In light of today’s date and associated holiday some reader might think a vCard has something to do with Valentine’s Day, but fear not, the v in vCard stands for virtual.

The vCard idea was developed by the Internet Mail Consortium for personal data interchange. It’s like a digital version of a business card and has become the standard for exchanging contact data. The vCard standard is built into most email programs such as Outlook and Thunderbird and allows you to send and import business card like details to your recipients and from those who send email to you.

Using a vCard with your email program falls under the marketing heading of being easy to do business with. When you send a contact an email with your vCard embedded, they have the option to click on the card and automatically add all of your contact information to their address book if they choose.

There is nice tutorial for vCard set-up and use for most common email software programs here. vCards also work with CRM software such as ACT and Goldmine.

I even came across a free service called getvcard that will host your vcard so that you can post a link to it on your web site or blog and allow visitors to automatically download your contact info to their address book. I like this option better than a software driven service such as Plaxo.

Add John Jantsch to your address book