By Alan Glazier, OD, FAAO
ROCKVILLE, Md.—If you’re like me, you constantly think about the people in your contact list, with the best intentions of contacting them periodically to let them know you’re thinking of them, conduct further business, keep them in the loop as to relevant goings-on etc. But with our busy schedules and huge contact lists, it isn’t always realistic to do so.
Introducing
Contactually, which is a personal assistant for your professional (and personal) contacts. Contactually analyzes the relationships in your contact lists and automatically prompts you to reengage with the people you deem important who may have “slipped off your radar.”
The web based software has no downloads or installs, and enables a universal address book. All your contacts from all your email accounts, social media accounts and multiple other internet locations are all synched to one convenient location. Reminders that you schedule pop up as requested in email (or if you desire not to have your email loaded with these prompts, you can use the web portal). The reminders prompt you to act on them, defer them or ignore them. The service works with PCs, Macs or any smartphone. Contactually also tracks how often you’ve contacted people, when you last contacted them, what the content of the contact was and what the priority of the contact was as well.
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Within Contactually, your contacts' name, information and details are listed, as well as links to the supported social sites. You can receive the reminders to reconnect within the portal or via email, and you can control how often (or not) you want to receive these e-mails, frequency can be set to default to daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. A benefit to having your Contactually reminder pop up in email is you can email the contact directly from the reminder in your inbox, so it doesn’t appear to come from Contactually. The person you reconnect with gets the impression you remembered them and sent them an email and that is all. After you reconnect with email, you can remind Contactually to “follow up with Mary in a month” just by typing it in the system.
I use Contactually to stay in touch with important contacts, remember family and friend events, nurture business relationships and follow up on action items. I find it’s an incredible asset to my organizational management efforts.
I have arranged a free month of Contactually for readers of CLICK. Be sure to sign up
here to try it out!
Alan N. Glazier, OD, FAAO is the founder/CEO of Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care in Rockville, Md. A search and social optimization consultant, he is a regular contributor to CLICK and also writes a regular blog for
SightNation.com. A founder of ODs on Facebook, Glazier is also a VM/ROB Optometric Business Innovator. Glazier is at
aglazier@youreyesite.com and his regular posts can be found via his Twitter handle: @EyeInfo, his blog:
youreyesite.net and his website:
YourEyeSite.com. He's the author of the new eBook, Customer Communication Software, which features a "comparison checklist" to help ECPs determine which software platform is the best fit for their office. More info on the new eBook is posted
here.
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