BatchBook Blog
Archive for the “Press” Category
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
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
Now that the weather’s finally getting nicer, more people heading outside to do their thing. A pleasant way to spend some time might be to grab your laptop and head outdoors, fire up the wi-fi and ice up a glass of coffeemilk to check out some recent BatchBlue press. Relaxing AND informative!
BatchBook & Google Apps Marketplace
Our big news of the month was that we were one of the 50 companies selected to launch in the new Google Apps Marketplace. As one of only two New England companies selected, we were excited to be a part of it and our local Providence Business News was there to cover our big moment.
Our friends at Small Business Trends also wrote a post on the Google Apps Marketplace launch, “Getting to Know the Google Apps Marketplace“, which gives a nice overview on how the services there can benefit SMB owners.
Small Business Web Directory
We launched the new version of the Small Business Web Directory at SXSW last month, which a quite a few folks wrote about. There was great write-up in Inc. magazine by Howard Greenstein, who was nice enough to attend our SXSBW party in spite of being sick.
Web Worker Daily helped us announce the Directory to the world, as did BusinessWeek AND ReadWriteWeb. Thanks, guys! These are some of our favorite resources for small business owners and we’re really glad they found the Directory newsworthy.
There’s also a video of a slightly tired me talking about the launch of the directory on My San Antonio.com. Get that woman some coffee 
Beloved BatchBook Customers
Of course, my personal favorite category, for whom our bell tolls etc…posts from our customers about how they are using BatchBook, why they like it, and how it’s made life easier for them.
Big Thinking for Small Business: At first he liked us a little, now he likes us a lot. And all because of the simple TLC we give our BatchBook peeps. We can’t help it, we’re crazy for customer service.
Three Great CRM Tools for Small Business: We always love when someone calls US their favorite!
AMEX OPEN Forum: An excellent post on Quick Customer Touchpoints by the consistent bringer of awesomeness Chris Brogan includes a mention of BatchBook. We really like the ideas he expresses here about why staying in contact is so important in the age of social media, especially because it fits so nicely with some of what we’re doing with our upcoming re-design of BatchBook.
So that’s just a sample of some of what’s been written about us lately. Have you written a post about how you’re using BatchBook, or seen one we might have missed? Let us know, we’re happy to include it here and on our press page.
Happy organizing!
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Tags: batchblue, chris brogan, Customer Service, google, google apps, google apps marketplace, google marketplace, ReadWriteWeb, small business trends, small business web, WebWorkerDaily
We wanted to start the new year off with a round-up of some recent articles and reviews that have hit the Interwebs. A brief media retrospective, if you will (a complete list of media coverage can be found on our press page.)
Live via Skype
Back in September, our friend and Internet marketer Bernie Borges did my first ever interview via Skype about all things BatchBlue and our content strategy in particular. His Optimize This blog post has a link to the audio version as well as a nice summary of our chat.
The work/life thing
One of our very favorite ladies Aliza Sherman, who’s the Entrepreneur Mom at WorkItMom (among her many other projects!) posted an interview of our president Pam O’Hara and me by problogger Gina Blitstein. Pam and I were both surprised at how different our answers were when it came to how we balance our work and family lives (Pam has three kids under seven and I have two.) Have a read – maybe you have come up with an entirely different way to make it all work that you’d like to share.
Locavores
Here in our hometown of Providence, we were featured in Rhode Island Business Quarterly. I like this article because it includes a picture of (most of) our team in our office, which is kind of rare. I also love the title “The Organizers” because it makes us seem alike street gang in a gritty episode of the Sopranos — arguably more exciting than building software!
Monkey do
Our favorite monkeys over at email marketing company MailChimp reached an important milestone with their API and mentioned BatchBlue and our Small Business Web cohorts over on their blog. Our integration with MailChimp was our first ever, therefore we will always have a great fondness (as well as free bananas!) for them. Congrads to the MailChimp team on their continued success.
Word on TheStreet.com
Finally, as an early Christmas gift, Jonathan Blum wrote a nice review of BatchBook on TheStreet.com and also posted a slick little video of BatchBook in action. It was a great way to end an exciting year.
As always, we’re now hard at work at the BatchBlue headquarters, building things to surprise and hopefully delight our customers in upcoming months. Thanks to all for your support — we look forward to what the new year will bring for BatchBlue and our customers.
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Tags: batchblue, batchbook, mailchimp, small business web
I woke up this morning to an early Christmas gift from Jonathan Blum at TheStreet.com. He posted a great review of BatchBook this morning entitled “To Sell Better, Sell Smarter.” While Jonathan had some very nice things to say about the simplicity of BatchBook as a CRM tool, he also had some very insightful criticism as well.
Jonathan writes that “BatchBook is no CRM final solution. As with all CRM tools, BatchBook is no miracle.” I could not agree with him more. I wrote an article for Network Solution’s Grow Smart Business blog a few months ago titled “For Start-up Businesses, CRM Software is Not the Answer”, where I argued that CRM software is a tool that can help small businesses collect and share information across the team as they learn together what their winning sales strategy will be. I argued that “there are no magic growing beans for new businesses. The fun part is figuring it out as you go.”
CRM software that tries to sell a small business the right sales funnel or the winning pipeline is selling magic beans. Even within the same industry, same market and same product offering, two competitors are going to have very different sales strategies. If not, neither is likely to succeed. What your CRM software should do is make it easier for you, your team, your network and your customers to work together to find the right way to make your business successful.
As Jonathan notes in the article, “Cleaner, faster, leaner selling will be job No. 1 in 2010. Or you can expect not to make it to 2011. And BatchBook is as simple a way to fight that fight, as I have found.” With BatchBook, we’ve provided a tool to help small businesses be more successful in managing their contact network. In 2010, we look forward to both expanding our tool set and helping our customers better manage their workflow processes.
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Tags: crm, small business, small business CRM, social crm
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