LeadOcean + Zoho CRM: Enrich Records Automatically

You get a nightly job that fills the gaps in Zoho CRM. It reads leads that have a LinkedIn URL, sends each to LeadOcean, and writes the work email, email status, phone and job title back through Zoho's upsert API. LeadOcean is a plain REST API, so any script that can call two HTTP endpoints does it. The free plan covers a first run of 1,000 records.

Related: the integrations hub, Retool, Notion, Folk and pricing.

How it works

The job has three parts: read from Zoho, enrich at LeadOcean, upsert back to Zoho. It runs as an external script, outside Zoho, using only Zoho's documented REST API for reads, upserts and limits.

1. Get a LeadOcean key. Sign up at app.leadocean.io, open API keys and copy one.
2. Add two custom fields in Zoho. Create LinkedIn_URL and Email_Status on the Leads module. Tick "Do not allow duplicate values" on LinkedIn_URL. That makes it a user-defined unique field, which Zoho's upsert can match on.
3. Create a Zoho API client. Register a self-client in the Zoho API console and generate a token with scope ZohoCRM.modules.ALL (or the narrower leads scope). Zoho's docs describe web and self-client grants.
4. Read leads. Call Get Records on Leads with the fields parameter and per_page=200. Page with page_token past 2,000 records.
5. Enrich each lead. Call POST /v1/people/enrich with the linkedin_url and reveal_email: true. A person LeadOcean holds nothing for returns 404 and costs nothing.
6. Upsert in batches of 100. Zoho allows at most 100 records per upsert call. Set duplicate_check_fields to ["LinkedIn_URL"].
7. Schedule it. Run the script from cron or any scheduler once a night. Select only leads where Email is empty so each lead is enriched once. Leads with no match stay empty, so add a date field such as Enriched_On and skip rows checked in the last 30 days.

Configuration

The script below is the whole job. Set LEADOCEAN_API_KEY and ZOHO_TOKEN in the environment. Zoho access tokens expire, so refresh them with your refresh token before each run. The www.zohoapis.com host is for the US data centre; use your own region's API domain.

import os, requests

LO = "https://api.leadocean.io"
ZOHO = "https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v8"
lo_headers = {"x-api-key": os.environ["LEADOCEAN_API_KEY"]}
zo_headers = {"Authorization": "Zoho-oauthtoken " + os.environ["ZOHO_TOKEN"]}

r = requests.get(f"{ZOHO}/Leads", headers=zo_headers, params={
    "fields": "id,Last_Name,Email,LinkedIn_URL", "per_page": 200})
leads = [l for l in r.json().get("data", [])
         if l.get("LinkedIn_URL") and not l.get("Email")]

batch = []
for lead in leads:
    e = requests.post(f"{LO}/v1/people/enrich", headers=lo_headers,
        json={"linkedin_url": lead["LinkedIn_URL"], "reveal_email": True})
    if e.status_code == 404:
        continue                      # nobody matched, nothing billed
    e.raise_for_status()
    d = e.json()["data"]
    emails = d["contact_data"].get("contact_emails") or []
    phones = d["contact_data"].get("contact_phones") or []
    batch.append({
        "LinkedIn_URL": lead["LinkedIn_URL"],
        "Email": emails[0]["email"] if emails else None,
        "Email_Status": emails[0]["status"] if emails else None,
        "Phone": phones[0]["phone"] if phones else None,
        "Designation": (d["contact_data"].get("contact_current_experiences")
                        or [{}])[0].get("job_title"),
    })

for i in range(0, len(batch), 100):
    requests.post(f"{ZOHO}/Leads/upsert", headers=zo_headers, json={
        "data": batch[i:i+100],
        "duplicate_check_fields": ["LinkedIn_URL"]}).raise_for_status()

Test the key first with one call:

curl -X POST https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/enrich \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"linkedin_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jane-doe", "reveal_email": true}'

Send exactly one identifier per call: linkedin_url, email, phone or person_id. reveal_email: true costs no extra record. The script needs a Last_Name on each lead only if you create new ones.

Field mapping

The enrich response has success, data and meta. Emails, phones and current roles are arrays, so the script takes the first item. Field paths are from the enrich docs, October 2026. Designation is the API name of the Title field on Zoho Leads.

Cost at 10,000 rows

Enriching 10,000 Zoho leads costs LeadOcean one Solo month at $97, and about 1,050 of Zoho's daily API credits. The Free plan covers the first 1,000 records, once.

Rows with no match are 404s and cost nothing, so 10,000 is a ceiling. Paid plans have no credits and no overage invoice. Agency at $497 a month suits teams that enrich across many sellers.

Zoho's side is its own credit system (Source: Zoho API limits, September 2026). Each API call costs 1 credit. Upsert costs 1 credit per 10 records. So reading 10,000 leads at 200 a page is 50 credits, and upserting them is 1,000 credits. The Free edition allows 5,000 credits in a 24-hour window, so one night's run fits.

Zoho seats are the larger bill, and this job does not add any. Zoho lists a Free edition for 3 users and paid editions priced per user a month (Zoho pricing, October 2026). Paid editions also get more API credits: Standard starts at 50,000 a day plus 250 per user license (Zoho API limits, October 2026).

Troubleshooting

FAQ