How to Export Leads from Facebook Ads [2023 Update]

Facebook introduced Lead Ads in 2015, and since then, it’s become a powerful tool for everyday businesses to improve their sales and marketing abilities. But, with the many changes occurring on the platform, we thought it’d be worth walking you through how to export leads from Facebook Ads, in light of the 2020 updates. 

Keep in mind that lead information is only available on Facebook for 90 days, meaning older leads cannot be downloaded. We suggest exporting your data regularly or automating lead data collection, so you don’t miss out on valuable information!

There are three key ways to downloading your Facebook leads in a tidy CSV or XLS file: 1) via your page, 2) via Ad Manager, and 3) via external API. Let’s get started!

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Export Leads from your Facebook Leads Center

This is the most straightforward method for downloading your leads, especially if you’re already on your organization’s Facebook Page!

1. Access the Facebook Page that has your desired leads.
2. On the Manage Page sidebar, click on Leads Center (note: this button will only appear if you have previously placed a Lead Ad).
3. Select the parameters for your lead export (i.e. Forms, Owners, Dates, Labels) > Click the Download button.
4. Voila! You can now open a spreadsheet with your lead information on Numbers, Excel, etc.

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Export Leads from your Facebook Publishing Tools

While the Leads Center is the quickest way to complete this task from your Facebook page, here’s an alternative method, just in case!

1. Access the Facebook Page that has your desired leads.
2. On your Manage Page sidebar, scroll down to Publishing Tools.
3. On the new sidebar, click Forms Library.
4. Locate your desired form on the table and click Download under the Leads column.
5. Select how you want to download your leads, by clicking either Download New Leads (aka the number of new leads since your last download) or Download by Date Range Only (aka the number of new leads during a certain time period).
6. Click CSV and/or XLS based on your desired file type.

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Export Leads from your Facebook Ad Manager

This method is good when you’re also looking to export other information and metrics from your Facebook Ads, which are all housed on your Ad Manager.

1. Access your organization’s Facebook Ad Manager.
2. Click on the Ads tab > Locate the cell in the row of your desired lead ad under the Results column > Click on the On-Facebook Lead link.
   

3. Select how you want to download your leads, by clicking either Download New Leads (aka the number of new leads since your last download) or Download by Date Range Only (aka the number of new leads during a certain time period).
4. Click CSV and/or XLS based on your desired file type.

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Export Leads from an External API

This is the easiest method for downloading leads, especially if you don’t want to manually complete this task every 90 days. APIs allow you to automatically request and pull for certain data and, therefore, can be useful in consistently extracting your Facebook lead information. 

For those with little to no coding knowledge (like me!), you can access automation abilities through specific apps that connect to Facebook Ads. At this point, I’d be remiss to not bring up our Facebook Ads integration that can pull your leads data--as well as other ad information, metrics, and KPIs--all in one place. If you’re more interested in linking your Facebook leads to a CRM, we suggest looking at Facebook’s curated list of providers!

Regardless of which application you choose, we mainly recommend this last method to minimize error and ensure you’re making the most of your Facebook Ads account.