Plaxo

Do you know that every year 10% of the population moves or changes work? This could mean that all your contact data is worthless in 10 years. So how can you be sure to have the latest information from people? Some of them will tell you, send a card with a new address or provide you with the new contact data via e-mail. But what about all the others, especially people you don’t meet very often? One of the tools that can help you solve this problem is Plaxo. There are other tools that are similar, but Plaxo is used by most people at this moment.

What is Plaxo?

If you didn’t hear from it yet, chances are that you nevertheless came in contact with it. With Plaxo people can send e-mails to ask you to check if the contact data they have from you are still correct.

Plaxo consists of two things: the website www.plaxo.com and a toolbar for MS Outlook and Outlook Express that can be downloaded for free from this website. The website itself is useful if you don’t have MS Outlook or Outlook Express or in situations where you don’t have access to your own computer. Personally I never use the website, but only the toolbar in MS Outlook.

How can Plaxo help you?

• The contact data of other people who use Plaxo are constantly up-to-date. You don’t have to do anything yourself. If they change their contact data, these modifications are automatically carried through in MS Outlook on your computer.
• You can send people requests to check and update their contact data. You can send one message to all your contacts. But please, at least personalise your message. Don’t use the default message of Plaxo. People (maybe including yourself) are really turned off by this kind of impersonal e-mails.
• When you use the feature “build your address book” Plaxo searches for e-mail addresses in the e-mails stored in the folders in MS Outlook you choose. They are checked with your existing Contacts. And if you want, you can make a “contact card” for the found e-mail addresses. Combined with the feature of requesting people to see if their contact data are still up to date, this is a very powerful and easy way to always keep your address book up to date.
• You keep your contacts up to date of changes in your life. When you change the data in your “Plaxo cards” all people who also use Plaxo automatically get an e-mail that notifies them of the changes. And these changes are also carried through in their “Contacts” folder.
• With Plaxo you can also create a signature for your e-mails. This has more graphical options than the standard signature from MS Outlook. Nice to know is that Plaxo has a partnership with www.iprint.com. They print your Plaxo business card on paper for a low price.
• People can also fill in their birthdays on their Plaxo cards. Plaxo automatically notifies you a week before with an e-mail. They were smart enough to team up with websites that offer e-cards, paper birthday cards (www.artamata.com) , flowers (www.growerflowers.com) , gifts (www.redenvelope.com) and books (www.barnesandnoble.com). If you tend to forget birthdays and birthday presents, this service might be something for you.

This is also a nice example of commercial networking. Plaxo teams up with other parties that their users might benefit from. What about your organisation? Who can you team up with? Even if you’re not in a commercial role, think about how collaborating with other departments or other teams might benefit the both of you and your (internal) customers.

How could Plaxo be useful within larger companies? If you change function or department and modify your Plaxo card, all connected persons will be notified. This will give them an opportunity to contact you again. Use this opportunity to reconnect yourself when you see that there are changes in the function, company or department of someone you are connected to.

In short: I strongly recommend using Plaxo (or a similar tool). It really helps a lot in staying in touch with your network.