It’s happened to you. You accepted a LinkedIn invite and suddenly you find yourself on that person’s email newsletter. The email appears in your inbox and you think, “Wait, I didn’t opt in! Why are they emailing me?”
It was an easy thing to do and super tempting. Log into LinkedIn, navigate to the privacy settings and click Download Your Data. Within a few minutes, a link to a spreadsheet that contained FIRST NAME, LAST NAME, EMAIL, COMPANY, POSITION appeared. Armed with that file, the next thing a person had to do was upload the list into MailChimp or some other email marketing automation platform and boom, SPAM!
Well, the game has changed, my friends!
I downloaded my contact list today for backup purposes and the email column is EMPTY!
Is it because of the GDPR regulations? Is LinkedIn simply trying to curb SPAM? Perhaps it’s both.
The email address column is still there and emails can appear, it’s now up to the user whether they allow their email address to appear in the file. The default setting is NO. I have 29,172 first degree connections and only ONE person opted to have their email address displayed in the connection download file.
You can access this privacy section by clicking here.
So what if you actually used the email address for non-nefarious purposes? Perhaps you uploaded the file to your CRM so you can better track relationships and conversations. Sadly, it appears you are out of luck. You will have to manually add new connections, checking their LinkedIn profile‘s contact info for the email address.
Yes, I know this is a lot of work but this is the only workaround for right now.
There were numerous companies out there that depended on this file and the email addresses for marketing purposes. I am sure there are people working on a workaround.
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I was going to send a one time outreach as they are all chosen to be connected on Linked In. I read this was possible but too late- I guess it got abused and yes I only got an file with empty column- NO EMAILS. So dissapointing, I guess anything that marketers abuse gets eliminated or loses its efficacy in time.
I coach women in meditation for stress and better health and use Youtube, so I wanted to reach out to my network of holistic types to see if they wanted coaching on how to start on Youtube to build their brand. So it’s totally in line with the peeps I was gonna reach out to. Thwarted!
Donna, I am a long-time connection of yours and I am about exactly one year behind you. I have downloaded my contact list just now and the email addresses are empty! Is there another workaround other than following the instructions you list in the article above? Thanks for your help.