Last week’s trip to Atlanta was a whirlwind of Realtors, Batchbook customers and monkeys (more on that later!). Pamela and I were there to attend the 4th annual ReTech South conference, where Pamela was presenting on panel with some other Small Business Web friends.
The thing that struck me the most about the conference was the great enthusiasm and energy from both attendees and presenters. Pamela and I attended a different real estate conference a few years ago, and I was amazed at how far the industry has come in terms of its adoption of technology in general and social media specifically. Most of the sessions were standing-room only, as panelists discussed ways to use blogs to attract leads, using Facebook to build network and of course, how web applications can help grow their businesses. Plus, you will not meet a nicer, more network group of people than Realtors. These guys are definitely in our wheelhouse!
Here’s some thoughts on the conference from Realtor Jim Duncan, who made a short video while driving home from the conference. Please note: we do not condone videotaping and driving!
You might remember that we spent a little time in Austin a few weeks ago. In addition to getting to hang out with a ton of Batchbook customers and partners, Michelle sat on a panel with some of our Small Business Web friends: Freshbooks, MailChimp and Formstack. The panel was moderated by Scott McMullan of Google. He’s part of the Google Enterprise group and leads the Google Apps Partners program.
Hold on. Google? Enterprise? Small Business? Yes! Scott has been a champion for small businesses for as long as we can remember and he made a big announcement at the start of the panel: Google Apps have become members of The Small Business Web. And we’re tickled to be in such good company. Google Apps and The Small Business Web share a common set of goals and philosophies. Specifically the the belief that web apps are more valuable when they integrate and work together. We continue to work hard to integrate Google Apps into Batchbook and have some exciting things coming up in the not to distant future that will strengthen those integrations.
The panel itself covered a range of topics from why and how web apps can work together to how small businesses can leverage the power of the web to help their business grow. The folks at SXSW have posted the audio of the panel, go have a listen!
Hi guys – just a quick update to say thanks to all who came to the Big Party for Small Business! We had a lot of fun and hope the folks who came did, too. A special thanks to Guy Kawasaki and Gary Vaynerchuk who took time out of their insanely busy schedules to come by, do a little bowling, and be good sports about getting their pictures taken a million times. Thanks, too, to our Small Business Web sponsors American Express OPEN and to Laura Thomas from Dell for providing some great last minute additions to our giveaway bags in the form of their hot new ruby red laptops, the Vostro V130. It’s great to see how much support there is out there for small business owners!
Here are a few pictures from the party, as well as some other Texas highlights. We’re really looking forward to doing our panel tomorrow with our pals from Google, FreshBooks, Formstack and MailChimp presenting on being Friends with Business Benefits, How Integrations Sell Apps in Salon D at the Hilton. If you are in Austin, swing on by to say hello!
Batchbook is now available as part of Palo Alto Software’s new Sales and Marketing Pro offering. Sales and Marketing Pro is a new bundled package of online and offline sales and marketing planning software products that includes all the tools to write a successful marketing plan, as well as the resources to actually implement it.
Sales and Marketing Pro is available now from Amazon.com and will be available shortly in retail outlets such as Office Max, Office Depot, etc. This is an exciting first for Batchbook and a rare opportunity for SaaS product to be included in retail outlets. By bringing the advantages of web-based software services to the big box outlets where small business owners typically go to find their start-up equipment, Palo Alto is giving small business owners both the education and tools they need for a successful sales strategy.
We have known Palo Alto Software for a few years now, ever since founder Tim Berry was a regular contributor and guest speaker on our #SBBuzz twitter chat. They are the masters of good business planning – with their original product Business Plan Pro, a tool we have used here at BatchBlue to help keep the business planning process alive and part of our ongoing quest for greatness.
We’re pleased to announce our refreshed integration with MailChimp. MailChimp was one of our very first integrations. We figured it was time to revisit it to provide even more useful functionality.
Two-way sync!
The biggest change is that we now support two-way contact syncing between MailChimp and BatchBook. Now you can have new subscribers in MailChimp come over to BatchBook. You can also add contacts in BatchBook and have them sync to your MailChimp lists.
More highlights:
If you use groups in MailChimp to segment your list, these groups are then used to create a custom SuperTag in BatchBook. Any changes to data in the groups or supertag will sync to the other service.
From within Batchbook, you can now view AIM information to see opens, clicks, etc. on the contact detail page of each linked contact.
A new MailChimp dashboard widget in Batchbook shows your recent campaign stats.
For more detailed information, check out the updated FAQs and have a look at this quick screencast showing the new Batchbook/MailChimp features in action.
