How to Use the HubSpot Contact Data Refresher

Before you start

• LinkedIn's rate limits awareness:
  • Free LinkedIn accounts: 80 profiles per day (10 profiles, 8 times per day).
  • Sales Navigator accounts: 150 profiles per day (10 profiles, 15 times per day).

Step 1: Connect your HubSpot account

1. Click Connect and authorize PhantomBuster to access your HubSpot account.
   • You only need to do this once, your HubSpot account will remain linked for future Phantoms.
2. Contact update only (Optional):
   • Enable if you want to update existing HubSpot records without creating new ones.
   • Before you can use this checkbox, you must first activate it in your Workspace Settings:
     1. Click your profile menu in the top right corner.
     2. If you have more than one workspace, make sure the correct one is selected from the dropdown. Look for the ✔️ symbol next to the active workspace name.
     3. Under your Workspace section, click Settings. 
        
     4. Check the box Contact update only.
        
     5. Once enabled, the checkbox will automatically be checked in all HubSpot Phantoms.
3. Select your HubSpot contact segment:
   • Use the dropdown to select the segment you want to refresh.
   • These contacts will be checked for any recent job or company changes.
   • For accurate tracking, ensure your HubSpot contacts have a LinkedIn Profile URL field completed.
     → If URLs are missing, use the LinkedIn Profile URL Finder Phantom first.
4. Input fields mapping:
   • This ensures PhantomBuster correctly identifies which field in HubSpot stores each contact’s LinkedIn URL.
   • If your workspace uses a custom property name, make sure it points to the right LinkedIn Profile URL field here before saving.

Step 2: Connect your LinkedIn account

To let the Phantom act on your behalf:

1. Install the PhantomBuster browser extension and connect your LinkedIn session in one click.
2. If you’re not using Chrome or Firefox, you can retrieve your session cookie manually (see our cookie guide).

Check your browser user agent
Make sure your browser is up to date before connecting your account. 
→ If your Chrome or Firefox version is outdated, your session cookie may expire much more quickly, and you’ll need to reconnect often.

Step 3: Configure behavior and enrichment options

You can control how many contacts to refresh per run and whether to enrich them with new company data:

1. Profiles to update per launch (Optional):
   • Default = 200.
2. Enrich your profiles with company data (Optional):
   • Enable to extract company details (name, size, industry, website, etc.).
3. Push contact updates to HubSpot:
   • This option is enabled by default.
   • This ensures any refreshed details are synced automatically to your CRM according to your field mapping.
4. Field mapping (required - takes a couple of seconds to load):
   • After connecting, configure Field mapping to decide which PhantomBuster fields are sent to which HubSpot contact properties. 
     → If you skip this step, properties will be sent blank.
   • Columns:
     • PhantomBuster → the data source (e.g., first name, last name, company, lifecycle stage).
     • HubSpot → the destination contact property to update.
     • Action → how to update the property in HubSpot:
       • Fill if empty: only writes when the HubSpot field is currently blank.
       • Overwrite: always updates the HubSpot field with the new value.
   • Add custom properties:
     • Click Add property to map another field, then select:
       1. A PhantomBuster property (e.g., lifecycle stage).
       2. The corresponding HubSpot property: 
          → If the HubSpot property doesn’t exist yet, create it first in HubSpot as a custom contact property, then return to mapping.
          → For a step-by-step walkthrough, see How to Map Properties Between PhantomBuster and HubSpot.

When a contact has changed companies, the Phantom automatically creates a new record in HubSpot and links it to the old one. The new contact includes:
- Updated job title and start date
- New company (created in HubSpot if it doesn’t already exist)
- New professional email (if available)
- Previous lifecycle stage, company, and job title stored as historical data
This ensures continuity in your CRM and follows HubSpot’s best practice of keeping separate records for each professional email address.

Step 4: Select launch frequency

Choose how often the Phantom should run:

1. Launch manually: Start the Phantom yourself whenever you need.
2. Launch once at a specific time: schedule a one-time run at a set date and time.
3. Launch repeatedly: schedule regular runs (e.g. once per day, several times during working hours).
4. Launch after another Phantom: chain automations together so this Phantom starts right after another finishes.
5. Advanced scheduling: customize the exact minutes, hours, days, or months when the Phantom should run.

→ For a complete walkthrough of scheduling options, see our guide to scheduling Phantoms automatically.

Step 5 (Optional): Advanced settings

Advanced settings are available if you want to fine-tune how your Phantom runs, but by default they’re already optimized for most use cases.

We recommend leaving them as they are unless a guide specifically instructs you to change something.

→ For a detailed overview of all advanced options (like execution limits, retries, email notifications, proxies, webhooks, and file management), see our Advanced settings guide.

Launch and results

When you’re ready:

1. Click Launch to start your Phantom.
2. View your updated contact data in two places:
   • The Results tab in your Phantom console.
   • Your HubSpot CRM, where each change is reflected automatically.

→ Contacts who have changed companies are marked with the property “No longer at company = true.”
→ A new contact record is then created and linked to the old one enriched with all relevant data.

Export and input limits on the Free plan
If you’re on the Free plan or Free trial, some features are limited:
- CSV exports include only the first 10 rows of results.
- CSV download links (for dynamic viewing in Google Sheets or integrations) are not available.
- JSON exports are not available.
- CSV upload as an input method is not supported.
To unlock all features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

What you give (Input) and What you get (Output)

This section gives you a detailed breakdown of everything you need to provide to run this Phantom, and everything you’ll receive once it completes.

What you give (Input)

What you get (Output)

Tips and troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• Missing LinkedIn URLs → Contacts without profile URLs can’t be tracked.
• Duplicate records → HubSpot may duplicate old and new contacts when emails differ, this is normal.

If you run into issues

• Check how to troubleshoot your phantom using Logs.
• Browse the Fix Issues & Troubleshoot Errors section for solutions to common problems.
• Review our Automation Rate Limits by Platform guide.
• Check our Best Practices for Social Media Automation guide.

Suggested automations

• HubSpot Contact LinkedIn URL Finder → Fill in missing LinkedIn URLs before running the Data Refresher.
• HubSpot Contact Career Tracker → Continuously monitor contacts for job changes after a full refresh.
• HubSpot Contact Sender → Automatically push refreshed data into your CRM or connected workflows.