I used to get dates of birthdays by going into Facebook and seeing the list there… but I don’t go into Facebook enough to make that worth my while, and I’m not connected with enough real contacts that it is worth my time to check it out.
My new favorite place to get birthday dates is, of all places, Plaxo. Weird, huh? I get less spam contacts on Plaxo and Plaxo sends me an email that has this:
This is from a real professional contact… I had no idea his birthday was coming up, but since we’re connected in Plaxo I got the reminder. Nice, huh? (well, nice unless you are worried about your privacy – if you don’t want your birthday floating around go check your Plaxo security settings).
Immediately I go into JibberJobber and put the date in there, if it’s someone I want to keep in touch with. I went to the Contact Detail Page I had for this contact and double-clicked on the birthday field:
Now I can get the reminders I want because JibberJobber:
- sends me an email on the first of every month with a list of birthdays coming up in the next 5 weeks. This way I can see if there is any planning I need to do for anyone.
- Sends me an email for each birthday. Be default we send it two days before the birthday but I’ve changed my settings to get it the day of. I send birthday emails so getting a reminder the day of gives me an easy, actionable email to send from. (go to My Account, Preferences and you can set it to zero, which is the day of)
- The email address of the contact is in the email so I don’t have to login to JibberJobber to see what their email is. It’s easy and convenient.
- Stores this info forever, even if the person isn’t connected with me on Plaxo, FB or any other system. I don’t know what will eventually happen to those accounts and I want to keep this info handy and under my own control, so I like to have it there.
Pretty cool, huh? This is why I think even grandmas should use JibberJobber (to get reminders of their grandkids’ birthdays)