Recognizing our "Most Connected Customer" Brandon Dunlap at the SXSBW Happy Hour
In preparing for the launch of the new Small Business Web Directory and for the SXSBW (South by Small Business Web!) party that we co-sponsored at SXSW last week, we came across someone who we think just might be our “most connected” customer, Brandon Dunlap from Brightfly, Inc. Brandon uses several of the Small Business Web members applications to run his business.
We were delighted to bring Brandon to the party as our Special Guest of Honor and showered him with all sorts of hip and useful schwag from the thirteen sponsoring companies of the party.
Here’s Brandon’s story:
Very well-connected
Brandon Dunlap, managing director of research at Brightfly, Inc., logged nearly 100,000 air miles last year crisscrossing the country for business meetings, conferences and other professional events. He is constantly networking, which in turn helps the research and consultancy firm grow its contact base by thousands each year.
To foster and grow all of these relationships, Brightfly relies on a number of solutions offered by The Small Business Web, an open collective of businesses aimed at connecting Web applications to help small businesses bloom and grow. The integrated solutions, which work together through their open APIs, help Brightfly maintain mountains of contact data and more efficiently and personally stay engaged with each person.
“Being a relationship-driven company, we don’t have a sales team managing all of our data. without the help of BatchBlue, this would be an arduous task. The companies of The Small Business Web give us a single point to manage all the ways we get in touch with our friends and colleagues in the field,” said Dunlap. “Since The Small Business Web solutions can ‘talk’ with each other, I can get back to people faster, even while I am on the road. The time savings are phenomenal.”
For example, Dunlap might collect a batch of business cards while at a information security conference in San Francisco and send them off to Shoeboxed before he gets on a plane to return home to Texas. Once back in the office, he can take all of the contact data that can be scanned and digitized by Shoeboxed and seamlessly enter it into his BatchBook social CRM account by BatchBlue. BatchBook enables him to tag each person by what event he met them at, what types of materials they requested or any other follow-up or other identifiers. He can then build and manage e-mail lists using MailChimp, another Small Business Web partner, to stay in touch with contacts with key research developments as they occur. Recently, Brightfly has kicked off a Competitive Compliance survey project leveraging the relationship between MailChimp and Small Business Web member SurveyGizmo to glean research insights from leaders in the information security and audit field.
Data in Brightfly’s is also imported into a Freshbooks account for recurring invoices, while Small Business Web partner Clarity helps Dunlap and others try to forecast and look for trends in their revenue streams.
“Everything in our business is done on personal connections. For everyone on my team to share all that information in one location and to be able to pivot across that data is huge,” said Dunlap. “The Small Business Web network of solutions helps us maintain currency and relevancy with all the individuals we need to contact at a price and service level better than a single-source solution.”
It was great to meet Brandon in person and be able to learn first-hand how the Small Business Web is helping small businesses like his succeed.
What about you? Are you using multiple web apps to help your small business bloom and grow? Let us know, we want to hear from you!
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Tags: batchbook, freshbooks, mailchimp, small business, small business web, SXSWi
You may have noticed the increased excitement around BatchBlue recently. We’ve been working on some new efforts and tonight we are announcing the launch of the BatchBook as a part of the Google Apps Marketplace, Google’s online storefront for Google Apps products and services. BatchBook is part of a diverse group of applications that will now be available for sign-up directly within all Google Apps customer’s accounts.
This marketplace represents an exciting new era in the world of small business management. Google has long been a leader in providing easy, affordable, reliable applications such as Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs for small businesses to use to run their businesses. With the launch of the Google Apps Marketplace, Google is now making it that much easier for their customers and all small businesses to find, set up and maintain their own grab bag of business applications without the overhead of IT installation and maintenance.
Why we love the new Google Apps Marketplace:
- It’s easy for small businesses to set up all of their applications at once.
- It is safe, reliable and very affordable.
- The integration between Google Apps Marketplace vendors means better results and less work for small businesses.
- The high caliber of companies in the Google Apps Marketplace means we know our customer’s are in good hands.
- We got to work with THE Google.
All of the applications included in the new Google Apps Marketplace integrate with the existing Google Apps products. So a small business user can now manage their communications in Gmail, automatically save those Gmail contacts as customers in BatchBook, easily invoice them using FreshBooks and collect payments using Google Checkout, then send an auto-response using MailChimp. All with a few quick clicks and without uploading/downloading separate files or duplicating entries into different systems.
We are very excited to be involved in the new Google Apps Marketplace. And we are excited by what this new era in cloud computing means for small businesses.
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Tags: freshbooks, google, google apps, google marketplace, mailchimp
Since we launched the Small Business Web last March, we’ve had over 40 amazing, like-minded companies join our mission to provide powerful, affordable software to small business owners. As we’ve grown, so has our Small Business Website. We’ve given it a pretty new look and made it a bit easier to find things.
This week, I’m at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York meeting with the Small Business Web founders and other small business owners to see what’s next. We’re even planning a Small Business Web-up for Wednesday night to talk small biz – please stop by if you are in town and would like to meet up for a drink!
Want to be a part of the Small Business Web? Join the Google group or, if you have an API, sign the manifesto! We’re taking over the Internet, one small business at a time.
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Tags: freshbooks, mailchimp, outright, shoeboxed, small business, small business web, web 2.0 expo
Last week, Stephanie and I presented the first BatchBook webinar specifically about integration with our partners from The Small Business Web. The webinar, The Small Business Webinar: Using BatchBook’s integration partners to achieve contact management bliss, was a hit and we received many requests for an archived version. We’re pleased to announce it has been added to our Screencasts page (and is also embedded below).
Screencast: The Small Business Webinar: Using BatchBook’s integration partners to achieve contact management bliss
The Flash Video runs 12:26 and is 68.8MB. (Download iPod compatible version, 20.2MB)
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Tags: freshbooks, gmail, google contacts, integration, mailchimp, shoeboxed, zendesk
Tomorrow (Thursday September 10 at 2:00 ET), we’ll take a break from our regularly scheduled webinar to bring you a special one. This webinar, called The Small Business Webinar: Using BatchBook’s Integration Partners to Achieve Contact Management Bliss, will focus on how you can enhance your BatchBook experience through our integration partners.
The webinar description:
Join Stephanie Sweeney and Adam Darowski of BatchBlue Software as they demonstrate how to use BatchBook’s integration partners to achieve contact management bliss! You’ll see how easy it is to send emails to your customers, keep track of outstanding client invoices, import business card and other contact data, even monitor support questions all from the comfort of your BatchBook account.
With our integration partners, we’ve made it easier to manage your contacts, your way.
Stephanie and I will cover BatchBook’s integration with Google Contacts, MailChimp, FreshBooks, Shoeboxed — and a sneak peek at the newest addition to our small business arsenal — Zendesk! We hope to see you there!
Register Now!
(it’s free)
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Tags: freshbooks, gmail, google contacts, mailchimp, shoeboxed, zendesk
