I need to do a better job of managing correspondence.

A letter will go out to a mail-merge list, kicking over anthills and calling out politicians for greed, avarice, stupidity, and usually a Venn-ish convergence of various similar vices.

That's sort of the root of a tree. The initial contact will consist of the letter, enclosures, perhaps some initial phone calls, and probably some notes and references for the sorry situation in question.

From there, every contact may respond, requiring additional proof of malfeasance. And so, on recursing down the tree, now including other targets in that sub-conversation.

I need to keep track of who's ducking out on me, and I need to keep the chain cross referenced.

Devonthink is working fine for document storage, but I haven't worked out a way to keep track of status, like "no response."

Any thoughts? What's a good way to keep track of complex correspondence?

Hi Amontillado,

Perhaps specify OSs (Win, Mac, Linux, Chrome) and whether you need both desktop and mobile access

Thanks

Pierre

Generally speaking, you're looking for a Customer-relationship management (CRM) app for personal/small business use. A lot of good products/services are derived from solutions for sales departments, where keeping track of everything client-related is advantageous.

I remember you previously writing about Devonthink so I assume you're interested in something working on a Mac, but you don't say here, nor do mention a budget. (You should have!) Nor did you mention what kind email service you use. (You should have!)

Good lists of useful CRM services (and a couple of Mac apps, like Daylite) can be found here:

https://zapier.com/learn/crm/best-crm-app/

https://www.capterra.com/mac-crm-software/

Whoops, I buried the lede!

I use MacOS and IOS, and appreciate portability to Linux. I'm not likely to use Microsoft products in the future, not out of hatred or bitterness, just preference. To me, a Mac is more of an appliance than a computer, but it's a great tool.

A couple of times I've started to write something sqlplus-based in Python, and I've hacked around in Tap Forms.

Seems like there should be something out there to handle correspondence without being a full blown enterprise CRM.

In the early 90s, Symantec made a wonderful program called ACT! that managed all of my letters and memos and contacts. Since then, everything seems to be way more expensive, web-based, business-based, and way more than I need.

Amontillado wrote:

Seems like there should be something out there to handle correspondence
without being a full blown enterprise CRM.

Apps and services don't need to be 'full blown'. If you want to manage correspondence a CRM is a good choice, and there are consumer and small business solutions that would fit the bill.

If you want to merely to manually keep track of basic lists of responses, a checklist would do, or perhaps something made in Airtable or Numbers.

https://airtable.com/

https://www.apple.com/numbers/

Jeffery Smith wrote:

In the early 90s, Symantec made a wonderful program called ACT! that
managed all of my letters and memos and contacts. Since then, everything
seems to be way more expensive, web-based, business-based, and way more
than I need.

A very long time ago, I used ACT! for what was essentially a small-scale CRM operation. I agree that it was really good for the times, and not hugely expensive. Unfortunately for the OP, it was then, and from a cursory glance at its website appears still to be, a Windows-only application.

The one I know would work for you is only available in Windows OS. The rest of the CRM's out there don't look like they do much for mail merge of snail-mail. Also, they're complex and therefore overkill.

What are you using now for your database of contacts? Is it a spreadsheet?

Steve

Jeffery Smith wrote:

In the early 90s, Symantec made a wonderful program called ACT! that
managed all of my letters and memos and contacts.

Even before that, in the 80s the Mac had an app called CAT (Contacts, Activities, Time) that pioneered the idea. Then one day the app disappeared. I often wondered if they were bought by Symantec and it was transformed/recoded into ACT.

There are crm that are not subscription based, also some freemium, better some free, better yet some open source.

There are also genres of software. But I think the OP would be happy with Mozilla thunderbird which is free open source and with numerous plugins. Don't think he needs various genres of email environments.

Just learn how to search for thunderbird plugins & themes & add-ons, by function, how to activate and setup, etc. Should be easy to learn, should be some YouTube videos too. Multi platform too, better than the old ACT.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Right now, when I start a mass-mail argument, I begin with a Numbers spreadsheet. One row per contact, with columns for address, greeting, and any other fields I want to merge into a letter.

Nisus Pro prints letters and envelopes.

After the columns of merge fields, I create columns of checkboxes, titled after letters sent. That way, I can check off some recipients in a new column and export just the checked rows to a CSV file which is then ready for use with Nisus for merging.

Until I find or write something more organized, I'll use this setup. In Devonthink, I'll have a group for the mail project, with subgroups for subsequent conversations with individuals. When a letter or email gets a response, I'll tag it as having gotten a response and possibly with needing a follow up from me.

One thing I haven't done in the past is use a "no response yet" tag per individual I send a letter or email to. Kind of a manual thing to do, but I need a better way of finding who I haven't heard from yet.

Thanks for the tips, all.

Google sheet might be worth a look, cells can have a formula or even Form content:

https://zapier.com/learn/google-sheets/spreadsheet-crm/

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=google+sheet+crm

I think Libreoffice will do the job for you.

You need a "real" contact database that integrates with a word processor. Libreoffice has that.

https://www.libreoffice.org/

The database comes with templates to track contacts:
https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/base/

Someone wrote an extension for it to do mail merge:
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions/mail-merge-db

Steve