smart CRM

Partner integrations

The LinkedIn Sales Navigator Application Platform (SNAP) is a partner program providing customers with expanded Sales Navigator partner integrations across their sales stack. Each SNAP partner is carefully selected through a rigorous application process, and undergoes a rigorous design review prior to receiving access to LinkedIn Sales Navigator SDKs and APIs. Throughout development, partners are required to use environment-specific credentials, and LinkedIn conducts a code and security review to ensure compliance to standards.

SNAP security requirements focus on how partners access and protect LinkedIn information, including the credentials used to access it. For SNAP Display service integrations, partners just display content within the context of the their product, within a browser. All the information is accessed directly from LinkedIn within the browser, and the partners do not actually get access to the LinkedIn data. For SNAP API Integrations such as those for data sync and BI tools, partners use distinct API keys for data access, and best practice methods are used to enforce the security of LinkedIn information.

Smart Links

Smart Links is the content sharing functionality in LinkedIn Sales Navigator that allows sales professionals to package and share relevant sales documents with their buyers throughout the customer lifecycle. LinkedIn Sales Navigator users can attach multiple files, and images to a Smart Links presentation, and send to buyers via web links in email and InMail messages. Once a Smart Links presentation has been accessed, LinkedIn Sales Navigator users can track viewer engagement in order to better gauge intent and follow up more effectively.

Please see here for additional information on Smart Links security

Enterprise connectivity

Rolling out and managing access to LinkedIn Sales Navigator at scale is made possible through our enterprise integrations. The Sales Navigator platform supports SSO and auto-provisioning capabilities using Employee Data Integration (EDI) to give administrators greater control of application access. Our SSO relies on industry standard SAML 2.0 protocols both for IdP and SP initiated authentication paths. Employee data upload is only permitted over HTTPS and SFTP.  Penetration testing has been performed on SSO integration, the admin portal, and all EDI interfaces (including UI-based CSV upload, SFTP and HTTPS) as well as targeted source code review during development.

See here for more information on SSO/EDI security.

Certifications

Learn more about industry standard certifications for the LinkedIn platform:

Certifications

Additional resources

See the following resource below to learn more about security across the LinkedIn platform:

Additional resources