How to Gather Your Contacts' Email Addresses

Your database of contacts and connections is your source of the majority of your business, and the source in which you have the greatest control to produce new clients. Before we can start the marketing activities to turn your database of contacts into a lead generation machine, we need to get all of your contacts' email addresses.

If you have a CRM already, it'll be easy to export your list. Refer to your CRM's help center to find instructions, or email their support team for help.

For many of you, it's likely a number of your contacts are hidden in the following places:

• Phone
• Gmail Contacts
• LinkedIn
• Old CRMs, Transaction Management Systems, Business Cards, and Everything Else! 

Keep reading for some helpful ways to collect these contacts into a format that you can easily share with us!

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Getting Contacts Off Your Phone

If you want to get your contacts out of your iPhone and into your CRM, you may find it a little difficult because there’s not a direct way to export your contacts.

The easiest way is to sync your contacts on your phone to Gmail and then export your Contacts from Gmail and import them into your CRM. Some CRMS, such as Realvolve, support a direct connection to Gmail, so that if you sync your contacts from your phone to your Gmail account, then they will automatically sync to Realvolve.

If you don’t have a Gmail account, it is worth the few minutes to setup up the account rather than taking hours to manually transfer each contact into your CRM. 

You can create a Gmail account easily from your phone. Below is a short video showing you how to how to create a Gmail account on your phone, how to sync your phone's contacts, and how to download them from Gmail. 

(This video has no audio. Please refer to the screenshots below for interface updates.)

Gmail Update

Gmail changed how you access Contacts since the time these videos have been created. To access contacts from Gmail use the following screenshot instructions from your Desktop.

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Getting Contacts From Gmail

One of the neat features about using Gmail is that it automatically creates a contact record for people you have emailed frequently. The following video will show you how to access your Gmail contacts to export and import into your CRM.

 (This video has no audio.)

Getting Contacts from LinkedIn

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Don't Forget About Business Cards, etc.

Last but not least, don't forget to go through your desk drawers and briefcases to gather up any business cards you may have collected, or an old Rolodex. Maybe you even have some old files with contact information. Gather all of these contacts up and get them into your database.