A while back, Microsoft quietly pulled the plug on something that actually worked pretty well: the out-of-the-box integration between LinkedIn LeadGen forms and Dynamics 365 Marketing. Even though it didn’t seem directly tied to Outbound Marketing, it lived inside that module — and when Outbound Marketing was discontinued, this integration went poof.
If you never used it, the feature let you capture leads from LinkedIn campaigns directly into Dynamics as leads. Clean and simple.
I even asked Jim Nakashima, the Product Leader at Microsoft, about it when he visited Stockholm before Christmas last year. His answer was straightforward: “Too few customers are using it. We will not prioritize a replacement”. Fair enough. But for those who were using it, the impact is real. And as you can see from the votes and comments on Microsoft’s Idea site, we weren’t that few; “Bring Linkedin LeadGen to real-time journeys“, with 100+ votes and counting.
Instead of providing a replacement, Microsoft published an article, a “how-to guide” for building your own integration. Then they removed that article too. And honestly? Even when it was there, calling it a replacement was a stretch. Unless you’ve got a pro developer colleague sitting idle, spending (at least) a couple of days building and testing something like this is not really an option. Also, having each customer build their own integration is a complete waste of time.
So, what now?
Two Workarounds I’ve Tested
I investigated the Microsoft “solution” and a couple of other possible replacement solutions for one of my customers:
1. Swap LeadGen forms for Dynamics 365 forms
Instead of running campaigns with LinkedIn LeadGen, you can set up your own Dynamics 365 form and then use LinkedIn “Sponsored Content” to promote it instead. Just add a link from your LinkedIn to your own form and you’re good to go.
It works, it’s free (no extra tools needed), and it keeps everything inside your own environment.
Downside: it requires a bit of setup and most important; the user experience isn’t as streamlined as LinkedIn’s native forms. The native forms are prefilled with the customer’s profile details, where as the customer has to enter their contact details again if you use your own form. It’s not difficult to do, but the easier it is to submit the form the more submissions you will get.
2. Use Zapier to connect LinkedIn LeadGen with Dynamics 365
If you prefer to keep using the LeadGen-forms in LinkedIn, instead of creating your own forms, then you should take a look at Zapier which is a third party integration tool. Zapier has a connector for LinkedIn LeadGen-forms and another one for Dynamics 365. Using these connectors you can push leads directly into Dynamics from LinkedIn. It costs about $20/month (for a personal account), but the real win is how fast and simple it is. You don’t need a developer — your marketing team can set this up in under an hour if they have the right permissions. Zapier is a well-known product with good reputation, so even if you have a strict policy on using third party services, this one will likely pass.
For most organizations, the time saved compared to “rolling your own integration” easily pays for that monthly fee. Better yet, once you have that Premium subscription for Zapier you can most likely find more use cases for it. You pay once for the subscription, not for each integration you build. Quite similar to your Power Automate licenses I would say.
My recommendation
I get why Microsoft killed the original integration. If only a small percentage of customers used it, it’s hard to justify ongoing investment. But the way it was handled — no replacement, no supported alternative — leaves customers stranded.
That’s why I recommend Zapier. It’s affordable, quick to implement, and it puts control back into the hands of your marketing team instead of the devs.
Outbound Marketing may be gone, but that doesn’t mean your LinkedIn campaigns need to hit a dead end.
Have you found any other workaround for LinkedIn LeadGen + Dynamics 365? Let me know — I’d love to hear how others are solving this!
Hi Fredrik, we are experiencing similar challenges and facing the issues you mentioned. We are still waiting (or better: hoping) for MS to provide a concrete update, but it does not appear to be forthcoming. Did you consider this custom integration in your assessments? Thank you for sharing your article and feedback!
https://community.dynamics.com/blogs/post/?postid=fb6ed89f-67a1-ef11-8a69-7c1e520b1f9b
Hi Maximilian!
I think you (and all of us) have waited long enough… Let’s face it; Microsoft will not deliver a replacement for us.
The solution in the article you’re linking to is the one I referred to in my blog post. I couldn’t find it anywhere and thought Microsoft had removed it completely, but it was apparently still available on the Community site.
I have looked at it quite a bit, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It will take some time to set it up, and even after it’s set up, it seems like a very fragile solution to me.
It has too many moving parts… And I don’t think it makes sense that each customer creates their own custom solution for the same integration.
Better to have a look at Zapier (or LeadsBridge that someone else recommended), that have precreated solutions for this.
If you want to avoid the monthly cost, consider building a fully custom integration pro-code style and try to simplify it as much as possible.
Good luck!