Bulk Actions in LinkedIn: Your Secret Weapon

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Madie Hubschmid Written on May 25th, 2023, Last updated on October 10th, 2023

Everyone that has used LinkedIn’s campaign manager knows it’s not the most intuitive platform. It can be slow, buggy and time-consuming to manually edit multiple campaigns individually in the platform – wasting time and patience! 

If you’re anything like us and you’re segmenting your audience granularly and managing multiple campaigns, making these types of changes in bulk is, ahem, not fun

The good news? There is an easier way – LinkedIn’s bulk actions. Bulk actions will save both your time and sanity when editing large accounts! Let’s dive into what they are and how they work. 

Bulk Actions – Your Efficiency Saviour

Bulk actions can be used to easily and efficiently edit and create different elements of campaign groups, campaigns and ads. This is especially useful when updating a large number of campaigns, for example, changing the status of campaigns, updating audience exclusions, and changing budgets or schedules. 

Instead of having to update all these elements manually in every campaign, you can make changes in one exported spreadsheet and then re-upload it to adjust the campaigns automatically, saving precious time and resources!

How to Use Bulk Actions

To make the most of this innovative tool, get started by either selecting the campaigns you want to export and edit or selecting ‘export all campaigns’ under the bulk actions button on the campaign manager homepage. 

Once exported, you’ll receive an Excel document with all the details of the campaigns selected. Here, aspects of the campaigns/ads/campaign groups can be edited in a huge number of different ways, including adding elements that weren’t previously there. 

For example, you can update the campaign audience, budget or bid strategy, change the ad name, copy or URL and edit the campaign group name, budget or schedule. A full list of all the editable elements can be found here.

Once these elements have been updated in line with the restrictions and formatting structure of the bulk actions template, this file can be uploaded back into the LinkedIn platform via the ‘import file’ option, under the bulk actions section. This will automatically update the campaigns with the changes made in the document. 

But be careful! There are a lot of pros to using bulk actions, for example, ease of use, the ability to make bulk edits quickly, and avoiding fiddly platform management. However, there are a couple of tips and limitations to be aware of before utilising this feature!

Our Top Tips for Maximum Success

  • Always follow the formatting guidelines! This will avoid any costly mistakes or frustration upon receiving an upload error message.
  • Always triple-check the data before importing – it can be a time-consuming process to rectify issues and there is no way to preview the changes in the platform before committing to uploading. As with everything, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so check, check, and check again. In other words, this isn’t something to rush at 4:45pm on a Friday. 
  • Always save a copy of the bulk export – this means you always have a backup of how the campaign was structured pre-bulk import changes, just in case an error is made in the import document (or you simply want something to refer back to). 
  • Look for an asterisk* on the column headings to see whether a field is mandatory for the bulk upload feature. 
  • Make your life easier by using an exported campaign as the template for new campaigns. By using a previous campaign with similar targeting as your base, you’ll decrease the margin for error and have some guidance to work with. 

Limitations 

  • This feature is only available for managed accounts – you’ll need a LinkedIn account manager to be able to access bulk actions.
  • Currently, ads are only able to be edited – not created – in the bulk actions feature.
  • The template can be fiddly to work with. For example, when adding or excluding audiences you’ll need to know the ID number associated with that audience before adding or excluding it in the bulk document. 

How Bulk Actions Can Revolutionise Your LinkedIn Journey

The bulk actions tool can be very handy to maximise your efficiency when managing larger accounts, helping you bypass LinkedIn’s notoriously fiddly campaign management system. 

Just remember to always ensure that changes are deliberate and well thought out to avoid any costly mistakes! Triple-checking bulk actions is a must. 

Want a little more support with your campaigns? Let us do the hard work for you. Get in touch to see how we can level up your paid ads – we’re super friendly, promise!

P.S. @LinkedIn, more bulk features where this one came from, please!

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Madie Hubschmid Hiya, I'm Madie and I'm a Paid Media Manager at Bind Media. I've previously had the opportunity to work with the B2B enterprise tech industry, while now I manage an array of different accounts at Bind. In my free time I love going to gigs and live music events!

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