0:02

hey everyone thank you so much for

0:04

joining us today uh today we're going to

0:07

be talking about how you can import your

0:10

contacts and because it's a very related

0:13

topic how to create custom Fields as

0:16

well uh so this is going to be just more

0:19

basic kind of uh Imports that we're

0:22

going to be talking about whether you

0:23

are implementing your system or you've

0:26

got just a list on hand that you want to

0:30

to import into the system and you

0:32

haven't done this in a minute so we'll

0:34

help you with that starting off with

0:36

just the more basic stuff and then

0:38

getting on to some of the slightly more

0:40

advanced stuff a little later on the

0:42

video so it's possible that uh that

0:44

you'll get everything you need in just

0:46

the first half of the video um so before

0:48

we jump into all that make sure to uh to

0:53

ask any questions that you might have

0:55

even during the video uh we're going to

0:57

be live streaming this to start and then

0:58

of course it will just be available for

1:01

viewing later on too so while it's live

1:04

streaming feel free to throw in any

1:06

questions into the comments or chat and

1:08

we'll be there to answer them on the Fly

1:11

and if you're watching this later on of

1:13

course you can always reach out to our

1:15

support team just in the bottom right of

1:17

the of your vibecloud account you'll

1:19

have easy access to send in your chat

1:21

questions to us and we'll be happy to

1:24

help you uh so the topics that we're

1:27

going to be covering here today uh

1:29

starting off off with uh how to or at

1:32

least just like prepping you with the

1:33

idea that you need to export your

1:35

contact from your from whatever your

1:36

Source system is whether it's a CRM or

1:39

email marketing platform that you are

1:42

migrating things over from um you need

1:45

to uh get that file on hand then you

1:49

need to review that file make sure that

1:51

it is prepped and ready to import in the

1:54

VIP cloud and of course also you need to

1:56

make sure that you're able to uh have

1:59

like the custom fields and stuff like

2:00

that if needed ready in VI Cloud uh so

2:04

that the data has a home to go into how

2:07

the actual import itself happens once

2:09

all those preparation stages have taken

2:12

place and also just you know reviewing

2:15

how to verify your work make sure that

2:18

everything uh has happened

2:22

successfully um so we're going to cover

2:24

all of that and also really fast before

2:27

we uh get the demo itself going um a

2:32

major topic here too is duplicates how

2:35

to how to avoid the creation of

2:37

duplicate contacts into the system and

2:41

uh the way that this is done most

2:43

typically is through email addresses uh

2:46

because you might have multiple contacts

2:48

with the same names email addresses are

2:51

how we differentiate those say like you

2:53

know five different Bob Smiths that you

2:55

might have in your account and what will

2:57

happen is that when you import bipod

3:00

will check to see is there a matching

3:02

email address in the system if not you

3:06

it'll create a new contact record but if

3:08

there is a matching email address then

3:10

instead of creating a new contact what

3:12

it'll do is just look for new data so if

3:15

there's a match in the email address but

3:18

maybe there's a new last name and a new

3:21

phone number then VIP Cloud will

3:23

overwrite that last name and that phone

3:26

number and it'll keep everything else

3:29

intact and it will not create a

3:31

duplicate contact so that's most

3:33

typically how uh duplicates are handled

3:36

and also how how it's important to make

3:38

sure that if you can you have email

3:40

addresses for every contact uh because

3:43

it helps with data management and

3:45

avoiding

3:46

duplicates right so enough of that so

3:49

like I said you need to have a file on

3:52

hand in order to you know have something

3:55

to import so you're going to um if

3:59

you're sure of say like from your other

4:01

system how to get that export file uh

4:05

you can reach out to them you can

4:06

usually Google it um but you're going to

4:08

need to have some kind of a a file to

4:10

import CSV is the file type that VIP

4:16

cloud is able to accept uh most systems

4:19

will do CSV exports sometimes it'll be

4:23

an Excel file export type that you will

4:26

receive but the good news is that you if

4:29

you just do a save as in your Excel file

4:33

CSV is an option right there you'll just

4:35

see

4:37

CSV and you can then convert it over

4:39

very very easily and then that can be

4:42

imported into vibecloud

4:45

now we're going to jump

4:49

over to excel right here so this is a

4:54

CSV file that we're going to be

4:56

importing

4:57

today and this is going to be

5:00

this is an example of a

5:03

good file that is ready for importing

5:07

one common thing is that some systems

5:11

will combine the first and last name

5:15

into a single column VIP Cloud does not

5:19

handle first and last names in that way

5:22

so the best practice is to then convert

5:25

that into separate Columns of first and

5:29

last before you

5:32

import another instance that's similar

5:35

to this that some

5:36

systems will have address as again a

5:41

single monolithic column you do not want

5:45

that for for your VI Cloud import VI

5:48

Cloud handles it separately with street

5:51

address maybe address to which could be

5:53

Suite or apartment number and then city

5:56

state ZIP as all separate

6:02

columns now uh we are going to not talk

6:07

right now about custom Fields these are

6:10

some examples of custom fields and but

6:14

we'll we'll talk about that a little bit

6:15

later so we're going to just move along

6:19

and so now if you were to be uh doing an

6:24

import that would involve custom Fields

6:25

this is when you would want to go and

6:27

handle all of that but let's go into the

6:31

import stage here so let me just change

6:35

my screen sharing here really

6:46

quickly all right jumping over to the vi

6:50

cloud account so our file is ready and

6:56

has been prepped for importing

7:00

now we're going to go ahead and we can

7:02

import by going to

7:04

contacts now left

7:07

sidebar the very bottom here you'll see

7:11

Import in the very in the bottom here so

7:13

import now you got contacts and contact

7:16

lists as two different options for

7:20

importing in almost all cases you're

7:23

going to want to do a contact list

7:24

import rather than just contacts the

7:27

difference here is that with a contacts

7:30

import it will simply just take all the

7:34

contacts from your import file and add

7:37

them to your to your

7:40

contacts but with contact lists when you

7:43

import this way it'll do what I just

7:45

described it'll add all of those

7:47

contacts to your contacts but it will

7:50

also create a contact list out of them

7:53

as

7:54

well and this means that if your plan is

7:57

to you know keep all of these people

7:59

kind of segmented or if if it if you

8:03

were looking to be able to send a mass

8:05

email to all of these people right

8:07

away it it will mean that you are one

8:10

step closer to being able to do that so

8:12

that is Handy and it also means that

8:16

it's really easy to say like get you

8:19

know delete all those contacts if

8:20

something went wrong with your import as

8:22

well it's really easy just to kind of

8:24

redo that import uh should you need to

8:27

for any reason so for that reason I'm

8:30

also a big fan of just doing a contact

8:32

list

8:33

import so we're going to click on

8:35

contact lists here oops we're going

8:39

to take yeah there we go Okay cool so we

8:43

are going to do contact

8:45

lists now here you are able to either

8:50

click to browse your computer and do the

8:53

import or you can drop your CSV right

8:57

there

9:00

so I'm going to go ahead and drop

9:05

this now you can just kind of work from

9:07

the top down so you got your list name

9:10

you can give it whatever it'll it'll

9:11

grab the file name you can give it

9:13

whatever name we want we'll just say

9:20

uh example for demo and then what you

9:25

want to do is match your CSV headers to

9:28

the vi Cloud field

9:30

and so this means that we got the first

9:32

name column and by the way you'll see

9:34

right here what this means too is that

9:36

sometimes people think that you need you

9:37

need to have a perfect match of the of

9:39

the of the Excel

9:42

files column header to matching whatever

9:46

the vi Cloud field name is this is not

9:48

true the CSV header could say just name

9:53

here and then we can just tell it to go

9:55

to say like first name so I'm going to

9:58

go here and also there's a big time saer

10:02

where you can just in right up here in

10:05

this drop down you can just start to

10:06

type what you're looking for so I'm just

10:08

going to type

10:09

name and it just it saves me a lot of

10:11

scrolling so I can click on first name

10:15

need last name also before I do this one

10:18

what drop column means here is it means

10:21

it's not going to import that column

10:24

unless I tell it where that that column

10:28

of data should go so if I were to just

10:30

hit process import right now we would

10:33

not have last name

10:35

data so say class

10:39

name company name's already matched

10:42

phone

10:44

number you'll see that there are a lot

10:46

of different phone number fields in the

10:48

system go with whichever one makes the

10:51

most sense for your use note that if you

10:55

are a texting user and this is a column

10:58

of dat that you're going to be look this

11:02

has like cell phone data in it that

11:03

you're looking to send your SMS messages

11:06

to be sure to choose mobile

11:11

phone so we got

11:24

email all

11:26

right and I'm going to pause this for

11:30

okay I just did the rest that I want to

11:33

have done here so I'm a big fan

11:36

of reviewing all of these to before you

11:41

hit the process button just to make sure

11:43

that it is doing everything that you

11:45

want to and that everything is matched

11:46

you want to have matched I've got a few

11:48

here that I'm just going to be skipping

11:50

for this particular case which is fine

11:53

so they are drop columns or dropped

11:56

columns I guess I could say

11:59

so we're ready so we're going to hit

12:01

process import and this you know you can

12:05

see right here it happened

12:07

instantaneously if it's a larger import

12:09

it might take a minute or two but you'll

12:12

get a confirmation right here in the

12:14

form of a

12:16

notification once that has taken

12:20

place and

12:22

so now uh verifying the import is the

12:26

next step that we want to take so we're

12:28

going to jump over to contact

12:30

contact

12:34

lists we're going to go into our contact

12:40

list and here are the two contacts that

12:44

are active for emailing but as we can

12:46

see here there are in fact a total of

12:48

three this one is just marked as

12:50

unsubscribed and when I say verify what

12:53

I mean by that is just clicking into a

12:55

couple of contacts and just seeing if

12:57

everything is where we expect it to be

12:59

you can do this easily by hitting this

13:01

quick view button which will save you

13:03

page

13:05

loads and you can just go and review all

13:08

of your data and compare it with your

13:12

source file and make sure that

13:14

everything is uh is where you expect it

13:17

to be if it is not then uh if if it's

13:20

not totally apparent to you why things

13:22

are not matching up the way that you

13:24

expect them to just reach out to us

13:26

we'll be happy to help send us your

13:28

import file as especially since that'll

13:30

be an important step on our end to

13:32

seeing why things might not have

13:33

imported the way you wanted but if

13:36

everything is in the right place then

13:38

congrats you are on your way so if

13:41

you're just looking for basic importing

13:43

information then uh that will probably

13:45

cover it for you we're going to dive a

13:48

little bit into the custom Fields side

13:51

of things as well um and and yeah just

13:56

just uh how you can you can configure

13:58

your custom field builds for a slightly

14:00

more advanced generally like a more of a

14:02

a sales kind of a data import whereas

14:07

what we just covered there is probably

14:09

sufficient for most marketing and

14:10

newsletter

14:12

purposes so if you have custom data that

14:16

you need to

14:17

import then what you'll want to do is

14:21

head over to you can actually get you

14:23

custom fields from this home screen here

14:26

and you'll see right here you got the

14:27

custom customized Fields button you can

14:30

click on that this is contact data that

14:34

we're talking about here today but as

14:36

you'll see accountant opportunity and

14:38

task data can be found over here click

14:41

on

14:43

contact and then you'll see these tabs

14:46

here for custom fields and standard

14:47

Fields so first of all it's important to

14:51

know like do I even need to create a

14:53

custom field so you can go to your

14:54

standard Fields just to quickly review

14:57

what stuff is in the system system by

14:59

default right

15:01

now basically it's going to be stuff

15:04

that you would see on somebody's

15:06

business card is I think the quickest

15:08

way to summarize it so that means you

15:12

know their first name their last name

15:13

email phone all the phone number

15:16

information social media links address

15:20

job title things like that you'll find

15:24

in the standard

15:25

Fields also you can note that these are

15:29

all customizable so let's say for

15:31

instance an example I like is let's say

15:34

you're located in Canada or in Europe

15:36

and zip codes are not a thing but you

15:41

don't necessarily need like you actually

15:43

you don't need to create a custom field

15:44

for that necessarily you could just go

15:47

in and rename zip into uh into post

15:52

code so all of this is customizable in

15:55

that way so you can change the verbiage

15:57

if you need

15:59

jumping over to custom

16:01

Fields you will see that there are a

16:06

whole variety of custom field types that

16:08

you can choose from text is going to be

16:12

generally the simplest one where it'll

16:15

just accept whatever whatever data is

16:18

put in there uh when when you're filling

16:20

it out whether it's numbers or or text

16:24

but I generally recom recommend that

16:26

people go with whatever the most limited

16:29

field type is that would make sense for

16:32

that data and of course also you need to

16:35

make sure it's going to work with your

16:37

source file too um so for instance if

16:41

it's some if it's a uh number field that

16:44

you're looking for but some of your

16:45

Source data might just be kind of

16:47

cluttered and it has some you know

16:49

somebody uh wrote out the word seven

16:51

instead of the the uh the digit seven

16:55

you're going to need to make sure that

16:56

your Source data is going to be able to

16:58

play by these rules but generally here

17:00

though currency that's going to be just

17:02

you know anything with a dollar sign in

17:04

front of it a checkbox is going to be a

17:06

simple yes no checkbox date is going to

17:09

be a date field including month day year

17:13

a dropdown is going to be a single

17:17

Choice field where you actually Define

17:21

each of the individual

17:24

options then you got a number which will

17:27

be any uh

17:29

pick list is like a dropdown in that you

17:32

have select options that you create and

17:35

Define except with a picklist you can

17:38

select

17:39

multiple so these are very

17:41

popular percent is a percent text is

17:44

going to be anything that is

17:46

just it's going to be totally flexible

17:48

any uh any text Data a text area is

17:52

going to be a little bit more of an area

17:54

where you can actually write and

17:55

complete sentences you know like if it's

17:57

a notes for instance works with the text

17:59

area and a link is going to be a

18:02

URL so if we go in and create a drop

18:06

down for

18:10

instance we are able to give it the

18:13

options so we say like one and make sure

18:17

you hit the plus button to

18:21

enter and it's as easy as that to create

18:25

your your options and you can always

18:29

reorder we can always add to this later

18:31

you can remove these options later on

18:33

too so you're not stuck with whatever

18:34

you choose right

18:38

now and really quickly I'm I'm GNA talk

18:42

in a second I'm going to wrap this up by

18:44

talking about some of these options like

18:46

the create card for instance so hang

18:48

tight for that but what I I want to

18:51

cover really quickly your source file

18:53

and how you can make sure it matches

18:56

with some options uh like this

19:01

this okay so when you are doing an

19:04

import with custom fields and you're

19:07

going to be doing things like for

19:08

instance with this lead status field the

19:11

idea here is to have this be a drop

19:14

down

19:17

or let's see uh you could have a pick

19:22

list as well well this is actually not

19:24

quite ready to be a pick list but I'll

19:26

show you in a second so with this you

19:28

you need to with any of these fields

19:30

where there are defined options and

19:32

there's like a set of them you need to

19:34

make sure that in VIP Cloud each of your

19:37

custom Fields has a home for each

19:41

possible option like in this case I need

19:43

to make sure that my drop down has not

19:46

contacted as an option and it has in

19:48

touch as an

19:50

option also these have to be perfect

19:53

matches as well so it has so there's no

19:57

wiggle room as far as

19:59

uh spelling things like that it needs to

20:01

be perfect matches so when you're doing

20:04

this with large amounts of data it can

20:05

be a little bit tricky you got like a

20:07

thousand rows you know how many options

20:10

are there in this uh in this given

20:12

column well the way that I like to do

20:16

this and I recommend you do it is to uh

20:20

in Excel you can select the entire

20:22

column and you go over to

20:25

data and then you go to filter

20:29

so when you do that you can click on

20:30

this and then this will show you really

20:33

easily like excellent okay I got two

20:35

options right here in touch and not

20:37

contacted then you go to vcloud you add

20:40

those options and you're you're in

20:43

you're in good shape also this makes it

20:45

easy if I saw um some like for instance

20:49

if I saw that there was also an option

20:51

here that said not in touch well that

20:55

can tell me like you know do I need to

20:57

add that as an option or maybe maybe I

20:58

just need to clean that data up and

21:01

recategorize it so it better fits a

21:04

different kind of verbiage and things

21:05

are a little bit tighter so this tool

21:07

also makes it easy to do your data

21:09

management in Excel ahead of time to

21:12

make sure that uh your data is clean for

21:15

your new

21:17

CRM Also let's say with these this pick

21:20

list this this uh contact here actually

21:26

matched two different variables like

21:28

this is a pick list where you can pick

21:30

multiple how does VIP Cloud accept that

21:34

that kind of formatting well the way

21:36

that works is between your multiple

21:39

variables you'll have a comma and a

21:43

space and then the next varable so in

21:45

this one let's just say this contact

21:47

matches two and one this is how you can

21:50

go about doing

21:51

that you can actually kind of see this

21:53

in action over here with these tags tags

21:56

work the same way in VIP Cloud where

21:59

it's going to be a value comma space

22:03

next

22:04

value also with tags you actually don't

22:06

need to create those ahead of time those

22:08

can simply just be imported then vcloud

22:11

will add those on the Fly for

22:16

you awesome okay so now we're going to

22:18

switch back to vcloud I'm going to talk

22:20

about some of those more advanced

22:22

settings for your

22:26

Fields all right so one of the these

22:28

that you might have seen before and you

22:30

can actually see it referenced in this

22:33

column here is custom field create card

22:37

versus basic create card so what does

22:39

this

22:40

mean well this means that some of these

22:43

fields can be elevated to a more visible

22:47

place when you're creating a contact so

22:49

this is really useful for those custom

22:51

fields that are something that you're

22:54

going to be defining every single time

22:56

you create a contact and you just want

22:58

to be like you want to be as few clicks

23:00

away as possible every time you're

23:01

making a new contact and so what this

23:03

looks like first of all just to give you

23:05

a visual so I go over here to

23:09

contact and I even collapsed this this

23:11

really helps you can see that on this

23:13

create contact model that there are

23:16

these sections right here of basic

23:18

Fields additional standard Fields

23:20

address fields and custom fields and the

23:22

custom fields are at the very bottom

23:25

they're a little bit farther to get to

23:27

so they can be elevated up to basic so

23:31

when I look here you can see you got you

23:33

know phone number first last name all of

23:35

that and then I've got content right

23:38

here and you can see this content custom

23:40

field is on the basic card that's why it

23:43

shows up right here and that means that

23:46

every time I'm making a contact I can

23:48

just go through you know their basic

23:50

contact information and boom I'm able to

23:52

access these custom Fields nice and

23:54

easily and the way that you configure

23:57

this in your your custom field is with

23:59

this edit

24:00

button and you can choose here create

24:03

card whether it's basic or custom

24:07

field also we can see required as a

24:10

checkbox here and people can get in

24:13

trouble with this a little bit because

24:14

what this means is you can literally not

24:17

make a contact without having some data

24:21

in this field right here so if you're a

24:24

solo user in this system you probably

24:27

don't need to check this because the

24:29

most common use case for this required

24:32

field is is in a manager enforcing that

24:36

their sales or marketing team be

24:38

diligent about always collecting some

24:41

information and this also will mean that

24:44

even in your

24:46

import there this field is absolutely

24:48

required and it's impossible to make

24:50

contact without some data in this

24:53

field so this is just for sales teams I

24:56

would say though uh your mileage may

24:59

vary let's also go over to our standard

25:02

Fields because we can see a bunch of

25:04

other options here as

25:06

well so uh and this isn't limited to

25:09

just the standard Fields but you'll see

25:11

it on all of them so if I go over here

25:15

to create standard field you can also

25:17

see that there are there's a similar

25:19

Choice here of create card being basic

25:20

or

25:22

additional and so that's just like like

25:25

I showed you before it's going to Define

25:26

what card this information is collected

25:29

in when you're creating a new

25:31

contact required is here again we just

25:34

covered that but we got a couple of new

25:36

ones like unique so what unique means is

25:40

that this field can only exist in its a

25:45

certain value can only exist in this

25:47

field a single time in the system so for

25:51

phone number for instance that's a

25:52

that's a place where people use this

25:53

sometimes is if a field is unique uh and

25:57

it means that and you do making it a

25:59

phone number that means that only one

26:01

contact at a time in the system could

26:04

have that phone

26:06

number what it also means is that you

26:09

are making it into a unique identifier

26:11

for contact so if you're importing kind

26:13

of like what I described earlier with

26:15

emails emails are a unique identifier in

26:17

the system so only one contact at a time

26:20

can have that email and also VIP Cloud

26:23

can use that to prevent duplicates when

26:26

you are doing subsequent Imports and it

26:29

can like kind of automatically update if

26:31

you do a subsequent import with a

26:33

contact that matches that field that'll

26:35

happen here too where you could do that

26:37

with phone numbers Market as unique and

26:39

then when you do follow-up Imports with

26:42

contacts that have phone numbers as as a

26:44

column then it will prevent duplicates

26:47

in those subsequent

26:49

Imports if that's a little uh if you got

26:52

thrown off there a little bit feel free

26:54

to reach out to us and we'll be happy to

26:56

walk you through you know custom unique

26:58

identifiers things along those

27:01

lines lastly we got hide as an option

27:04

and what this will do is exactly as it

27:06

describes it's just going to Simply hide

27:08

that field from being in the system and

27:12

this is something that some people will

27:13

do with these standard fields for things

27:15

that they do not need you can actually

27:17

see right here as an example this

27:19

contact or this yeah this contact field

27:21

is

27:22

hidden and you can just go around and

27:24

hide fields that you that you know

27:26

you're not going to use just just be

27:28

aware that if you are later on trying to

27:33

find a field in the system and it just

27:35

seems to be missing that's the first

27:37

thing to check occasionally people will

27:39

hide a field and then come back a year

27:41

later and wonder where it

27:44

is um and then also you might see here

27:46

too these are all sortable you can you

27:49

can drag and drop them and order them in

27:51

the way that you so choose mobile phone

27:53

as an example is not here uh normally

27:58

but it is something that I have made be

28:01

at the very top of the contact card as a

28:04

uh as a custom

28:08

measure all right well that covers

28:11

everything that comes to mind right here

28:14

there's a lot of stuff that was covered

28:16

there so hopefully uh hopefully it

28:18

wasn't too much it wasn't too dry um of

28:22

course we are always eager to be to make

28:25

ourselves available to help people with

28:27

importing especially

28:28

during their first time importing into

28:31

the system we certainly find that

28:32

usually those follow-up Imports are

28:34

found to be pretty easy by our

28:37

users but occasionally with that first

28:39

one it can be a little bit tricky so I

28:42

hope this helps if you are an

28:44

independent user and uh you just needed

28:47

to a basic orientation I hope that helps

28:50

but uh feel free to schedule an

28:51

implementation with us if um you know if

28:55

you could use extra support so um

28:58

excellent I hope uh I hope that helps

29:00

and I hope everybody has a wonderful

29:02

rest of their day thank you so much