Adding Contacts from Business Cards with Evernote
I had just introduced myself to the executive leading the meeting. He handed me his business card and I quickly snapped a picture of it with my phone. A few seconds later his phone dinged. He glanced at his phone, then looked at me in shock.
In mere seconds I had taken a picture of his business card, saved all of his information to my contacts, and emailed him my contact information. Since he had his phone set to notify him of emails (a terrible idea), his phone alerted him of the email. He quickly noticed it was from me and that I had sent him my contact information. Wow!
Here’s how it works:
The Setup
Tools needed:
- Smartphone
- Evernote (requires Premium to scan more than 5 cards)
- Business card
On iOS, you need to configure the following settings under General > Camera > Business Cards.
- Turn on Save to Contacts.
- Turn on Always Show under Follow-up options.
- I also recommend connecting to LinkedIn.
- It works best to fill out My contact info as well.
The Process
When you’re given a new business card, launch Evernote on your phone and open up the camera. Swipe to put it into Business Card mode and take a picture. Be sure to check off Email my contact info and you’re done.
From there, Evernote will create a new note in your Evernote account with the picture of the business card and all of the person’s contact information. It will also save that information into a new contact on your phone. Then it will send an email to the person (provided they have an email address on their card) with the contact information that you provided to Evernote. And it does all of this in just a few seconds. Brilliant!
