Importance of Legal Name, Phone, Email, and Birthday

• The Email and Text lists apply to bulk emails notifying people of news and events. You may still get emails or text messages for events you attend or other things directly related to you.
• The preferences apply to you and not a particular email or phone. If you have multiple emails in our system or multiple phones, messages will go to all of them. Use "Unsubscribe" in the footer of emails to be removed from EVERYTHING for just that email. Use the "DNT" or "STOP" feature for phones. You can also contact us for more custom solutions.
• Great efforts are made to keep people's information private. The person's preferred FIRST NAME and an ID Number are typically used for the public.
• People can log into the system with emails or phone numbers. You will often be prevented from assigning an email or phone number that another user has.
• There are A LOT of James (Jim), Robert (Bob), and John (Johnny) Smiths in America! How do we tell the difference when there are multiples in our system?
• Phone tends to be the best identifier! If you enter that first, it will often search for the person in the database. People go by different names and have a lot of email addresses throughout their life. They have very few phone numbers!
• Birthdays are great to identify people, but most people do not know their friends birthday...especially year. Be honest with your birthday! It is not made public. It gets very strange when a 70 year old gets matched up with a bunch of 18 year olds.
• Only use Phones (mobile preferred) and Emails specific to the Person. We use these for identifying people and letting them log into the system. Using a community email risks giving others access to private information.
• Your friend may already be in our system with their preferences already set. We attempted to match up to their account.
• The legal name settles the issue between Robert, Rob, Robbie, Bob, Bobbie, Buck.... The legal name is also important for billing. Users can specify a "Nickname" that people generally see.
• A Middle Name or Initial greatly reduces confusion.
• Sometimes we ask for birth names. It is a constant. People often change their name when they get married.
• We often utilize text messaging at our events for invites, directions at events, reporting scores, event updates, ... Many people do not check email and prefer text messages.
• We like to be able to communicate to people that attend our events. They can AND we want them to change their preferences. It cost us money to send out messages and we do not want to irritate people.