Better Cause Marketing with Evernote

I'm always looking for good tools to help make my cause marketing job better and easier, and one of the best additions of late has been Evernote.

What is Evernote?

Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use.

Evernote is one-stop saving for everything. Text, pictures and voice. Best of all, everything is searchable, including text in PDFs and in pictures so it's super easy to find whatever you're searching for.

Here are some of the ways I use it for cause marketing, and how you can too.

Project management. For each cause marketing project you can create an online notebook for everything related to it. Evernote makes this easy by giving you a bookmarklet to clip text directly from web pages. You can also email Evernote and even tweet them! In short, they give you lots of different ways to save the things you see and like.

Organize your snapshots... Evernote is most useful when you add their free app to your iPhone (my device), Blackberry or Pre. I snap photos of cause marketing programs I see around town and save them in Evernote so I can access them from anywhere. I've also uploaded pictures of examples from my cause marketing programs so I can easily share them with clients or prospects in meetings. Of course, all these images can be emailed right from Evernote. Like what you see? Let me email you a copy.

...And add business cards in a snap. Before when someone handed me their card, I took it back t to the office and gave it to @kaylarogers to put in Outlook. It was a pain for her and a low priority. Now, when someone hands me his or her business card, I snap a picture of it with my iPhone and hand the card back to them. The card immediately uploads to Evernote and the text in the picture becomes searchable. While I long for the day when I'll be able to dial and email directly from a picture in Evernote, being able to search and find the card in Evernote is faster than looking through a pile of business cards on Kayla's desk.

Manage your deliveries. Because I run a local cause marketing program, I work mainly with pinups that are sold at multiple stores throughout eastern Massachusetts. Here too, Evernote has proven to be a big help. Here's how:

• When I drop a supply pinups off at a store I take a picture of the storefront and save it to Evernote. Then I can include a note with all the details of how many pinups I left and anything else I might want to record. I can also tag the picture/note with keywords to make it easy to search.
• Taking the picture with the "location services" setting ON on my iPhone records where I took the picture so I can map out my drop-offs and--get this--retrieve notes by location. Did I drop pinups off at the iParty store in Avon? I can check my notes by location location.
• I can't tell you the number of times I've dropped supplies off at a store only to have someone claim later that they never got them. I've solved that by taking a picture of the person who took the delivery (be sure to include their name badge!). That's all you need. Don't remember at what store the person works? Hit the location button on your iPhone and you can tell where the picture was taken.
• A lot of times when I do drop-offs, managers ask for other things: more pinups, brochures, posters, etc. Use the Voice feature on Evernote to record a quick audio reminder. Again, no need to record what store you're at because Evernote notes the location for you!

All this and Evernote is free! Free on the web and a free app for your iPhone, Blackberry or Pre. There is a premium service, however, which I just signed up for. Its main benefit is that you'll have basically unlimited storage. The cost? A whopping $5 a month or $45 a year.

One last thing about Evernote: I've been using it with JotNot, a third-party app that sells for $4.99 on iTunes. JotNot allows you to trim your pictures in your iPhone so they are easier to read, print and share via Evernote. A bonus for me is that you can choose a notebook and tags for the picture before it's uploaded to Evernote. JotNot delivers a crisper picture and a one-step upload. It's well worth the five bucks.

There are a lot of other uses for Evernote. What are some of yours? I'd love to hear them!