Address Book

[greyghost]

What program do you use to keep customer information in? I'm looking for software that would let me keep a database of people I have met and worked with, and people I want to work with. Ideally it should be able to tell me when someone's birthday is, be able to format a mailing list in a format I can print out to Avery labels from, etc. Better yet if it lets me keep notes on that particular client, like "John wants to meet in February."

[Logo-Mechanix]

I still do it the old fashioned way, pen and paper in a planner.

[greyghost]

Pen, paper and a planner ain't gonna cut it for me anymore - my contact base is getting too big for that, and before it gets much bigger I want to fix it! :P

[carter the artist]

depends on your setup. I use a mac at work, and the address book feature lets me do all that, and keep it catagorized according to "client" "vendor" "employee", etc...
and it's integrated into Mail, which helps.

[greyghost]

That's pretty cool, Carter.
Unfortunately I'm PC based. I can't afford Mac. Guess I should have said that initially!

[Mynock]

What do you use for email? Outlook has a bunch of stuff you can use like appointments, calendars, address book.

[Jackimalyn]

how about good ole excel?? its pretty good with mail merges and crap like that. most email systems can pull emails outta excel for mass mailings and we used to import addys from excel into indesign to print newsletters for mass mailings. You just set up one document with a mail merge and it pulls a different address for every page it prints

[morea]

I have used both Excel and Access. If you don't have MS Office, you can download Open Office (www.openoffice.org) for free.

[frankster]

what about using something like gmail to build a contacts address book, the feilds you get for each contact are:

name
primary email
notes
personal email, phone, address
work email. phone, address
you can add other fields like: IM, mobile, pager, fax, company, title, other

You could add a feild for birthdays, but it would probably make more sense to put the birthday dates in a google calendar associated with the gmail account and that way you can set up automatic reminders.

If you want something more custom to your needs and that you can say pull up all the contacts with company names begining with A or something then you'll need to work with a database program like access or something, of course if you are a wiz with php or know anyone who is then you could make your own online database with mysql

[greyghost]

It's not just an addy book I am looking for - I think someone changed the topic of the thread. What I have heard of is a separate program, not linked to email. These programs I have heard of (but don't know the name of) let you search your database for say, "chiropractors" and you can print out mailing labels for the chiros in your database. It helps you with targeted mailing, not just keeping names and addys.

I found one - like this:

http://www.allprosoftware.com/am/

[(gra-ph!c-D'sig-nah)]

ACCESS on the PC is what I use. If you do not know how to use Access, then you will be lost. I created an entire database. The cool thing about creating your database is that when ever you want to add something for simplicity....you can do it your self and it will resolve in everyone of your clients you have entered in previously. If you can find a template, you can grow from there!

[jlknauff]

Act

[Riya]

It's not just an addy book I am looking for - I think someone changed the topic of the thread. What I have heard of is a separate program, not linked to email. These programs I have heard of (but don't know the name of) let you search your database for say, "chiropractors" and you can print out mailing labels for the chiros in your database. It helps you with targeted mailing, not just keeping names and addys.

I found one - like this:

http://www.allprosoftware.com/am/

You should be able to do that with any spreadsheet program... just create a column for occupation (or whatever other information is important to you). Then sort the list by "occupation" so chiropractors will all be sorted together and do a mail merge for those rows. You will probably have to set up a template for your mail merge, but you only need to do it once, and you need a template for whatever labels you are using anyway.
I am leary of using any sort of e-mail program (outlook, gmail, etc) for contact info, because that is how viruses spread.