Using Notion as a personal CRM
Because a good memory and a contacts app aren’t enough
⏱ tl; dr
I wanted a way of nudging myself to stay in contact with friends more often.
Not because I needed the motivation or because it’s difficult to do, but because life’s busy and time passes quickly. I ended up making a simple but effective personal CRM in Notion, which is working well for me.
Here are some alternatives, and my Notion personal CRM template (link below).
👥 What other people do…
I wanted something like a CRM but without business stuff (like “leads”), and being lazy I looked at what other people are using.
And I ignored using a spreadsheet — because I tried it, it doesn’t work for me, and I think the options below are all better.
- Airtable
- Monica
- UpHabit
- FollowUp
- Ryze
- Close
Airtable
✔️ if you like spreadsheets 👨🏽💻 but want something more automated ⚡️
❌ not very mobile friendly 📵 and not really designed for writing notes 📝
Airtable was recommended more than the other options I found. If you’re not familiar with it, Airtable makes databases as easy as spreadsheets and it’s awesome.
I’ll wait here while you go take a look.
️Airtable didn’t do it for me — I’ve used it for other jobs (and again, it’s awesome) but here I was looking for something more mobile-friendly and better for adding notes.
If you want to look at whether it could work for you, here are some good examples:
MonicaHQ
✔️ if you want something built just for this and made with open source software
❌ only maintained on web (no mobile-optimised or offline version) 📵 and a busy, inflexible design 🙁
I really like the principles behind Monica — built with code transparency, data privacy and strengthening human relationships above all else. It has the structure and — while manual — the functionality I think you’d want from a personal CRM.
If visual design and mobile-optimised/offline access aren’t priorities for you, it could be great — it has its advocates and with the way Monica is built I can see why.
For me though, mobile UX, offline access and simple, intuitive design are important if I’m going to build a habit around a tool like this. Just my preferences, not a criticism at all.
Once I found another way to get these things, I decided not to use Monica — but it may work well for you, so do check it out.
UpHabit
✔️ if you want something super simple and designed for mobile 📱
❌ still in production 👷🏽 and unclear how much it will cost when it’s released 💰
UpHabit is a new app that seems to be aiming squarely at doing this job. Right now (Jan 2019) it’s still in development and you need to contact them to get access to the app.
I haven’t tried UpHabit but I like the focus it has — though I’m sure it’ll have a price tag once it’s live, so I’ll wait and see before considering it as an option.
FollowUp
✔️ if you want something connected to your Google email 📩 and calendar 📆
❌ seems less flexible than other approaches 🔒
️FollowUp plugs into your Google account to track Gmail interactions and Google Calendar dates, add notes and get reminders to stay in touch. Great if email is where you do a lot of your socialising.
There’s a free tier available, though it’s fairly limited and it’s not clear how flexible FollowUp is in terms defining the fields of information you want to capture — so for me, FollowUp wasn’t an option.
Ryze
✔️ if you want something super simple and designed for mobile 📱
❌ not available yet on Android 📵
Ryze is, basically, what I’m looking for — with a simple focus on being proactive about staying in touch with people.
I like the look of it, though I wonder if it’s something you can really build a business around so I’d be wary about relying on it until it’s clear how sustainable and supported it’s going to be.
Beyond that, right now (Jan 2019) it’s not available on Android so sadly I couldn’t try it out.
Cloze
✔️ a lot of functionality and automation built in 🧙♂️
❌ expensive for a personal tool 💰 and probably too complicated for basic use 🤯
Cloze is the most extensive personal CRM that I’ve seen— it connects to most of the communication and collaboration apps you can imagine and pulls in all the data automatically…calls, texts, emails, shared documents, social media messages.
Understandably, this doesn’t come cheap — $17 for the cheapest tier and hence Cloze is really aimed at business customers.
🛠 What I did…
Notion
10 years ago, I made this in Excel. 5 years ago, I would have made it in Google Sheets.
This time, I used Notion.
If you install Notion via this link, you’ll get $10 free credit towards the paid tiers — I also get credits to discount future subscription payments.
Notion is one of a new breed of apps — together with Airtable, Coda and others — for creating data and documents in really productive and powerful ways.
In my view they’re the biggest step forward in productivity apps since Excel was released.
Imagine combining Evernote, Trello, Google Docs, Confluence and (in a limited way) Airtable in one app — that’s what Notion aims to do.
Here’s a gallery of Notion document templates other people have shared:
I currently use Notion for:
- Project management at work and home (e.g. planning trips)
- Writing a daily journal
- Keeping track of books, articles, podcasts and videos to read / finished
- Building a knowledge-base (my notes, website links, files, people)
- Being more proactive about staying in contact with people…
So Notion has become part of many things I do every day — which makes it easy to build valuable habits around (and happily pay for), rather than become something I’ll use for a month then forget.
That’s the kind of product-market fit that grows into a big business…
🖐️ Notion feature request: a simpler way to create templated pages in databases (e.g. daily journal)
👦 My Personal CRM template
✔️ simple to use 👶🏻 and easy on mobile 📱
❌ not a dedicated app — just a document template
I wanted something:
- 📱 Mobile-friendly
- ⏰ Actively prompting me when I’m overdue with people
- ✅ Easy to get into a habit of using
- 🧙♂️ Ideally, with automatic tracking of calendar, text, email and phone interactions — not possible with Notion (but see Cloze, above)
🖐️ Notion feature request: a way to automate workflows between Notion and other apps
So I created a Notion database:
- Personal CRM Notion template available here
- Importing instructions here on how to copy to your account
📲 Entering contact information
The important fields I enter manually are:
- When we were last in contact and how frequently I’m aiming to be in contact ← if I’m overdue with someone, the “Overdue” field is flagged
- Where I know them from and the social groups they’re in (e.g. friends, colleagues, mentors, etc.)
- What they’re interested in and know about
- Their birthday, address and family names
Less important / as needed:
- Their job
- Where they work
- Action with a calendar reminder
Automatically calculated:
- Whether or not I’m overdue meeting up or calling
🖐️ Notion feature request: a way to repeat dates on a schedule, like in a calendar
It’s quick to set up new contacts, with the fields automatically popping up menus whether it’s a date field…
…or selecting from a menu:
⚡️ Checking in
When I open full view, the list of people is sorted so that the overdue contacts are at the top:
With Notion’s different database “views”, I can see the contacts list in a variety of formats e.g:
- 🗄 As a full table, like a spreadsheet
- 📅 As a birthday calendar
- 🗃 As a board of cards (like Trello), grouped by target contact frequency
🖐️ Notion feature request: a simpler way to add cover pictures to database pages, from the clipboard, camera or pictures in the page
Using Notion’s built-in reminders that you can access simply by typing something like @Feb 19, 2019 20:30, I can easily add additional reminders to get in touch at a certain time.
Notion’s mobile app is also easy to use, so adding people or notes, getting notifications or checking who I’m overdue with doesn’t rely on the desktop version.
Personally, I make it a habit at the end of each day to update who I’ve met with or talked to that day, so the overdue list is up to date.
😎
Final thought
Two (kind of new) breeds of tools are changing the way work gets done:
- Content creation and collaboration tools like Notion, Coda and Airtable, which have “building blocks like Lego” — so text and data work well together rather than being separate blank slates like Word and Excel
- Cloud integration / automation tools like Zapier, IFTTT, Automate.io, and (Microsoft) Flow, which plug totally separate apps into each other with rules to make them work together (e.g. log Twitter mentions automatically in a Google Sheet)
Being able to use these kinds of tools will, I suspect, quickly become as valuable as being able to use Excel has been in the past.
If you want to use Notion, following this link will earn you (and me, for disclosure) £10 credit towards the paid tier.
Here are the links again to use this Notion template as a personal CRM:
🤦♀️ questions or 👍 feedback 👎, let me know in the comments 💬
