Note:  this post was updated on 7/15/14 to reflect changes to the LinkedIn export connections process.  

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network. According to CMO.com, LinkedIn's user base now stands at more than 259 million people and counting, up 38 percent year-over-year. It's a great tool for professional networking and I hope you are taking advantage of it.

But did you know you can use LinkedIn and Voodoo together to enhance your success? It's easy to export your LinkedIn connections as a CSV file, then import them into your Voodoo system.

Here's how:

Quick-Tip:  Export Your LinkedIn Connections and Import into Voodoo

From LinkedIn, you can export connections from the Contact Settings page. Only the full name, email address, current employer, and position are exported. To export your connections list:

1) Login to your LinkedIn account and move your cursor over and select Connections.

2) Click the Settings icon near the top right that looks like a gear. 

3) Under Advanced Settings on the right, click Export LinkedIn Connections

4) Enter the security text if prompted.

5) Click Export.

6) Save the file somewhere you can easily find it, like your computer's desktop. 

Note: If you're using Internet Explorer and you see a yellow pop-up blocker across the top of the page, click the yellow bar and then select Download File.

Now you have a CSV file that you can import into your Voodoo account.  Always review your list to comply with anti-spam law and to be sure you are emailing people who have a legitimate interest in your content, company, or what you offer.

Need some help importing the CSV file into your Voodoo account? Click to watch this video Quick Tip.     

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A powerful feature of Voodoo is its Automated Action Alerts.  They're the automated way to know which leads are showing interest in your campaign right NOW. You can choose to be notified in real-time when a recipient:

1. opens your email 
2. views your video 
3. clicks a trackable link  

This allows you to follow up with hot leads when they're still hot. 

Wouldn't you hate to miss receiving these alerts because the notifications were going into your Junk or Spam folders?  Since so much of Voodoo's power lies in this feature, we want to make sure you receive all the notifications you select.  So today's tip is more of a reminder. 

The easiest way to ensure Automated Action Alerts get delivered to your inbox is to add Voodoo to your safe sender list.   Here's how:

Quick Tip - Adding Voodoo to Safe Sender List

Every email client is a little different. Below we'll walk you through the steps to add an email address to the safe sender list of the most common email clients:

Outlook 2013:

1. Click on Home tab
2. In the Delete group, click on the Junk icon
3. Select Junk Email Options from the drop-down list
4. Select the Safe Senders tab
5. Click Add and then enter Support@Voodooviral.com in the text box.
6. Click OK.

Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003: 

1. Go to Actions on your email menu bar.
2. Select Junk Email from the drop-down menu.
3. Select Add Sender to Safe Senders List.
4. Right-click in the message and select Add the Sender to Safe Senders List.

Or you have another option:

1. Go to Tools on the menu bar.
2. Select Options in the drop-down menu.
3. Under Preferences, select Junk Email.
4. Click on the Safe Sender tab.
5. Click Add button and then enter Support@Voodooviral.com in the text box.
6. Click OK.

Outlook Express: 

1. Go to Actions on your email menu bar.
2. Select Junk E-mail from your drop-down menu.
3. Select Add Sender to Safe Senders List.
4. Right-click in the message and select Add the Sender to Safe Senders List.

Or you have another option:

1. Go to Tools on the menu bar.
2. Select Options in the drop-down menu.
3. Under Preferences, select Junk Email.
4. Then click on the Safe Sender tab.
5. Click the Add button and then add Support@Voodooviral.com in the text box.
6. Click OK.

Gmail:

1. Open the email
2. Click More Options in the email header.
3. Click Add Sender to Contact List.

Apple Mail:

1. Add the email address to your address book.
2. In Training mode, emails will arrive in the INBOX highlighted in brown.  In Automatic mode, junk emails will arrive in the Junk box.  
3. To add an email that arrived in the JUNK folder, highlight the email message.
4. Choose Message  >  Mark  >  As Not Junk Mail

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Do your contact lists often contain more than 1,000 opt-in recipients? 

Follow these tips to avoid headaches and maximize results!

Voodoo is a departure from most other commercial email broadcasting services—and the differences offer superior, True Personalization™ of your outgoing campaigns.

We don’t brand your “From” address with our company name, the way other large email services do. (They do this primarily for their own protection, with the convenient advantage that it puts their company name in the address line of every outgoing email from every one of their customers—it’s great advertising for them!)  

Using Sender Policy Framework and other advanced techniques, Voodoo sends your campaigns from the actual email address entered on your account’s Personal Settings page.  Your Voodoo emails are really from YOU, and that’s all your prospects and customers see.  

Why is True Personalization important?

It’s a key reason why Voodoo campaigns generate measurably higher response and click-through rates. For individual accounts, if contacts have already approved you as a sender, they don’t have to re-approve messages you send from Voodoo.  

  
Are their any challenges to this approach?
Only one—it prevents Voodoo from automatically scrubbing your lists of undeliverables— the ones you send to dead mailboxes or where the filters simply won’t let anything through. With Voodoo, undeliverables get returned to YOU, not us.  (We cannot and do not intercept emails being returned to you for obvious reasons.)

Handling Large-Scale Broadcasts

To avoid potential floods to your personal email in-box, we recommend that you set up a unique email address/account specifically for larger Voodoo campaigns. Set up a smart folder in Outlook (or other email client) to capture these undeliverables. It’s usually as easy as creating a simple multi-criteria rules, as shown below:

Once your campaign has been sent for at least a week, you are welcome to provide these returned emails to Voodoo for parsing and scrubbing. NOTE: This is usually only necessary on the first couple of broadcasts.  Yes, it adds a manual step, but the True Personalization of outgoing campaigns is worth it!

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Want to get even greater results from your Voodoo account? 

We all have witnessed the massive growth of social media.  Has your business taken the plunge?  Social media can be a cost-effective way to promote and grow your business.  But creating content to "feed the beast" of social networks can be overwhelming and time consuming. 

Voodoo's mission is to help our customers accomplish more with less effort. This Voodoo feature helps you do that by leveraging Voodoo in your social media feeds. 
 
You can post a link to any video in your Video Library on LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter and more. You can promote your business and get your content noticed.  With the new paid "boosting" options on Facebook and Linkedin, you can pay a little to escalate how often and where your special posts appear.

Just before I wrote this, I easily posted a status update to my LinkedIn account, then tweeted the same post within a few moments.  Both posts link directly to one of the videos in my Voodoo account.  

 
Bonus: Want to track how many people watch each video you post on each social networking service?  Just send yourself a Voodoo campaign and create your post using the video link it generates.


Voodoo Feature #502 - How to Post Trackable, Personalized Videos on Your Social Media Accounts

Business Builder Users:

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