Mailchimp LinkedIn integration: how to add LinkedIn connections to a Mailchimp audience

Your newsletter and your email flows live in Mailchimp. The people you talk to every week are on LinkedIn. You open Mailchimp's integrations directory, type "LinkedIn" and hope your connections will start flowing into your audience.

Short answer: Mailchimp has its own LinkedIn integration, and it does one job: it copies the people who fill in your LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms (lead ads) into an audience. It doesn't bring in your connections or the people you message. For those there are two ways. By hand, you export your connections from LinkedIn and import the file into Mailchimp, with the limits below. Automatically, a LinkedIn outreach tool adds each person through Mailchimp's API at the moment they accept or reply. Either way, add only people who agreed to get your emails, or let Mailchimp's double opt-in ask them.

What Mailchimp offers for LinkedIn today

We read Mailchimp's integrations directory, help center and developer docs on November 13, 2026:

• LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. Listed as made by Mailchimp, and free. Mailchimp's help says it "automatically syncs customer leads who have responded to your LinkedIn lead forms into your Mailchimp audience", usually about every 15 minutes. You pick the LinkedIn account, the form and the audience, map the fields, and choose whether leads arrive as subscribed or non-subscribed. It needs Manager access to a LinkedIn ad account, Administrator access to a Company Page, or both. See Mailchimp's page for it.
• Zapier. Its LinkedIn Ads app starts a Zap on a new Lead Gen Form response, and its Mailchimp app has Add/Update Subscriber. That is the same kind of lead: someone who filled in a form.

On those pages we didn't find a Mailchimp feature that imports your LinkedIn connections, or one that sends LinkedIn invitations or messages. If your leads come from LinkedIn lead forms, you can stop reading: Mailchimp's own integration is the right tool.

Three ways to get LinkedIn people into a Mailchimp audience

Way	Who it moves	Emails you get	Best when
Mailchimp's LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms integration	People who fill in your LinkedIn lead forms	The one each person submits	You run LinkedIn lead ads
Export from LinkedIn, import the file	Your 1st-degree connections, as of the day you export	Only from connections who allow their email to be downloaded	A one-time list of people who already agreed
An outreach tool that calls Mailchimp's API (Kerux)	Each contact, when they accept or reply in a campaign	The email the contact has in the campaign	You do LinkedIn outreach every week and want the audience to stay current

Before you add anyone: consent

Mailchimp's help defines permission as "express, verifiable consent to receive marketing communication" and says it is required by its Terms of Use. Accepting a connection request on LinkedIn is not that by itself. In practice:

• Ask first. One line in the LinkedIn conversation ("Want the monthly newsletter? I can add you") gives you a clear yes, in writing.
• Use double opt-in when you add someone through the API: the status pending makes Mailchimp send its confirmation email, and the person joins as subscribed only after clicking the link in it.
• Don't import a list you got from someone else. Mailchimp's help says a list "obtained from a third-party source" violates its Terms.

The rules differ by country, and this is a practical note, not legal advice.

The manual way: export your connections, import the file

1. Export from LinkedIn. Click the Me icon, then Settings & Privacy > Data privacy. Under How LinkedIn uses your data, click Get a copy of your data, choose the data that includes your connections and click Request archive. LinkedIn emails a download link to your primary address. LinkedIn's help has the current screens.

2. Know what the file has. Two limits, both from LinkedIn's help:

• Only 1st-degree connections are in it.
• An email address appears only for connections "who have allowed their connections to see or download their email address". Each member chooses that in their own privacy settings, so some rows come without an email.

3. Import into Mailchimp. Save the rows that have an email as a CSV file and upload it with Mailchimp's import tool (Mailchimp's steps). On the way you can add a tag such as linkedin to everyone in the file, and you match each column to an audience field; columns you don't match aren't imported. Mailchimp asks for one email marketing status for the whole file, such as Subscribed or Non-subscribed. Choose Subscribed only if everyone in the file agreed.

What to expect from this route:

• No confirmation email. Mailchimp's help says imported subscribed contacts "don't go through the signup process", so the permission has to exist before the import.
• It is a snapshot. Next month's new connections need a new export and a new import. Mailchimp leaves out addresses that are already in the audience, so importing again doesn't duplicate anyone.
• People who unsubscribed stay unsubscribed. An import can't subscribe them again.
• Size. Mailchimp's Free plan holds up to 250 contacts.

For a small network and a one-time move, this is enough, and it needs no other tool.

The automated way: add each person when they accept or reply

If you run LinkedIn outreach every week, the export gets old fast. The other way is to let the campaign itself write to Mailchimp. Kerux has no native Mailchimp app. It works with Mailchimp's Marketing API, through steps you can put anywhere in a campaign:

Direction	In Mailchimp	In Kerux
A LinkedIn contact joins your audience	An API key and the audience ID	A Webhook / HTTP step
A tag starts your Mailchimp emails	An automation flow with the Tag added trigger	A second Webhook / HTTP step
Mailchimp continues or starts a Kerux campaign	A Webhook step in a flow (Standard or Premium plan)	A Wait for webhook step or the campaign's trigger URL

The first two rows are the setup below. The third has limits, covered after it.

1. Connect Mailchimp once

In Mailchimp, click your profile icon and choose Profile, then Extras > API keys > Create A Key. Name it "Kerux", click Generate Key and copy it: Mailchimp shows the full key only once. Two things from Mailchimp's help: a key gives full access to the account, so give each tool its own key, and keys created since June 22, 2026 expire one year after they are created. Put the date in your calendar.

Then copy the audience ID: Audience > More options > Audience settings, and the copy icon next to Audience ID.

In Kerux, open Integrations > Connections and click Connect on Custom API:

• How it signs in: Username and password. Any username (for example kerux), and the API key as the password. Mailchimp's API accepts a key that way, with any username.
• Base URL: https://api.mailchimp.com/3.0, the root URL in Mailchimp's developer docs.

Click Save, then Test connection: Kerux makes one read-only call and tells you whether the key works.

2. Add or update the member

The two steps can go anywhere in the campaign, for example on the accepted path of the Connect step. The safer place is after a message that offers the newsletter, on the path of the people who said yes. Add a Condition step first, Has an email address, so contacts without an email skip Mailchimp instead of waiting for one.

Add a Webhook / HTTP step, pick the Mailchimp connection and name it mailchimp:

{
  "method": "PUT",
  "url": "/lists/YOUR_AUDIENCE_ID/members/{{email}}",
  "bodyType": "json",
  "body": {
    "email_address": "{{email}}",
    "status_if_new": "pending",
    "merge_fields": { "FNAME": "{{contact.first_name}}", "LNAME": "{{contact.last_name | optional}}" }
  }
}

What each part does, from Mailchimp's API reference:

• PUT adds the person if they are new and updates them if they are already in the audience, so a contact who passes twice is never duplicated. The address takes the member's email in place of its MD5 hash.
• status_if_new only applies to new people. Someone who is already subscribed, or who unsubscribed, keeps their status.
• pending is double opt-in: Mailchimp sends the confirmation email. Use subscribed only when the person already agreed in writing.
• merge_fields uses your audience's merge tags as keys. If your audience has a field for the LinkedIn profile, add it with that field's tag and {{contact.linkedin_url}} as the value.

Mailchimp answers with the member, including its id and its status.

3. Add the tag that starts your emails

A second Webhook / HTTP step, right after the first:

{
  "method": "POST",
  "url": "/lists/YOUR_AUDIENCE_ID/members/{{steps.mailchimp.response.body.id}}/tags",
  "bodyType": "json",
  "body": { "tags": [{ "name": "linkedin", "status": "active" }] }
}

Mailchimp's reference for this endpoint asks for the member's hash in the address. That is the id the first step got back, so the step reads it from there. A tag that doesn't exist yet is created.

In Mailchimp, build an automation flow that starts with the Tag added trigger and pick linkedin. Mailchimp's help calls these marketing automation flows (you may know them as Customer Journeys) and says adding steps to a flow needs the Essentials plan or higher.

4. Test with one contact

In the Builder, click Test to open Test on one contact and use your own email. Check three things in Mailchimp: the member, the tag and the confirmation email.

If a call fails, the contact stops with Mailchimp's own message and shows in Home > Tasks with Retry. Two from Mailchimp's error list: 401 API Key Invalid (the key is invalid or disabled) and 404 Resource Not Found (the audience ID or the address is wrong). When a key stops working, the connection's row says Needs attention and the steps wait: click Fix, then Edit, and paste the new key.

The one-to-one follow-ups stay in the campaign: LinkedIn messages, and Send email steps from your own inbox. Mailchimp gets the people who want your newsletter.

The other direction: from Mailchimp to a Kerux campaign

This direction is narrower, and we haven't run it on a live Mailchimp account, so test it with one contact before you rely on it.

• What Mailchimp can send. An automation flow can have a Webhook step that sends a request to a URL when a contact reaches it. Mailchimp's help says webhooks need its Standard or Premium plan.
• What Kerux can receive. A campaign's trigger URL takes a POST with JSON and needs the person's LinkedIn profile URL, because that is how a campaign knows whom to invite. A Wait for webhook step holds a contact who is already in a campaign until data arrives for them, matched by a field you choose, such as the email.

So it fits only if the body you build in Mailchimp's webhook step can carry that contact's email or LinkedIn URL: check that in Mailchimp's editor first. If your audience has no LinkedIn URLs, Mailchimp can't start LinkedIn outreach for those people. Zapier, Make or n8n between the two also works: they can POST the JSON to the trigger URL.

Where this isn't the right fit

• Your leads come from LinkedIn lead forms. Use Mailchimp's own LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms integration.
• You want to move your network once. The export and one import do it.
• You want one click. The automated way is a paste-the-JSON setup with an API key. In Kerux it is part of Pro and Agency and of the 10-day free trial, and it isn't on Starter. Plans are on the pricing page.
• Most of your contacts have no email. Mailchimp needs one. The LinkedIn part of the campaign still runs for them; they just skip the Mailchimp steps.

The Mailchimp integration page shows the flow, and the Mailchimp setup guide in the help center has the short version. The help center also covers connections, webhook steps and trigger URLs. The pattern behind it (call an app, wait for its answer, continue) is in Outreach webhooks, the same idea with a CRM is in Pipedrive and LinkedIn, and every tool Kerux works with is on Integrations.

Mailchimp is a trademark of Intuit. Kerux is an independent product that works with Mailchimp through its public API.