Over the past 365 days we’ve been listening to your feedback. We heard when you said you wanted to integrate your Facebook Pages with Nimble, we listened when told us you needed the ability to add custom fields to contact records, and we understood when you said you needed more privacy options. All of your great feedback is the reason why Nimble 2.0 now exists!

Nimble 2.0 focuses on three pillars:

• Social Discovery – At the start of each day, it’s hard to know where to start to strengthen your relationships.  Nimble makes it easy.  Every morning Nimble sends you one email full of new engagement opportunities. You’ll also find one unified stream of all your incoming messages, requests, likes and more under the Notifications section under the Social
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• Improved Usability – At the heart of Nimble is the contact record – the embodiment of the relationship with the customer.  Nimble contacts have an all new and improved user interface which effortlessly pulls together all related messages, activities, deals, and includes the contact’s live social stream.  Nimble has also added custom fields and tabs to support the unique ways our customers relate to their contacts.  In addition, Nimble is just plain faster throughout the application with improved navigation and better data importing tools.

• Privacy & Marketing Integrations – Nimble now includes the important ability to choose which messages to share with your team. It also allows for powerful third party integrations with apps like Wufoo, HubSpot and MailChimp!

What Users are Saying

We’ve invited a few beta testers to try Nimble 2.0 early and here’s what they are saying:

“What I love about this product is the user interface. It’s very easy to find relevant information when I need it. The integration with contact management, activity management, sales and marketing automation, traditional and social media communication tools, and collaboration features into one web-based solution makes it very convenient for people like me to get a pulse of what’s going on in my network.” Michael Brito, Edelman Digital

“Nimble is by far the most advanced of the cloud-based CRMs out there. I’ve tried SalesForce, Solve360, Zoho and Affinity Live. Nimble is the cleanest CRM that I’ve seen; and automatically pulls down social network profiles of all your contacts. Seamless integration with Google calendars (a first compared to all of the other CRMs listed above). It’s far more reasonably priced than SalesForce, and a far better product for Google Apps users. It’s obvious that it was started by the same minds behind Goldmine; and why Google invested in the company.” –David Schulman, CloudOPX

“Nimble is the bedrock of our engagement toolset which nurtures our client relationships so that we can successfully meet their needs with our programs and services. Thanks Nimble, for putting engagement first in your product.” – Israel Vicars , Aegis

“I use many different systems, some for team management, some for client communication, some for task and productivity. I recently started using Nimble and find that it is among the top 4 windows that need to be open on my desktop at all time. It’s a really intuitive CRM that connects my email, social media and contact and deal information in one easily accessible location. Highly recommended if you’re looking to make your business more efficient and productive.”– Steve Lack Genlack

Visit our Nimble 2.0 Features page to view all of the exciting new ways you can use Nimble to engage your community!

If you have any questions you can leave a comment below, email us at support@nimble.com or tweet to us @nimble!

Thank you for helping us make Nimble 2.0 a reality!

Who:

Role: Director of EMEA

How you might know him: Richard was previously the Technical Director of AVG, the UK distributor of GoldMine. He was also the EMEA CRM manager for BMC software.

Contact: richard@nimble.com, @richard_y

About Richard:

I’ve been involved in the CRM industry for the past 16 years and I have to say it’s been quite a ride.   I meet Jon Ferrara, founder of GoldMine Software, back in 1996 whilst the Technical Director at AVG (the then UK distributor of GoldMine).  This was the early days of CRM so in those days we called it SFA, something that I still believe needs to be at the center of any CRM system today.   Back then GoldMine was the market leader, innovating the work place and winning award after award.   It was a real buzz being at the forefront of something that pioneered and established CRM and changed the way we do business today.

Bitten by the CRM bug and Jon’s enthusiasm for the subject I co-founded several start-ups specializing in the implementation of CRM and even did a stint as the EMEA CRM manager for BMC software.   Life was good, Jon in the meantime sold GoldMine (curse him!) and moved on to pastures new.

Whilst that took place, CRM developed and new players entered the market.  However, somewhere in the mix, CRM lost its way; it became more about business process enforcement and less about relationship management.  Where CRM put the customer in the center of all things, most companies deploying CRM used it to ensure the worker bees followed procedure.  Don’t get me wrong, business process enforcement is needed, but it shouldn’t replace or stifle the individual’s ability to build relationships with customers, to go that extra mile and make a raving fan customer.  In my view, it’s all about building relationships with people.

Enter Jon, back with a new product – Nimble.   Social Media has a lot of hype around it, but it has a lot of raw data to back it up and the facts can’t be argued with.   So I sat down and reviewed Nimble.  Having been through it, I thought someone must have already done this a million times… turns out no they hadn’t and those that had, didn’t really have a clear vision of where they wanted to be.  Jon brought a credible product and more importantly vision for where Nimble would be going and where the direction of the market place should be heading.

So there it was, Nimble – Social CRM.  A product that was bringing the R – Relationships back in to CRM, putting the customer interaction first and winning hearts and minds.  This I liked, this I could be part of.    The rest as we say is history, Jon called, we talked, turns out Jon has a number of the GoldMine crew onboard as well.   The opportunity to get the EMEA operations off the ground couldn’t be missed.

It has to be said I’m really looking forward to engaging with the partners and customers in Europe.  I believe Nimble offers a great opportunity for small businesses, helping them to compete with the big boys in economically challenging times by delivering on Social CRM.

You can find me on twitter @richard_y or on email at richard@nimble.com

Who: Jason McDowall

Role: Director of Product

How you might know him: Director of Product for the mobile team at Salesforce, built the Salesforce Chatter Mobile app

Contact: @mcdowall, jason@nimble.com

About Jason:

I’m coming to Nimble from Salesforce.com, where I was a director of product for the mobile team.  There I was able to work with a talented team and earned recognition for building the award-winning Chatter Mobile application, which was selected by Apple as a top business app for 2011.  We’ve also won 2010 and 2011 Codie awards for our mobile apps and helped Salesforce elevate the influence of mobile enterprise software.

Including my time at Salesforce, I have five years in cloud computing and seven years in mobile product management and strategy. Prior to Salesforce, this experience was gained as a co-founder and/or head of product for a few SaaS and mobile technology startups.  I also served in the US Air Force where I separated as a Captain.

Today I am excited to be joining Jon, Gilles, and the rest of the Nimble team.  This is a group of exceptional individuals on a mission to improve the lives of our customers by helping them build deeper relationships.

The first business book I had ever read was Dale Carnegie’s book, How To Win Friends and Influence People.  In it, Dale Carnegie highlights the profound value of communicating and connecting with people on an honest and personal level.  My mom, as a highly regarded real estate broker, lived and breathed the lessons in this book.  She built relationships and life-long clients with honesty, integrity, and a personal touch.  She got to know people face-to-face, in her office or in their homes.  She found a way to connect and became a trusted friend and advisor who helped people through one of the most exciting and stressful times in their lives.

Of all of the products I’ve helped to build, this is the easiest to explain to her.  A rolodex is not a relationship.  A relationship is a shared connection; it’s built on mutual interest and grows into mutual respect.  Within the best business relationships, you’re able to open up to a trusted friend or advisor, share problems and pains, and find good solutions.  Businesses are built on relationships, and relationships are inherently social.

I had the fortune of spending more than three years at Salesforce.com.  It is an excellent company, which brought about profound change in enterprise software.  But I found my way to Nimble because it is poised to disrupt the market in a different way.  Nimble is not just another web-based database of contacts.  It’s a powerful tool that leverages modern technologies and social platforms to help customers build and nurture their relationships and their businesses to be the most fruitful they can be.  At its core, Nimble unifies all of our communications, contacts, and activities and provides actionable insights into our relationships.

I believe small businesses are the driving force of our economy and pillars of our communities; we need to support and celebrate them.  Nimble recognizes that relationships are the lifeblood of every business, and by helping people nurture them, we can enrich the lives of our customers.

You can find me on twitter @mcdowall or at jason@nimble.com.

Cheers,

Jason

Thursday, December 8th @ 10am (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (U.S. & Canada)

Thanks for being a part of the Nimble journey so far,

Jon

A few months ago the SociaLink team started using Nimble and it changed the way they do business.

Daniel Pesis, cofounder of SociaLink says, “Finding Nimble is like finding your wedding ring in the ocean.” After searching for months, he finally found the right product to increase productivity and sales.

With Nimble the sociaLink team is able to:

• Save money
• Increase transparency across teams
• Customize contacts for sorting
• Track and improve customer interaction

For all the details on how SociaLink is using Nimble for increased productivity and sales, download the case study today!

Last month I sat down with Robert Scoble for a quick interview about Nimble. This 20 minute interview generated a huge rush in new registrations– I’m so grateful our servers and team survived the Scoble Effect.

Today I want to share some things we learned to help other companies prepare for fast growth. Let’s start with a few stats to help frame how big of a surge Nimble took on:

On the day Scoble posted the video, we received a 157% increase in traffic to the Nimble site, 87% of which was made up of first-time visitors, and our number of registrations increased by 155%! Talk about hitting the motherload!

Preparing for Massive Growth

So, let’s talk about the things your company can do now to prepare for fast growth in all aspects of the business – from sales and marketing to customer service and technology in today’s social world.

Marketing & Sales

• Use a social CRM with closed loop marketing capabilities to get to know the key people expressing an interest in your product. This will allow you to map out their social profile to better understand their needs and put them on an effective email track to share the promise of your product and services. Don’t just send them marketing info, educate, enchant and engage them with valuable content. Nimble provides this capability today through our new integration with HubSpot!
• It’s up to your team to convert your social community into customers for life. You can do this by: ensuring your website clearly conveys your company vision and product benefits, enabling customers to get up and running quickly, and having mechanisms in place to communicate with users about their experience. This open line of communication will enable you to better learn from them and serve their needs.
• Whenever you get a mention out on the web, your team should be actively listening and engaging in the conversation so you can educate the market. When Scoble posted the video interview with me, the Nimble team and I began communicating with his followers on Google+, YouTube and Twitter. We brought each of these conversations into Nimble, which automatically ties them to shared contact records, so our whole company can learn about them.

Customer Experience

• Scoble’s audience is made up of a social crowd of curious technologists. Once they sign up to use your product, they’ll be tweeting about it and sharing valuable information. Be sure to monitor and respond to their messages quickly, especially any questions.
• Don’t just listen to what new users are saying on their own, use this opportunity to ask questions too. Find our what features they particularly like and what features they feel are missing. If you don’t ask now, you may need to pay hundreds of dollars later to gather a focus group.
• Your site should clearly show users how to get started with your product. From a noticeable call to action, through to an on-boarding campaign, and a full support section, users should intuitively know how to use your product or find they help they need.

Technology

• Do load testing and balancing well before you go to market with demand creation campaigns. Our servers automatically spawned new servers to balance itself out, but there was an adjustment period where some users experienced sluggishness. This showed us areas we needed to refine architecturally – which we did right away.
• If the community loves your product, they’ll share it through word of mouth, and you’ll benefit from it, so be sure to take feature requests from this vocal crowd.
• Welcome feedback on your product, good or bad, because it’s the most valuable content you’ll ever receive. Use feedback to spark action and make your product better.

It’s always exciting have people talk about your product, especially someone as influential as Robert Scoble. When it happens, be sure to keep your head so you can maximize the opportunity through social engagement.

Robert – it was great seeing you and thanks for the breakfast in Culver City. I look forward to seeing you again soon!

If you have any questions about Nimble’s experience with rapid growth as a result of the Scoble Effect, leave a comment or tweet to me @jon_ferrara!

OUR STORY We have some exciting news! Nimble is now available in the Google Apps Marketplace, and has been selected as a “Featured” and “Notable” Google App! Now it’s even easier to find and benefit from the only Google App designed to help small companies turn business leads and social connections into sales opportunities.

Visit the Google App Marketplace to access Nimble and click on “Add It Now” in the upper right corner of the screen.

Nimble and Google Apps – Two Peas in a Pod

Over the past few years, Google has proven its ability to build awareness for businesses and generate leads with AdWords, SEM/SEO and apps such as Blogger. Nimble helps businesses capture those leads with a website contact form, organize them with an advanced contact manager, engage them with social media and drip marketing campaigns, and manage the sales opportunities that percolate to the top by tracking the deal amounts and probabilities. The two solutions couldn’t be more suited for one another.

Just as importantly, the partnership with Google marks a milestone in achieving our vision of bringing social back into business. Nimble’s entrance into the Google Apps Marketplace is an exciting venture and presents a BIG opportunity for the company. Millions of businesses are using Google Apps’ impressive database of applications. Many of these businesses are smaller, customer-driven companies, which is exactly who we’re trying to reach with Nimble. Now, by being selected as a “Featured” and “Notable” Google App, even more companies can find Nimble, access it, and incorporate it into their company infrastructure.

So Thank You!

We wouldn’t be here without you. Which is why everyone here at Nimble would like to extend a great big THANK YOU to all of you for your loyal support, your insightful feedback, and your faith in our ability to deliver a product worth waiting for. You are truly the BEST!

We’re excited to continue to refine and develop Nimble to meet the future needs of you, our customers. We invite you to visit our website to read about our latest news and watch our new screencasts for Nimble!

Hello World,

Quickly, I just wanted to introduce myself as the new Community Manager of Nimble. Hi, I’m Garick!

To give you some background, I started my journey into the digital world back in 1994 through dialing into bbs message-boards with Prodigy and a 2400bps modem. Back then, we did not have all the social sharing avenues that are available today, but there was still that sense of longing to connect with others across the Web.  It was wonderful to dial-in and be connected to the world! I could make friends in Germany, Turkey, Japan, or anywhere else that was awake while all my neighbors were sleeping. Things began evolving to real-time chat rooms on AOL with REAL pictures & images instead of text-based ASCII art. Then Youtube came along and we started seeing and sharing video content as well

Technology is fascinating to me and I’d like to consider myself an early adopter of many things tech. Yes, I’ve kept a blog and had actually managed a blog-ring of some 81+ users. I’ve even managed a webcam-chat community. However, as I watch the digital landscape accelerate at exponential rates, one thing has stayed the same – the desire for real human connections.

It was this idea of community that brought me to Nimble. Nimble is a platform that will help integrate all of the various social feeds out there to keep my contacts in just one place. Clean and simple, it just makes things easier. I hope to bring you relevant news and information about Nimble and technology in general. Please feel free to reach out to me if there’s anything I can help you with.

Garick@nimble.com
@iloveGarick or @Nimble on Twitter

For any business just getting started in social media, the first things I recommend are listening to what your current and potential customers are saying about your brand and industry before you engage with them. How?

• Set up Google Alerts for your brand, competitors and industry keywords
• Set up search the same search terms in a beginner Twitter client like Tweetdeck, Seesmic or Hootsuite and track Twitter conversations that are relevant to your company. Also set up search terms for “question phrases” pertaining to your business. Example: “I’m looking for a ____” or “Does anyone know ____”
• Look for opportunities to engage in a human voice with people who are talking about your industry and offer helpful insight.

For a local business, though, it’s more strategic to focus on local searches. This is called geo-targeting, and it’s very important for targeting your efforts. If you’re still just jumping into social media, two ways you can geo-target your monitoring are by using Twitter’s Advanced search and subscribing to an RSS of a local search for the terms that matter to your business. Also, you can sign up for Twilerts to receive an email digest of your search terms.

More ways to geo-target your efforts:

MarketMeSuite gives you the power of Twitter’s advanced search with geo-targeting and sentiment options but it a fantastic interface that makes your replies easy-to-manage. The Reply Campaigns section lets you monitor multiple saved searches all at once. You can load pre-written Twitter responses to question-phrase search terms and select those as your responses to leads on Twitter. In addition you can label and organize your Tweets with their Dotted Tweets system so you can keep better track of your keywords and responses to them. MarketMeSuite is still simple and affordable enough for a small business just getting starting in the space, but the interface is just a little more sophisticated than a plan-old Twitter client so you can stay organized with your social media campaigns.

Valuevine

If you’ve been at the social media thing for a little bit and you want to really identify who is talking about your company in your location, Valuevine is something you want to consider. Valuevine checks out Tweets, FourSquare checkins, Yelp reviews and Facebook “likes” and mentions of your business in specific locations to identify your biggest fans and critics. This helps you nail down who you should be interacting with. This is particularly helpful for franchises with several locations. To you, it’s a local spot  – but you’re part of a larger brand. Monitoring mentions of that brand on Twitter is going to get hairy, but Valuevine is going to help narrow things down for you.

Nimble

Last but not least, Nimble is a crucial part of your social media plan because this is how you will keep track of your relationships. Add tasks, keep track of meetings and monitor incoming messages to your Twitter account all from Nimble’s dashboard.

Jumping into the social media game is a great first step to engage with your current customers and generate leads for your business. Targeting those efforts to your location is how you’ll make the most of your time interacting in the space.

Another thing that makes social media really work is the ability to grow your network, meet like-minded individuals and engage in thoughtful conversations with them. The more you can do that, the more people will learn about you, and the more you can help others, the more people will want to work with you and…. Ready? Buy from you!

We’ve talked on this blog about the ability to turn social media into your very own cocktail party. When you get to the party, just make sure to not sell directly. Rather, have your smarts, experience and personality sell for you. Let’s back up for a second though.. Before you get to the party, you need to know which party you want to go to, and which small group inside that party you want to spend your time with.

You can’t possibly talk to everyone who is on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other network — the same way you can’t swim the whole “social river” from end to end, and the same way you can’t boil the ocean. What you can, and should, do is figure out who your target market is, and what your community is. Your target market may be, and probably will, be more limited than the larger community in which you run. You may be targeting moms with kids age 3-8, but your larger community would be “mommy bloggers” (with kids of all ages), and any other convergence points for these moms. How about publishers that review products for that demographic? How about “mommy blogger” conference organizers? Yes, you want to make sure you open up a dialogue with all of the above groups, even though they themselves won’t be consuming your product. These are the “influencers” — people who are able to affect trial and purchase decisions in your market.

With social media, you can easily find and connect with your target users and anyone even tangentially related to the decision making process. You just have to know where to look and how to find what you are looking for. Our CEO Jon Ferrara talks about the concept “swimming in the social river”, which is very telling if you can use it to visualize the process. Let’s take Twitter, for example — the fastest river out there. You could just follow the stream that consists of all the people all over the world, posting all about their favorite things all at the same time — good luck! Or you could selectively partition off a portion (via a hashtag, search term or list), and get to know the people there — which is a much more doable strategy.

I really love the notion of “contextual networks” explained here by Brian Solis — an article that’s couple of years old, but just as true today. ”On Social Networks we’re bound by context and not necessarily by the relationships that link us in the real world,” says Brian, and I agree. I may participate in an ad-hoc community around community management or customer service on Twitter, I may join a Facebook group on photography, and discuss social media monitoring in a blog’s comments. In each case, these may be overlapping groups of people, as much as they may be discreet. I may know them, and I may not; however, my real-life relationship may not have as much bearing on this contextual relationship as subject matter.

We’re reaching out to our esteemed community to ask: how do you surf these fast and noisy waters that are social media? How do you find signal amongst noise? Do you have any successes to share? How about learning opportunities?

Photo credit: prosto photo