LinkedIn Audiences & Enrichment
Audiences are collections of LinkedIn profiles used as targets for LinkedIn campaigns:
Creating Audiences:
- From Find Prospects — Run a LinkedIn search, select profiles, and save them to a new or existing audience
- Manual — Create an empty audience and add profiles individually
- Import — Upload a CSV with LinkedIn profile URLs
Profile Enrichment:
Enrichment fetches full profile data for each prospect in an audience — name, headline, company, location, job title, connection degree, and profile picture. This data enables personalization in your campaign messages using merge tags like {{firstName}}, {{company}}, and {{headline}}.
How Enrichment Works:
- The system processes profiles in small batches (up to 15 per tick, every 3 minutes) to mimic natural LinkedIn browsing.
- Each profile is fetched individually through your connected LinkedIn account — the same way you would view a profile manually on LinkedIn.
- A daily cap limits how many profiles can be enriched per day based on your account strategy (see below).
- When the daily cap is reached, enrichment pauses automatically and resumes at midnight UTC.
- Enrichment results are cached for 30 days — if the same profile appears in another audience, cached data is reused instantly (no API call needed).
Enrichment Daily Caps (per account strategy):
• New Account (week 1): ~10 profiles/day, increasing to 60/day by week 6
• Established (week 1): ~30 profiles/day, increasing to 80/day by week 4
• Veteran (week 1): ~50 profiles/day, increasing to 100/day by week 2
• Recovery: ~5 profiles/day, increasing to 30/day by week 8
These caps protect your LinkedIn account from being flagged for excessive profile viewing.
Estimated Enrichment Times:
The Audiences page shows an estimated time remaining based on your daily cap. For large audiences on new accounts, enrichment can take multiple days. Examples:
• 100 profiles on a veteran account: ~1-2 days
• 500 profiles on a new account (week 1): ~50 days at 10/day cap
• 1,000 profiles on an established account: ~13-33 days depending on ramp week
As your account ages and advances through ramp weeks, the daily cap increases and enrichment speeds up.
Why Enrichment Uses Your LinkedIn Account:
LinkedIn requires an authenticated session to view profile data — there is no public API or way to access profiles without a logged-in account. Using a shared 'system' account is not possible because:
• LinkedIn actively detects and bans accounts that view profiles at scale from a single source
• A shared account would be banned within hours, affecting all users
• Your own account sees network-specific data (connection degree, mutual connections) that a third-party account cannot access
• This is how all LinkedIn automation tools work — each user must use their own authenticated account
Is Enrichment Required to Start a Campaign?
No — enrichment is completely optional. You can create and launch a LinkedIn campaign immediately without waiting for enrichment to complete. Campaigns use LinkedIn profile URLs to send connection requests and messages. Enrichment simply adds extra profile details (name, company, headline) that enable richer personalization with merge tags. If enrichment is incomplete, campaigns still work — you just may have fewer personalization fields available for unenriched profiles.
Audience-to-Prospect Linking:
Enriched profiles are automatically linked to your Prospects table. LinkedIn-specific fields are populated: member ID, profile URL, headline, company, and location.
Using Audiences in Campaigns:
When creating a LinkedIn campaign, select one or more audiences as the target. Prospects from the audience are enrolled into the campaign steps. You can start the campaign immediately — enrichment continues in the background and data becomes available as profiles are enriched.
FAQ:
Q: Why is my enrichment showing 16 days remaining?
A: The daily cap depends on your account strategy and ramp week. New accounts start with a low cap (~10 profiles/day) to protect your LinkedIn account. As your account ages and progresses through ramp weeks, the cap increases. For large audiences (500+ profiles), initial enrichment can take multiple days. You do not need to wait — start your campaign now and enrichment will continue in the background.
Q: My enrichment stopped or failed — what happened?
A: Common causes: 1) Your LinkedIn account disconnected during enrichment — reconnect from LinkedIn > Accounts and restart enrichment. 2) Daily cap reached — enrichment pauses until midnight UTC and resumes automatically. 3) Circuit breaker triggered — if too many errors occur (10+ in a day), enrichment stops to protect your account. Reconnect your account and retry.
Q: Can I speed up enrichment?
A: The enrichment rate is intentionally conservative to protect your LinkedIn account. Faster enrichment would risk LinkedIn restrictions or bans. As your account moves to higher ramp weeks (2-6 weeks after connection), the daily cap automatically increases. Veteran accounts (1+ year old) have the highest caps.
Q: Does enrichment count toward my LinkedIn daily limits?
A: Yes, enrichment uses profile view API calls that share the daily limit with campaign 'View Profile' steps. If you have active campaigns with profile view steps, they share the same daily cap.
Tip: Build targeted audiences using Sales Navigator filters for best results. Quality over quantity — a smaller, well-targeted audience will outperform a large, generic one.