Important Dates Overview

Why This Matters

Staying in touch with contacts on meaningful dates builds stronger relationships and drives repeat business. Important Dates lets you track any recurring annual event for your contacts — policy renewals, loan anniversaries, home purchase dates, wedding anniversaries — and automatically run a workflow when each date comes around every year.

You define the date types you want to track, link each one to a workflow, and apply dates to your contacts. From that point on, the system takes over — checking every day and firing the right workflow at the right time, every year, without any further effort on your part.

What You Can Do with It

Important Dates is flexible enough to support almost any industry or relationship style. A few examples of how it gets used:

• An insurance agent tracks policy renewal dates and fires a renewal reminder sequence 30 days before each anniversary
• A mortgage broker tracks loan closing dates and sends an annual review email two weeks before each anniversary
• A real estate agent tracks home purchase anniversaries and sends a market update the week before, creating a personal touchpoint every year
• A financial advisor tracks account anniversaries and sends an appreciation email on the date itself

You define your own date types, so you can track any annual event that matters to your business. There's no limit on the number of types you can create, and a single contact can have multiple entries of the same type — useful when a client has more than one policy, property, or account.

How It Works

Setting up Important Dates takes two steps. First, you create your date types at Automation → Important Dates. Each date type has a name, a linked workflow, and a timing setting that controls when the workflow fires — either on the anniversary date or a set number of days before it.

Second, you apply dates to individual contacts from the Important Dates tab on each contact card. Each entry records the date type, the actual date, and an optional note for specifics like a property address or policy number.

After that, the system handles everything automatically. The contact card shows a Next Run column so you can always see exactly when a workflow will fire for each contact.

How It Differs from Birthday Assistant

Important Dates and Birthday Assistant are separate features that coexist in the system. Birthday Assistant is designed specifically for birthdays — it uses the birthday field already on every contact record and can send emails or create to-dos directly. Important Dates is for any other recurring annual event and always uses a workflow to define what happens.

Birthdays do not appear in the Important Dates tab. Use Birthday Assistant for birthday outreach, and Important Dates for everything else.

Finding Contacts by Important Date

Advanced Search on the Contact List lets you search by Important Date type. You can find contacts whose anniversary falls this month, next month, or within the next 7, 30, 60, or 90 days — making it easy to pull targeted lists for manual outreach or batch actions.

The Dashboard Widget

An Upcoming Important Dates widget is available on your dashboard. Each widget displays one date type and shows contacts with upcoming anniversaries ordered by nearest date first. Add multiple widgets to keep different date types visible at a glance.

Questions and Answers

Q: How is this different from Birthday Assistant?

A: Birthday Assistant is built specifically for birthdays and uses the contact's birthday field automatically. Important Dates is for any other recurring annual event and requires you to apply dates manually to each contact. Both features run independently and do not overlap.

Q: Does the system send emails directly from Important Dates?

A: No. Important Dates triggers a workflow, and the workflow handles all actions — sending emails, creating to-dos, assigning flags, sending texts, or any combination. This gives you full control over what happens when each date comes around.

Q: Can a contact have more than one entry of the same date type?

A: Yes. For example, a client with two insurance policies can have two Policy Anniversary entries, each with a different date and a note identifying which policy. Each entry runs its workflow independently.

Q: What happens if I delete a workflow that's linked to a date type?

A: The date type will show a warning in the library, and the system will skip firing that date type until you assign a new workflow. No contacts are affected — it simply won't run until a workflow is assigned again.

Q: Can I see upcoming Important Dates without opening each contact?

A: Yes. Use the Upcoming Important Dates dashboard widget to see contacts with approaching anniversaries for any date type. You can also use Advanced Search on the Contact List to find contacts whose anniversary falls within a specific time window.

Guide Type: Feature Overview

Estimated Time: 5 minutes