LinkedIn Conversions API allows you to connect and share your online and offline marketing data from your server with LinkedIn. This provides LinkedIn with a complete and accurate view of your customer’s journey, helping you understand how your ad campaigns are performing.
How does it work? - An Example
Zylker Travels, a reputed travel agency, offers personalized travel packages and has published ads on LinkedIn to promote and gather leads for the December 2024 holidays.
Amy, a writer at a well-known tech company, has been searching for a beach getaway to unwind and celebrate the New Year in 2025. She comes across the ad on LinkedIn, which directs her to a landing page showcasing various travel packages. Though interested, she’s not quite ready to book the trip immediately.
A few days later, Amy receives a sponsored message on LinkedIn from Zylker Travels with a form to gather her preferences so that an agent can contact her. She fills out the necessary information.
A couple of days later, James, a Travel Expert from Zylker Travels, contacts Amy by phone to discuss her requirements and customize her itinerary. After an hour of in-depth conversation, Amy books her beach trip with Zylker Travels.
In this example, we see three touchpoints before Amy completes her booking:
LinkedIn ad on her feed (online)
A sponsored message ad (online)
The phone call (offline, tracked in CRM)
The details of these touchpoints that led to the purchase need to be shared with LinkedIn Ads to help the platform understand that a combination of online ads and the offline phone call resulted in the sale.
The prospect to customer journey is not like a straight line. "They came, they saw, they purchased" is something that every business selling a product or service would love to say or rather achieve, but it's just not the case.
The real-life customer journey is quite complex and nuanced. It involves various touchpoints. Every customer journey could be unique, and it's important for the ad tool to understand and help your business get high quality leads. This is made possible with the help of LinkedIn Conversions API (CAPI). When more such touchpoints are fed back to LinkedIn Ads, it helps the ad platform better understand your target audience, and display ads to the right people, who have high chance of conversion.
Connecting Zoho CRM with LinkedIn Conversions API
Zoho LeadChain lets you connect Zoho CRM and LinkedIn Conversions API and synchronize the marketing data automatically from the Leads, Contacts, or Deals module. It involves the following steps:
Connecting the apps
Mapping the fields
Connecting the apps
This step lets you configure the source and the destination, in this case the source will be Zoho CRM and the Destination, LinkedIn Conversions API. The source section lets you configure the module from which you would like to synchronize the data such as Leads, Contacts, or Deals.
The following options are also available to further customize the flow of data from Zoho CRM to LinkedIn Conversions API.
CRM Tags Tags are like labels that are added to a lead or contact to help group, sort, or filter them as required. Specifying tags here while configuring the connection between Zoho CRM and LinkedIn Conversion API helps you filter out the right information and send them to LinkedIn from the Leads, Contacts, or Deals module and optimize your conversion.
CRM Campaigns This option lets you synchronize the information of the leads or contacts who are associated with a Campaign in Zoho CRM. Say you have created a lead nurturing email campaign in your CRM, and you want all the leads who are part of the campaign to be sent to LinkedIn. You can select the appropriate CRM Campaign from the list, and all the leads will be automatically associated.
The destination section lets you connect your LinkedIn account, the LinkedIn ad account, and the conversion rule.
Field Mapping
This stage lets you map all the fields between LinkedIn Conversions API and Zoho CRM. This defines what data will be sent to LinkedIn from the Leads, Contacts, or Deals module.
To connect Zoho CRM and LinkedIn Conversions API
Go to the LeadChain module and click + Create new chain.
Select Setup Now next to LinkedIn Conversions API from the template available to map the Source and the Destination automatically. Alternatively, you can also click Setup Now next to Setup on your own to map the Source and the Destination manually.
Enter a suitable name for the chain.
In the Source section, do the following:
Select a Module from the drop-down list.
Select an appropriate CRM Tag and Campaign from the drop down list.
In the Destination section, do the following:
Select a LinkedIn account from the drop-down list. If you haven't connected already, click + New LinkedIn Account to add a LinkedIn account to LeadChain.
Select the LinkedIn Ad account, and the Conversion Rule from the drop-down list.
Click Proceed to Configure.
Map the fields in LinkedIn Conversions API with the fields from Zoho CRM for Event, Customer, and Custom information. Alternatively, you can also enter a default field value.
Click Save and Publish. Alternatively, you can click the drop-down and select Save as Draft.