Identifying Contact's Interests

[John Thompson]

At a community gathering we collected a list of names/emails and how those people were interesting in helping. Now I want to store those interests in CiviCRM. Right now they have just indicated interest but are not committed yet so I want to differentiate those with interest from those who end up doing. The reason for capturing this info is because I want to be able to convert them from interested to doing through follow-up emails, letters, calls, etc. and differentiate between the various interests. Does anyone have suggestions on how to track this info?

Thanks

[JonGold]

Hi John,

You can use groups, tags, or custom fields.  I don't think I have enough information to say which makes the most sense in your situation, but my guess is that they'd all meet your needs equally well.  Here's a page that explains the difference:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Tags+vs.+Groups+vs.+Custom+Fields

Note that it's easier to go TO tags or groups from one of the others than it is to go from any of those to custom fields - so if you're not sure, custom fields is a good safe bet - it's easy to convert to tags or groups later.

[John Thompson]

Thanks, Jon

[FrTommy]

I would probably use Smart Groups as it's dynamic and will always be up to date and you don't have to worry about manually changing a custom field or from one group to another once the contact has done what you wanted them to do.

[joanne]

A smart group just let's you do things (email, mailing labels etc) with contacts that meet predefined criteria.

You would need to use tags or custom fields or ordinary groups to record the type of interest.

Smart groups would help with separating those who "might do" from those who  "are doing"/"have done" if you also keep a record of the activities a contact has done.