Most everyone who uses any version of Outlook, knows how to enter a contact. One neat feature to do when you add a contact is to put them in a Category.
Categories will make life easier when you want to bring up a group of people that conform to what you are looking for. When I am adding a contact, I put them in as many categories as I will ever use that person in. Outlook has a Master Category List. However, I add many other categories to it. Thousands of ways to use your data base.
So for instance, I add Maria Labie and put all her information in there. Before I save I add her to several categories. I would add Maria to Lender Category, Christmas Cards and Personal Friends. So depending on what I am searching for Maria would come up different categories.
One of my Categories is Service Industry (here I add inspectors, handy-men, electricians, plumbers etc). Another Category I use is Past Clients, this category comes in handy for my follow-up campaigns and just staying in touch with past clients. Let me give you an example how I use it.
When I go into Outlook Contacts, I can search different ways, lets say I want to look for all Past clients, I search my Category Past Clients and then put in the category I want to search by, in this case Past Clients. I bring them up in a list format. ( Play around with it as it depends on what purpose I am using them for )
In this case, I am going to be traveling somewhere and so I pull up all Past Clients in a list format, now I print it out and take all my list of Past Clients with their phone numbers with me in my car. In fact, I leave this list in my car. Then if I am stuck in traffic, or waiting on an appointment to show up, I have their phone numbers right there and give them a call.
I recently stated a Category called Activerain. Then when I get personal emails from activerain members, I add them to my Outlook Contacts and put them in the category called Activerain.
- Tip if you use Plaxo, there is a feature there where you can grab all of their signature and it opens up Outlook and automatically puts them in there. I am all for automatic. then I have automatically added their name, company, email, address, website.
If you want to be in my Activerain Contact's category, send me a email with your signature and I will add you to my Outlook Contacts under the Activerain Category.
Missy@MissyCaulk.com
Ann Arbor House Search
Have a great day, I am going to the game U of M vs Notre Dame. Go Blue !! 
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