Introduction
In today’s competitive sales environment, lead generation teams often face the challenge of consolidating leads from multiple sources such as web forms, email campaigns, social media platforms, and CRM systems. Manually aggregating these leads is time-consuming, error-prone, and hinders timely follow-up. Automating the aggregation of leads not only improves efficiency but also ensures that sales teams always have an up-to-date, unified view of prospects, enabling faster and better-informed decision-making.
This guide will walk you through how to build an automated lead aggregation workflow using n8n, an open-source workflow automation tool. The workflow will integrate multiple lead sources—such as Gmail (for incoming lead emails), Google Sheets (for form submissions), and LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms—combine and deduplicate the lead data, and then send the cleaned and aggregated leads to a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce. This workflow is designed for sales teams, automation engineers, and startup CTOs who want to reduce manual lead handling and improve pipeline accuracy.
Tools and Services Integrated
– n8n: The automation platform to build the workflow.
– Gmail: Capture leads from incoming emails.
– Google Sheets: Collect leads from web forms or other manual inputs.
– LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms: Automated capture of leads from LinkedIn campaigns.
– HubSpot (or Salesforce): Destination CRM where aggregated leads will be sent.
– Slack (Optional): For team notifications when new leads are aggregated.
Step-by-Step Technical Tutorial
Prerequisites:
– A running instance of n8n (can be self-hosted or cloud).
– Access to Gmail with API credentials configured in n8n.
– Google Sheets with a spreadsheet collecting leads.
– LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms credentials.
– HubSpot API key or Salesforce connected app credentials.
Step 1: Set Up Trigger Nodes for Each Lead Source
1.1 Gmail Trigger
– Purpose: Watch for new emails in a specified label or mailbox containing lead information.
– In n8n, add a Gmail Trigger node.
– Configure it to monitor the inbox or a specific label (e.g., “Leads Incoming”).
– Apply filters to only trigger on emails relevant to leads, e.g., by subject or sender.
1.2 Google Sheets Trigger (Polling)
– Purpose: Fetch new rows added to a Google Sheet where web forms or manual entries log leads.
– Add a Google Sheets node configured as Trigger or Scheduled node that runs every 5 minutes (n8n currently does not support native triggers for Google Sheets, so use polling).
– Configure to read the sheet (e.g., from row N onwards using a Last Processed Row stored in workflow data).
1.3 LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Trigger
– Purpose: Capture leads from LinkedIn campaign forms.
– Use the HTTP Request node or LinkedIn API Credentials to pull new leads regularly (LinkedIn does not provide webhook triggers).
– Schedule the node to run every 10-15 minutes.
Step 2: Normalize and Extract Lead Data
Each source will have data in slightly different formats. We need to normalize fields like name, email, phone, and company.
2.1 Parse Gmail Email Content
– Add a Function node after Gmail Trigger.
– Extract usable lead data from the email body or attachments using regex or email parsing libraries.
– Output a standardized JSON object with keys: name, email, phone, company, source (“Gmail”).
2.2 Parse Google Sheets Rows
– The Google Sheets node returns structured rows.
– Add a Set or Function node to map column headers to the standardized JSON keys.
– Add “source”: “Google Sheets” key.
2.3 Parse LinkedIn Leads
– LinkedIn API returns data in JSON.
– Normalize fields to match the same standardized keys.
– Add “source”: “LinkedIn”.
Step 3: Merge and Deduplicate Leads
3.1 Merge Data
– Use the Merge node configured as ‘Append’ to combine lead objects from all sources into one array.
3.2 Deduplicate Leads
– Add a Function node to iterate through leads and remove duplicates based on unique keys (usually email).
– Sample snippet:
“`javascript
const uniqueLeads = [];
const emails = new Set();
for (const lead of items) {
if (!emails.has(lead.json.email)) {
emails.add(lead.json.email);
uniqueLeads.push(lead);
}
}
return uniqueLeads;
“`
Step 4: Filter Valid Leads
– Use the IF node to filter out records missing mandatory fields like email or name.
– Route invalid leads to a different path for logging or alerts.
Step 5: Send Leads to CRM
5.1 HubSpot Node
– Add a HubSpot node for “Create or Update Contact.”
– Map fields from the normalized lead object.
– Configure to update existing contacts to avoid duplicates, based on email.
5.2 Alternatively, Salesforce Node
– Use the Salesforce node with “Upsert” operation on Contacts.
Step 6: Notify Sales Team (Optional)
– Add a Slack node to send a notification to the sales channel with lead summary.
– Useful to alert reps instantly when hot leads appear.
Step 7: Error Handling and Logging
– Add a Catch node to handle failures in any node.
– Log errors to a separate Google Sheet or send Slack alerts to admins.
– Implement retries in nodes that interact with APIs to make the workflow robust.
Common Errors and Tips
– API Rate Limits: Monitor API usage especially for LinkedIn and HubSpot; use delays or exponential backoff retries.
– Parsing Failures: Email formats change often; regular updates to parsing logic in Function nodes may be needed.
– Data Consistency: Ensure date/time zones align when pulling from different systems.
– Google Sheets Polling: Keep track of last processed row or timestamp using workflow static data to avoid duplicate processing.
Scaling and Adaptations
– Add More Sources: Integrate additional lead sources like Facebook Lead Ads, Typeform, or custom webhooks following the same structure.
– Enrich Leads: Add API calls to enrichment tools (Clearbit, Hunter) for better lead scoring.
– Multi-CRM Support: Branch the workflow logic to route leads automatically to different CRMs based on sales regions or teams.
– Bulk Processing: Batch API calls to improve efficiency when sending leads to APIs that support bulk operations.
Summary
Automating lead aggregation from multiple sources using n8n significantly reduces manual workload and enhances data accuracy for sales teams. By triggering on emails, sheets, and LinkedIn forms, normalizing data, deduplicating leads, and forwarding them to a CRM, this workflow provides a reliable, scalable solution.
Bonus Tip: Use n8n’s built-in credentials manager and environment variables to securely store API keys and easily migrate workflow between environments without code changes.
With this automation in place, sales teams can focus on converting leads, while ensuring no valuable prospect falls through the cracks.