Keeping tabs on all your social media services plus your email can seem like a full-time job. But that job just got easier. After adding new apps to its marketplace in January, Nimble Inc., the cloud-based CRM service designed to manage clients and prospects across various social media services and email, just announced a major upgrade. Now you can install Nimble into Microsoft Outlook, Google’s Gmail, and Hootsuite, placing contact information inside the applications most used during the workday.
“Information professionals spend one-third of their day inside their inbox,” says Eric Quanstrom, chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing and sales for Nimble. “Just ‘Nimble’ your contacts, then stay connected through Nimble after that.”
Turning “Nimble” into a verb aside, the service does an excellent job of placing information about customers and prospects from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn all in one location-be that Outlook, Gmail, or Hootsuite. Quanstrom’s goal is to increase usage of Nimble by folding information needed by sales and marketing workers into the applications where they spend much of their workday.
Quanstrom says more than 15 percent of Nimble’s sales are through channel partners. Commissions are paid monthly for each converted lead, and the most successful resellers to date are digital advertising or social media agencies. Consultants in social media also refer many customers. Network-oriented professions such as real estate agents and mortgage brokers see the value of Nimble, says Quanstrom. “Relationship management is inherent to every business, including professional service and information technology products. Even old-line businesses are shifting and trending into social media.”
NOT JUST A DATABASE
Rather than just acting as a customer and prospect database, Nimble actively tracks the social media activities of your contacts on a daily basis. Searching for terms like “entrepreneur” and “CIO” across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn helps Nimble customers identify prospects for their services. “You [find] people who talk about your keywords, pull them into Nimble, and start to walk in their social footprint,” says Quanstrom. “You look for those that fit your profile, then take the relationship where it should go organically.”
As part of its “smart relationship management” approach, Nimble shares information between coworkers. Tasks can be assigned to team members, then tracked and monitored by all coworkers with authorized access to those records.
Pricing, currently $15 per user per month, will remain the same. Volume pricing tiers for large Nimble customers may be introduced early next year, along with new features aimed at actively helping customers find new leads by matching their perfect customer profile to prospects.
Apps for Nimble integration are now available at no extra charge through the various app download pages at Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and Hootsuite. A Nimble subscription and valid username are required.
