vCard is a file format that is used for digital business cards. There are also vCard editors that allow you to create electronic business cards if you do not have one. This format is convenient because it can be attached to emails, can be sent as separate files or images, provided in messengers, etc. These files can also act as data interchange format personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal information managers (PIMs) and customer relationship management (
vCards are one of the oldest forms of online media. The Internet Mail Consortium took over the management and oversight of them back in
Earlier versions of vCards had more limited functionality and lacked the aesthetics of their modern counterparts. They have evolved in recent years and play an important role in modern branding and organizational communications.
What are the Main Benefits of vCards?
Back when the average Internet user’s activities were limited to simple mail managers, vCards were shared with email addresses. They are now incorporated into a variety of other types of online media, as online technology has become more versatile.
The beauty of the vCard files is that they can actually be embedded as contacts on the web page, transferred into email contacts, or used otherwise without the necessity to rewrite the contact information from the business card into another database manually. One can easily import vCard to outlook and use the data as a contact list.
The vCard files can contain a bunch of info about the person who owns the business card. Since the data is digital, it can contain much more than a paper card. For example, you can find their name, address, date of birth, URL to calendar, electronic mail address, gender, photo and/or logo of the organization associated with the owner of the card, unit of the organization, last time the card was updated, profession, hobby, timezone, and still have space for other additional info.
As you can see, there is a ton of useful information about the person squeezed into one small digital file. There is no way in the world one could get the same amount of data from a paper card, and the beauty is that you do not have to copy the info manually to use it, you just click on the URLs or sections and you find out what you need. Implementing the same volume of info into the contact list allows you to keep the info about all your contacts in one place, having access to it in a convenient manner.
That is why it makes a lot of sense to use vCards as additional files in emails or texting threads in messengers, and also to import them to the email contacts. This will save lots of your time and efforts.
In addition to importing somebody else’s contacts to your mailing contacts, you can also make other people’s life easier by providing them with your own vCard business card. This will allow you both not to waste your time on double-asking about telephones, emails, or other data that can easily be added to the vCard file.
The last but not the least benefit of the vCard format is that you can actually import or export multiple contacts in one single file if you need to transfer or send them quickly. This type of format allows such manipulations.
How Can You Use vCards for Optimal Effectiveness?
There are a lot of benefits of using vCards. You need to know how they can be used and have a strategy in place. Design Shack has some very insightful ideas that you can try. They include:
- Integrating the vCard into the background of your website
- Adding digital animation to them
- Linking all of your social media accounts
- Incorporating responsive design elements to make your website have a better user experience across all devices
- Optimizing the font of your brand name
There are plenty of brilliant ways to use vCards. Make sure that you do your due diligence and plan accordingly.
