Tips for using the 'External: Basic client email/mobile' field option

The 'External Basic Client Email/Mobile' field option is a method used by Glide to determine who the correct recipient is for your Email or SMS message, along with the correct email address and phone number. An alternative method is also using the contact tagging structure. If you would like to see how to use Contact Tagging click here. This setting is especially handy when you want a quick setup without the complexities of contact linking and tagging.

Please watch the above video to get a full breakdown of how this feature works. Below is an overview of what is discussed in the video with examples.

Tip Number 1:

When you have a workflow route that is only used by individual clients, as may be the case with Personal Tax Returns, you can send them an email or SMS message directly if you have their email addresses or phone numbers. This method is only for sending emails or SMS messages to one recipient per client at a time, and you cannot use it to send the same message to multiple recipients within the same client. When creating a personalised email or SMS message, you can select the 'Recipient' option within the email editor to add the client's full name, first name, last name, and title if desired.

Example of how Tip 1 can be applied:

Suppose you have a workflow route for Personal Tax Return jobs, and you have all the clients' email addresses filled in. You want to send an email requesting clients who haven't submitted any paperwork to do so. In order to make each email personalised with the recipient's 'First Name', you can use the {Recipient.FirstName} merge field. Since you know that all the clients have their 'First Name' field filled out on their client summary cards, you can use this merge field to pull in the 'First Name' of each Personal Tax client into their respective emails. By doing this, you can ensure that each email is personalised and tailored to the individual client.

Tip Number 2:

For workflow routes that are not solely used by individual clients, consideration should be given to which individual you would want to address within an organisation. Our preferred method is to use contact tagging, (you can read about that here), however in some circumstances, you can achieve this using the basic method.

This is possible where:

• The email/mobile number that you wish to target is stored on the client record (as opposed to a linked record such as a director), in the appropriate fields.
• Each time this automation runs, you will only need a maximum of one message to be sent per client (as opposed to sending multiple messages to different directors).
• You do not need the additional functionality offered by contact tagging such as filtering.

If you choose to use this basic method to send messages to organisations and if you wish to merge in the first name or salutation of the intended recipient, then you need to consider how you will access the first name. Organisation clients on Glide do not have a value in the first name field in the way that individual clients do, therefore you would need to create an additional custom field to hold this value.

Read this article to understand how to create this field. In the example below I have created a 'Main Contact Known as Name' field.

For example, if you wanted to address the company Glide Practice Solutions Limited as 'Ben', you would populate this new field on the client's summary card with 'Ben'. As mentioned above you would need to ensure Ben's email address is in the organisation's main email address field.

For any queries or further assistance, feel free to contact us via 'Questions? Docs + Help' widget. We're happy to assist you at every step of your Glide experience!