Organize Your Contacts in 5 Easy Steps: Step 2
Now you’ve collected a bunch of business cards or entry forms. You’ve categorized them. Now what? Data entry.
Use a database. There’s no reason not to. If you’re reading this right now that means you have a computer. Even if you don’t have or don’t like outlook there are plenty of other options.
Your free email account- yahoo, gmail and all those have places where you can enter all a persons contact info (not just their email). Some free contact management systems are Thunderbird and WindowsLive. Both are similar to Outlook.
If you intend on sending out lots of messages also look into services like ConstantContact and Aweber. If you send your eblasts through these services you won’t get zinged for disobeying any spam regulations.
This is definitely a step you can delegate unless you love data entry and will make the time for it. Here are the guidelines I use for outsourcing this task:
- They must be able to spell and type
- price it according to volume not time. The average I allow is 60 or 90 seconds per contact. So if you want someone to make $25/hr working for you this is at least 40 contacts per $25 ( or per hour). Tie it to the work performed and not the hours- they could drag the work out.
Doing this step well will save headaches in the future. Having data entered accurately is extremely important if you intend on using email as a means of communication because one wrong character and that address is useless. Of course, you won’t know that until things start bouncing. At that point you’ll have to pay again or waste time yourself fixing errors.
