BatchBook Blog
Posts by Michelle Riggen-Ransom
As you may have heard, we’re hard at work developing an iphone app for BatchBook. This is something we’re very excited about and in preparation for the big event, we’ve asked two local filmmakers to help us get the word out.
Meet Ethan and Dylan, eight-year old twins with a passion for all things movie-related. The boys, sons of BatchBook customer and BatchBlue friend Anisa Raoof from kidoinfo.com, write about movies as Flick and Flack on their blog FlickFlackMovieTalk.com. They also recently completed a week of film camp at the very cool Kid’s Eye Summer Filmmaking Camp, and their directorial debut (complete with a walk down the red carpet!) screened this past weekend at the University of Rhode Island.
We’re proud to support these local, up and coming filmmakers and look forward to seeing what they come up with to showcase the awesomeness that will be the BatchBook iphone app.
In the meantime, we’re pleased to introduce you to Flick & Flack as they enjoy lunch from Mad Ernie’s Cafe in lovely Wayland Square!
BatchBlue interviews Flick & Flack from Michelle Riggen-Ransom on Vimeo.
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Tags: batchbook, Community, iphone, marketing
It’s summertime and that means many BatchBluers have been taking a little time off to spend with family, go camping, splash 
around in pools and relax just a bit before the mad crunch of our Super Secret Fall Launch. That doesn’t stop folks from writing about us (in fact, judging from all the press we received in recent weeks, I should go on vacation more often!)
Here are a few links to some recent articles in case you saw one of us at the beach and want to make sure that yes, there is still work getting done around BatchBlue headquarters…
Award winning software AND software builders!
We are delighted to have been selected as a Rising Star by CRM magazine as part of the 2010 CRM Market Awards. This prestigious event is attended by some of the biggest names in the CRM space: other winners included industry analyst and author Brian Solis, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and companies like FourSquare, Radian6, Salesforce and IBM. We’re proud to have been chosen as representing “SMB meets social—in a very good way” by this organization. See the complete list of award recipients.
Speaking of winners, our very own VP of Technology Sean Ransom received his 40 under Forty Award at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI. A good time was had by most all of the BatchBluers (a couple of our crew couldn’t make it) as we celebrated Sean’s specialness with delicious drinks and food. Congratulations again to Sean on his achievement!
Multi-media
One of our favorite people in the small business world is Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends. Pamela and I were honored to be interviewed by her recently on her radio show. We had a great time talking small business with one of the leaders in this space.
While in Chicago for Start-Up Weekend, I sat down with Tim Jahn from Beyond the Pedway to talk about a topic we’re quite passionate about: the Customer Experience! Tim asked some great questions and meeting him was definitely a highlight to an already really fun and interesting weekend with some rocking Chicago entrepreneurs.
Fresh ink
The past couple of weeks have also brought some nice product reviews that we wanted to share. CRM Buyer featured us in a recent product profile of BatchBook and we received a mention in a helpful article from PC Mag about how to choose a CRM.
Phew, that’s it I think. A special thanks to our PR folks at Matter Communications who help us wrangle all this media and to all our great customers and readers for being so interested in what we’re up to.
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Tags: Community, Customer Service, small business
Our panel “Friends with Business Benefits: How Integrations Sell Apps” made it through the first round for SXSW11! We’ll be speaking with some of our favorite Small Business Web folks and other integration fans about why integrated apps are the way to go for companies and for customers.
Here’s a description of the panel, should be a fun one!
“The Small Business Web now has over 100 web app companies all serving the small business market. Together, we’re re-writing the rules for traditional business development and building the market for small business software through integrations.
So how has it not devolved into fisticuffs and mayhem? And why does integration help both the consumers and the vendors who are building the applications?
Members of the Small Business Web will discuss the power of the open API, why customers buy apps that integrate, how they are embracing their competition and why sometimes even they have to remember to “Hug It Out” as they work together to define the future of the Small Business Web.”
We need your help in making our dream of a Small Business Web panel a reality by giving us your vote*, your Tweets, your love etc. Vote for our panel and hopefully we’ll see you in Austin in March.
*You’ll need to sign in or create an account at the SXSW site to vote.
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Tags: Community, events, small business web, SXSW
We’re pleased to be a part of the latest software bundle from appsumo.com. Called the “Start Up” bundle, this one was created with entrepreneurs in mind. In addition to BatchBook, the deal includes some of our favorite wep app friends.
There’s a nice write-up about AppSumo over on TechCrunch today, but in a nutshell: AppSumo works with the best web app companies around to 
offer great deals on amazing services.
And, 5o% of each bundle sale for this particular bundle will be donated to the National Wildlife Federation to help animals affected by the recent Gulf oil spill. We’re aiming to reach $50,000 to donate to NWF.org!
The Startup Bundle includes 6 months of service for BatchBook (reg. $90), MailChimp ($140), FreshBooks ($120) and Formstack($84), plus 100 MOO Mini Cards + free shipping ($25.49). That’s $459 worth of software for only $55!
A suite of sweet small business applications
These services together are perfect to get your business going or to take it to the next level:
If you’ve been holding off on becoming a BatchBook customer, now is a good time to do it! The offer extends until August 2, 2010 or until 5,000 accounts are sold so act fast! You’ll meet a lot of other cool companies making great software for small businesses as well as play a key part in helping out a very good cause.
Please note this is for new accounts only. Already a BatchBook customer but want to contribute to the cause? Visit nwf.org to see how you can help.
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Tags: appsumo, entrepreneurs, freshbooks, mailchimp
The latest cool little feature we snuck into BatchBook has been a pet project of mine for a while. So much so that I get to be the one to announce it!
Have you ever been working in BatchBook and thought “Oh, I’d love to send someone this person’s contact information”? Recently, I had an editor friend looking for a freelance writer for a project. I clicked on my “writer” tag in BatchBook, took a quick look at the resultant list and found someone I thought would be perfect for the job. But I had no way to send that person’s information from BatchBook, so I had to cut and paste everything into a separate email. Kind of a bummer since all the info my friend needed (name, email and street address, phone number) was right there on the contact detail page.
Thanks to some back-end wizardry, you can now send a person’s contact information directly from BatchBook just by clicking on this last little icon on the Contact detail toolbar:
<== hello!
Once you click, just add the recipient’s email address to the drop-down bar and the vcard information is zipped off to your friend. This is also great for those times when you want to make a virtual introduction between two folks. With this new feature, you’re off and networking in no time. It’s just a quick little thing that adds up to a bit of a time-saver, which is always nice.
A big thanks to the BatchBlue tech team for making my BatchBook dream a reality! Now, who in my network needs an introduction to whom…?
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Tags: batchbook, contact management, usability
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