CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi everyone,

I spent some time last night trying to figure out the best way to add contacts to CiviCRM. I don't think I'm the first so if you can point me to resources I'd appreciate it.

The use case is this: I often go to conferences or meet new people and collect their business cards, then a stack of them grows next to my computer that I want to add to my own contacts as well as get them involved in my organization and online platform. What's the best way to do this?

The way I do this now is:

1) add contact to my email address book and send them an email inviting collaboration in various areas
2) add email address to progress updates via the http://kabissa.org/subscribe form
3) person starts receiving mailings and has the option to opt out later or sign up as Kabissa member

But I see several issues with this:

1) tracking information about the contact is lost
2) person may be unhappy about getting progress updates (though I am always careful to let them know in my email that I am adding them)
3) many of these people work for organizations that I would like to also invite to join Kabissa and add profiles in the Kabissa organization directory, which would be contacts and organizations in CiviCRM.

I know I could be adding the contacts one by one into civicrm and sending them email through civicrm, but the interface is slow and clunky for this.

It would be nice to be able to have a workflow in CiviCRM that automates this to some extent - e.g. sends the email, adds the contact and organization and invites them to come and create a drupal account and complete/make public their organization profile. And that with a CSV upload or some other bulk approach since it is often a big pile of cards that I have to add.

Thanks!

Tobias

Hi tobiaseigen:
I import via csv file large groups of contacts, into either "Individual" or "Organization" depending on who they are.
I sent out regular email blasts via civimail, and have unsubscribe at the bottom of the email so that can unsubscrive from bulk emails, or opt-out.
Tip: When I do imports, I don't use excel, but Open Office to ensure there are no funny characters that excel puts in, then I can import large quantities of orgs or indi's.
The import is so quick, I use that versus one by one. I have a mapping file setup in advance (one for indi's, one for org's).
Hope this helps.