Originally posted by @Drew Clements:
Goals:
1. Have a place where I can, at a high level, manage and organize all of my contacts (sellers, buyers, agents, vendors, etc.)
2. Leverage these contacts throughout my apps, and have my apps - in turn - update/edit/create new contacts, etc.
3. Create Processes for each of my marketing channels (e.g. Driving for Dollars, Web Leads, Referrals, Call-ins, Direct Mail, etc.). I assume these would each be workspaces with their own sets of apps (?).
Right now I'm working on a "Driving For Dollars" workspace with apps for Properties, Property Profiles (relationship with Properties, a Contact Field for Owner, and Mailing address text fields). Mailings are done manually based on an export of this Property Profiles app (I don't have the chops for Globiflow, although that's an eventuality). I'm now working on a Responses app... but I'm stuck on how to "link" it to contacts and Properties and Property Profiles.
It seems that the Contact Field creates a record, but I have no idea where to find it or how to create a relationship with it (Goal 1)... this is the issue I'm having with contacts and I'm guessing this is why Podio is moving away from the contact field?
I'm still really new to Podio, and I consider myself a capable person; but this isn't "clicking" yet - I know the potential is there, though! I'm just missing some key pieces somewhere that I need to get into place to "get" this... any idea what those pieces are?
The contacts field is handled a little different depending on the settings. One option creates a workspace member, another option creates just a contact. It is very confusing where they are stored. I still haven't figure it out 100%. To me it always made more sense to hold contacts in a separate app.
I agree that you should create a workspace for each of your different marketing techniques. Then when the leads progress to a point where they should get offers, you can move them to an advanced Lead Flow workspace. I like this approach because at this stage all leads are typically handled in the same way.
You could have one master contact workspace that handles all your contacts (Property and Personal). Then you can just use relationship fields in all your apps to link up to this table. Then it will be accessible by all your workspaces and apps.
Take a look at my blog post about Proper lead flow in Podio. It explains in detail how and why I set things up the way I do. it should help you think through your setup better.
