BatchBook Blog
Archive for the “Using BatchBook” Category
I’ve been using Batchbook since way back in October of 2007 and it has served as the primary storage area for all contact information over those years, for business and for our personal use. In our house, our Batchbook account is like a knowledge base with all the information I need to get in touch with just about any one.
One thing I always wished was possible was getting my Batchbook contact information to my home phone. The address book functionality in our phone was decent but it required manually entering in all that data. I was going to my Batchbook account to look up the number and then using that to dial. I liked having it all in a single place but I sure wish I could have made that easier.
Recently though we decided that we would replace our primary home phone number with a Google Voice number, and one of the primary motivators for that was my thinking about how well Batchbook and Google Voice would play well together.
Google Voice is a nifty phone service that gives you a single number that you can use for everyone and everything. By setting up rules in the system you can direct calls from different people to different phones and play different messages for different groups. Voice messages come in to my email and I can even transfer calls from one device to another while still online, All great stuff.
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Tags: batchbook, google voice
Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of contacts you need to wade through every day? Not sure which contact to call on next, or which task should take precedence? You may be suffering from contact overload.
It is very easy to get to the point where you are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of contacts in your CRM. The good news is, with a few tweaks, it is also pretty easy to bring your contacts under control. When you do it right, you can build meaningful relationships with your most important contacts.
Minimize contacts
The first rule of thumb for controlling contact overload is to avoid having too many contacts in your system. Be realistic about what your business can accomplish. Thousands of cold leads from a list you bought may just get in the way of meaningful interactions with qualified prospects and active customers.
There is nothing wrong with a list of cold prospects that could turn into customers one day. Its just that you need to be strategic and organized in how you handle a large amount of contacts. It is far better to segment that list out from your active group of contacts that you are having ongoing interaction with.
Batchbook is best used to build and maintain relationships with customers and other important contacts (including qualified prospects). Focusing your primary efforts here will help you avoid the feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of people that you think you need to reach. Instead, move qualified leads and customers to the front of the line, and use Batchbook to better manage you relationships with them.
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Tags: batchbook, how-to, sales, small business CRM
We’re all about supporting our wonderful Batchbook users and helping them get the most out of their Batchbook accounts. We also realize that for a lot of folks, starting a new year is a logical time to make resolutions and changes. At its core, Batchbook is a tool for organization and we want to do our part to help you use your Batchbook accounts to the fullest.
We think our screencasts and webinars do a great job of giving you an overview of the features and functionality of Batchbook. We send welcome emails and provide introductions and tips right in the application to get you started and get you on your way to productivity.
We’ve also shared a lot of tips and tricks here that might be useful to bring together in one place as we all prepare for the new year. Want to get more organized with Batchbook? Follow these steps and you’ll enter in a whole new realm of organization and productivity.
Tips & Tricks for an organized New Year
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Tags: comments, communications, rss, supertags, tags
We’ve had web forms built in to Batchbook for some time now. We created them with intent to allow super-simple forms integration that would allow our customers to gather contact information from a web page and have it automagically sent to their Batchbook accounts. In the short term, we strove for simplicity, providing the basics of what folks needed with the intention of integration with a proper form-building service at a future date.
So when our friends over at Formstack let us know that they were working on a way to get data from their incredibly robust form builder into Batchbook, we were super excited. We’ve been using and loving Formstack for a while now and they’ve been great partners in The Small Business Web. The team over there is awesome at what they do and their commitment to customer service is right in step with ours.
Here’s Chris Lucas from Formstack: “The Batchbook integration just made sense from our standpoint. It is one of the most requested integrations we receive from customers and potential customers…and really, we wanted to integrate with another company who’s passionate about the web, loves small businesses, and appreciates their customers like we do.” See, we said they were awesome!
Formstack’s web form creator gives you an easy-to-use HTML form builder that allows your forms to be integrated with your website without any programming, software, or special skills. Click, drag and type your way to professional forms in minutes.
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The decorations are up and the turkey’s been eaten, which can only mean that the winter holidays are officially upon us. I know, I know, you’re thinking ‘Wait – didn’t I just finally put my beach chair in the car?’ The good news is that organizing with BatchBook can help take away some of that stress and help keep your holidays full of mirth and merriment.
Here are a few of my favorite tips on how BatchBook can make your holidays brighter this year:
Make holiday card sending a snap
- Start by creating a new tag for your holiday cards and tag everyone you’d like to mail to (for instance “holiday10″).
- Search though your other tags to find groups of people you’d like to include and BatchAdd these folks to your new holiday tag in one fell swoop.
- Want to use your holiday cards to help reconnect with folks you haven’t communication with in a while? Use our handy dandy “record communicated with” Advanced Search to find folks you haven’t spoken with since Valentines Day.
- You can build a list using your new tag name with a click of a button. Then check out which labels we support and print your mail labels right from BatchBook!
- Another option: send your list over to MailChimp or export your list to Tiny Prints and let them do the hard work for you!
Manage your holiday To-Dos (more…)
Tags: batchbook, contact management, holiday, holiday cards, how-to, mailchimp, mailing labels, mobile web
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