BatchBook Blog
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.
Tweet This Post
Tags: appsumo, entrepreneurs, freshbooks, mailchimp
We have been loving the Flowtown integration and have been looking for more ways to leverage the information we get back from Flowtown in BatchBook.
We’ve received some ideas from Twitter as well as a very thoughtful blog post from our customer Hugh Macken. They all agreed on one thing: Add Klout!
Klout, for those who don’t know, is a great tool to measure a persons influence on the social web. Influence is measured on many different fronts including followers, friends, total retweets, etc. You receive a Klout score from 1-100 with 100 meaning you basically rule the social web.
Flowtown gives us this score but until today we were not displaying it. Now, if you are using the Flowtown integration, we populate the score into your social media supertag:
Yeah my score is pretty low…thank you Mom for following me though!
We import the score as a number field so using BatchBook reports you can search for folks with a Klout score greater than, less than or equal to. You can create lists targeted based on Klout score which can be very powerful.
We’re also pulling in job title information from Flowtown if the contact does not have a existing title on their contact record. Let us know what else you would like to see out of this integration — we’re listening!
So there you have it, a small addition to BatchBook but something we think you will find very useful. And you’re welcome, @tsondermann.
Tweet This Post
Tags: batchbook, flowtown, marketing, social crm, Social Media
Typically when people travel for business it means packing up and heading out to destinations away from their office. Whether it is for client meetings or trade shows, folks take some time and work virtually, apart from their colleagues and the conveniences of their offices. They rely on communication and collaboration tools like Skype, email, and mobile phones to stay connected to their home base while physically away from the office.
A little while back I made my first business trip for BatchBlue, but it was a different sort of business trip because, unlike most business trips, for me it was my chance to abandon my virtual ways and physically be in the office with my coworkers.
I started working at BatchBlue back in February of this year but the team here and I go way back. I was a very early beta (alpha?) user, a regular in the forums, a reviewer of their product, a winner of their contests, an SBBUZZ guest and host, and now an employee. Through this all though, I hadn’t ever met any of my coworkers. We’ve talked on the phone, video chatted over Skype, emailed, tweeted, facebooked, but for people that I’ve “known” for nearly 2 1/2 years I had never seen, or met, any of them in person.
For me virtual is the norm, not the exception. I must rely on the communication and collaboration tools that we’ve chosen to stay integrated in to the workflow and to keep myself active. I attend a weekly team meeting via Skype and we use cutting edge technology to make sure that I’m visible to everyone.
BatchBlue by nature is still pretty virtual, even with our recent move in to our BatchHaüs, but I’ve been the most virtual of all. But for 3 days I got to sit alongside these wonderful, talented, and smart people and learn from them. We talked a lot about business, about BatchBook, about Customer Experience and how we can do better. But we also had a team picnic where I had the chance to meet spouses and families, and dogs. We also laughed and told stories and did the things that coworkers do.
Doing the work is only part of what is important at BatchBlue, and I think in any company culture really. I know that there are a lot of things I miss being separated, but the ubiquitous chats and the updates via Twitter, Flickr, Facebook – not only from the company but my colleagues helps me feel more connected.
Now, as I sit writing this, once again sitting in my virtual office, I am glad that I got the opportunity for the virtual to become real – if only for a little while. I also know that with each personal connection I get a little less virtual – no matter how far away I am.
Tweet This Post
Tags: team, virtual
I recently did some customization of the BatchBlue fan page on Facebook. We thought it would be fun to have a little give-away for our friends on Facebook, so I added one of our very own BatchBook Custom Forms to our page. Now, when friends sign up on our Facebook page, their information is magically transported to our BatchBook account so we’ll have all the important information we need to notify the winners.
One of our super smart customers, Alex Webster, outlined the steps for adding a BatchBook form to your Facebook page in our forums and I thought I would share some steps and screenshots here for you.
Step 1:
The first thing you will need to do is set up your form in your BatchBook account. We have a handy FAQ which explains the process. Create the form and save it in your account. I would suggest that you set the return URL to the URL for your Facebook Wall. Then, you’ll need to take a little trip down memory lane to visit Adam Darowski’s post on customizing BatchBook forms. Grab the source code from your form and pay particular attention to step 2 so your form will work with your BatchBook account. Save the code in a text file. If you would like to add your own custom css you can add it at the top of this file between some style tags or use inline styles for the elements you would like to customize. If you don’t use your own styles, then the default Facebook styles will be used for your form. If you need help customizing the css in your FBML tab, here is a great tutorial.
Step 2:
Head on over to your Facebook fan page. Click on the edit button below your profile picture. You will need to add the FBML application from this page. If you don’t see it listed at the bottom of the page under “More Applications”, then click on “Browse More” and do a quick search for it. Adding this application to your Facebook page will allow you to create a custom tab on your Facebook page.
Step 3:
Click edit to customize the tab.
You will need to give the tab a name and then you will paste the form code from your text file into the large box of the FBML application. Click “Save Changes”.
Step 4:
FBML can be saved as a box or a tab. We will be setting this up as a tab, so you will need to make the following edits. Find the name of the FBML tab that we just created and click on Application settings.
You will need to change the settings to look like what we have in this image. The wording is a little confusing, but make sure that you change it to “Box: Available” and “Tab: Added”. That will make your form appear on it’s own tab.
Step 5:
You can set the form tab to be the default landing page for new visitors to your Facebook fan page. You can do this by clicking on the “Edit” link under “Wall Settings” and selecting your form page from the drop down menu.
Ta Da!
You now have a new Custom Form on your Facebook Fan Page. Who’s cooler than you? Please share your Fan Pages with us, we’d love to see them!
Tweet This Post
Tags: facebook, forms, Social Media
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…?
Tweet This Post
Tags: batchbook, contact management, usability
