We have implemented Filters to help members limit results and locate important contacts and companies. This article will review some tips on how to use Filters within the Directory.

The Keyword search is the most commonly used filter. You can use this to search for a contact, company, or brand. You will see two radio buttons under the search box, limiting results to "Contains" and "Starts with." When searching the Directory, these come in handy.

The next filter is "Company Type." You can segment the database to:

What's more, you can segment the company type by specialty. For example, let's say you are a Director and produce short video commercials for beverages and food. Limiting your filters to specialties will surface contacts working on these items, helping your research, list building, and tagging.

Let's talk about "Geocentric." Many agencies and companies are hiring locally these days. It saves them money on travel and boarding expenses, and let's be honest; this is a priority. Promoting to your local market is extremely important, and this next filter makes it easy for you to identify said local market. Narrow your search by country, but go even further and narrow by region, state, metro area, and province.

Next, we move into "Role." If you know what titles you are looking for, this filter will work wonders for you. Drilling down your results to specific titles will help you put your marketing dollars and your time spent in situations where you can get the best results.

Next are our "Email Preferences" and "Tags." With Email Preferences, you can narrow the Directory to creatives that accept emails or don't accept emails. As an artist trying to get creatives to see your work, it would be great if we had emails for all our contacts. Unfortunately, we don't, but the positive is we know who wants them, who is getting them, and who chooses not to receive them anymore. Not being able to email a creative makes it more challenging, but knowing who to address and market differently to is invaluable.

If you already had contacts tagged, this filter will allow you to cull the results of those tagged contacts, in turn making it easy to gather information, document notes, or add to a new email promo list.

Lastly, we have our "Date Added" filter. This filter will gather contacts added by our Research department up to the Last 90 Days.

These filters are similar to the "Contact" filters but focus on companies, not contacts. You can select "Company Types" and "Specialties" here, too, along with the Company Attributes, Location and Date Added.

You can search for a Brand as a keyword, which will pull up the corporate headquarters for that brand. However, it will also pull up the agencies that advertise for that brand as well. In addition to the keyword search, just like in a "Contact" or "Company" filter, you can limit results using the location filters.

Finally, just like "Contacts" and "Companies," you can limit Brand results by "Specialty" and get results from Brands that work in a specific field.