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Nimble & HootSuite Close the Loop on Social Selling

12/3/2013

Nimble, the pioneer of social relationship management now integrates with HootSuite, makers of the market-leading social media management system. Now users can connect social media best practices to Social CRM capabilities, such as identifying, connecting and nurturing prospects to really engage with their customers.

Nimble is the first CRM in the HootSuite App Directory and the integration is available free to all Nimble and HootSuite users.

This is a significant step by Nimble towards their goal of becoming the primary source of consolidated contact insights and the most effective tool to engage and nurture business relationships. The Nimble app for HootSuite makes it easier for you to grow your business network, track social conversations, realize measurable value from your social media investments and finally "close the loop" on social selling.

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One Year Status Update on Nimble

7/3/2013

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Great review of Nimble's first year at the DEMO Conference from CEO Jon Ferrara.

To find out more about Nimble CRM and how you can make it work in your organisation - click here

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The Social Helpdesk Revolution

31/1/2013

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Social networks continue to grow at an alarming rate. While Twitter is averaging 250 million tweets per day, Facebook has grown to over 900 million active users. This means that now for every five minutes spent online, one of those minutes is spent solely on social media sites.

Every week over one million people view customer service related tweets, with 80 percent of them being negative. Understanding and responding to the needs of your customers is crucial, because 59 percent of consumers will switch brands for better service.

The social help desk may turn out to be a game-changer in the ongoing relationship between businesses and their customers. As customers increasingly turn to social media sites for customer service, the social help desk lets you respond in real-time to meet the evolving customer definition of "now."

See below for a great infographic from Desk.com showing how the Social Helpdesk is changing the game.

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How to be a CRM Power User

16/1/2013

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How can I be a CRM Power User? This is a common question that I am regularly asked, the short answer is there is no "magic button" - but there are a lot of habits and activities that you can employ with your CRM that will dramatically improve your productivity.

The first thing you need to do is to establish exactly what it is you want to achieve and then devise a plan to that will enable you to reach that goal. Without a plan you are wandering in the dark. When you are working on the plan you need to think strategically about your business and your role in it and decide on the elements that will bring YOU more success. Then use your CRM as your vehicle to achieve those objectives.

Having established your strategic goal, there are a number of ways that you can use your CRM tactically to achieve it;

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Press Release: SmartCloud Announces Solution Partnership with Nimble CRM

1/12/2011

NEW SOCIAL BUSINESS PLATFORMS, NIMBLE, TRANSFORMS THE WAY PEOPLE MANAGE RELATIONSHIPS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: PRLOG (PRESS RELEASE) - Dec 01, 2011

Dublin, Ireland – SmartCloud has announced their solution partnership with Nimble. Nimble is a Social Business Platform that combines customer relationship management and social engagement into an affordable web-based solution.

Nimble integrates LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, email contacts and conversations into one seamless, intuitive environment, empowering small businesses in today’s socially connected world to attract and retain the right customers.

Created by Jon Ferrara, the founder of GoldMine, a pioneering SFA/CRM product, Nimble is the only solution on the market that integrates the "4 Cs" -- contacts, calendar, communications and collaboration -- to enable professionals to effectively manage the way they see, hear and connect with their company's most important asset: their business contacts.

"The problem today is our contacts and our communications are in too many places," said Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble. "Between IM, text messaging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and email, we can't keep track of it all. Trying to manage all of this in eight different tabs on your browser isn't the solution. We created Nimble to solve our own needs and we’re bringing it to the world to help small businesses solve theirs."

Michael McKenna, Principle Consultant of SmartCloud states, "We are excited to announce this new solution partnership with Nimble. We are pleased to offer our customers Nimble which unifies email, calendar and social channels in one application. This will allow our customers to easily see all of the communications made with their contacts no matter where the conversations took place."

Nimble is the next evolution in relationship management – a social relationship manager that makes it fun and easy to nurture personal and business relationships.

About SmartCloud: At SmartCloud, our goal is to build systems for your organization that will analyze your customers and opportunities, and help your company be more efficient by examining your current business, sales, marketing, and customer service processes. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.smartcloud.ie or call us at +353 1 506 0760. You can also join us socially on Twitter @mckennamike.

About Nimble: Nimble was founded in 2009 to help small businesses transform their communities into business opportunities. Nimble opens a whole new channel for businesses to engage customers in two-way dialogue, leveraging the power of traditional CRM and social media with its web-based social business platform. Located in Santa Monica, Nimble is in the heart of the Southern California tech community. Please join the conversation on Nimble’s Facebook page, LinkedIn and on Twitter @Nimble.

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Press Release - Award-Winning Social Business Platform Nimble Launches in Europe

8/11/2011

NIMBLE RESPONDS TO OVERWHELMING MARKET DEMAND FOR SOCIAL CRM SOLUTION WORLDWIDE.

Santa Monica, CA - Nov. 8, 2011 - Nimble announced today that its award-winning Social Business platform for small businesses has now officially launched into the European market with the partnering of key channel organizations to meet overwhelming demand. Nimble is the first SaaS platform designed to help small companies turn business connections and social communities into customers for life.

"More than half of our customers are overseas, and European partners have recognized the power of applying social to their business processes and are looking for a solution today," said Jon Ferrara, CEO, Nimble.

"Companies are trying to fix their social business dilemma with legacy CRM systems. That’s because most business people live in Outlook, Address Book or Google and they only go into the CRM systems to manage leads to update lead status and forecasts. Having to copy emails and activities into your CRM system does not work. An effective relationship platform needs to capture your social contacts and communications and activities for you and your team."

With its unique combination of relationship management, social networking, and sales and marketing tools, Nimble helps businesses capture leads with its website lead capture forms, organize them with its advanced contact manager, and engage them with automated drip marketing campaigns. To further help build relationships with those leads, Nimble enables businesses to run marketing campaigns and engage in social conversations via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. As conversations and campaigns turn to business opportunities, Nimble manages the sales pipeline by tracking the deal amounts, probabilities, and conversations that translate to business success.

Said Michael McKenna, Principal Consultant, SmartCloud: "We became a Nimble Partner because we could see there is a fundamental shift in the way that companies and customers interact. Companies are looking at other ways to engage with the users of their products and services via the medium of 'social media' and the power of this media is plain to see to anyone witnessing global events this year. Nimble has looked at traditional business and at social media and created a tool that allows 'social business' for the next generation of business owners and employees. Nimble has changed the game. This is going to be the natural way to do business and we are really excited to be part of the change."

A recent report from comScore measured social networking visitation and engagement around the world, by region. Europe saw the highest engagement of worldwide visitors to social networking sites.

Nimble’s groundbreaking standalone and team solutions have driven unprecedented early success: since its launch earlier this year, the company gained over 20,000 registered users and is one of the fastest growing CRM platforms today. Nimble has signed up over 300 partners worldwide with our European market as our fastest growing market who see the vast potential in the social business marketplace.

According to Gartner, the global social CRM market is forecast to achieve USD $1 billion in revenues by the end of 2012, up from approximately USD $625 million in 2010. The same report shows that spending by buyers on social software for marketing, customer service and sales increased by 40% in 2010, but that social CRM received less than 5% of revenues from the total CRM app market. This indicates that there is now a clear path for a market leader to emerge in this billion-dollar market.

About Nimble: Since its initial launch, Nimble has quickly established itself among publications and customers alike as a leading Social Business platform. The platform was awarded PC Magazine "Editors Choice" as well as the coveted "DEMO God" award from a field of hundreds of start-up contenders. It has also been recognized by leading analyst firm, Gartner, as a “Cool Vendor” for Social Software and Collaboration and placed on "The CRM Watchlist 2011” by Social CRM expert and best-selling author, Paul Greenberg.

Founded in 2009, Nimble leverages the power of traditional CRM, Sales Automation and social media to create a complete, web-based Social Business platform capable of helping small businesses transform their social communities into business opportunities. Located in Santa Monica, Nimble is in the heart of the Southern California tech community. Please join the conversation on Nimble’s Facebook page, LinkedIn and on Twitter @NIMBLE.

February 04th, 2013

14/3/2011

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The following is a research note written by Jim Davies, Research Director with Gartner. In it Davies draws an analogy between the behaviour and attitudes of organisations today towards Social Media and similar attitudes a decade ago towards CRM.

At that time Gartner developed its eight building blocks of CRM which consisted of steps such as vision from the board, implementation of strategy and changes to organisational structures, processes and culture. In this article Davies subscribes to the same approach to ensure that investment in social CRM isn’t wasteful.

"I really got the sense that a lot of companies that are doing social CRM have actually forgotten about the building blocks. They may have had a CRM strategy and metrics and done all that in the past, but now with social they have forgotten about it and instead it’s all about playing with social monitoring platforms."

"There was a real sense that there wasn’t a social strategy in place that could then help steer them in terms of what technologies they need, what metrics they should be tracking, what data they need to collect, and what analytical tools they need to buy. All of that hadn’t been thought through. It was more of a 'kids in a sweet shop’ approach. On the back of that I published a research note which was basically eight building blocks again, but applying it to social media, because I think it is such an important finding that people have forgotten about it and they are not approaching this the way that they would approach CRM – but they absolutely should be."

Applying the Eight Building Blocks of CRM to Social Media

Jim Davies, GARTNER

The increase in adoption of social media across media, high-tech, consumer goods and retail sectors has been prolific during the past few years, and is set to expand into other industries during the next three years. Organisations need to embrace this phenomenon as an integral part of their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

Our research points to improvements in customer and market responsiveness, product development, sales effectiveness and operational efficiency as key drivers. Success, however, requires the same due diligence in traditional CRM that Gartner has reinforced for the past decade.

CRM is difficult to get right and Gartner estimates that fewer than 10 per cent of organisations have optimised the management of their customer relationships. A decade ago, Gartner created a framework called "The Eight Building Blocks of CRM" to help organisations be more successful. This framework has stood the test of time and is still highly regarded worldwide. Updated versions of the original research have been released over the years to reflect market shifts, but no fundamental changes have been made to the core framework.

The Eight Building Blocks of CRM

Our very latest research emphasizes the additional considerations that organisations now need to factor in across each building block from a social CRM perspective. Many of the social CRM projects Gartner has studied over the past three years have been in the "pioneer" phase, where individuals experiment and break new ground, but don't measure benefits. We are now seeing a desire to move to the "settler" phase, where a more structured approach is needed to get business results. Of course, to achieve this settler status, commitment to all eight of the building blocks will be required.

Gartner defines social CRM as a business strategy that mutually benefits cloud-based communities and the business by fostering engagement while generating opportunities for sales, marketing and customer service. The key considerations within this definition that organisations need to take heed of are:
Social CRM is a sustainable strategy, not a single project, such as setting up a Facebook page or mining social media.

Social CRM requires an increased level of openness and a willingness to engage more with customers.
Social CRM relationships need to be mutually beneficial for them to work.
Social CRM has to have a positive financial impact on the organisation through the associated impact on sales, marketing and service.

Given these considerations, each of the eight building blocks needs to be refined accordingly.

1. Social CRM Vision

A CRM vision encapsulates the very essence of a company's reason for existence, highlighting the differentiated attraction for its customers. A social CRM vision should take this customer value proposition further by embracing the shift of power associated with social CRM to one that is much more balanced.

2. Social CRM Strategy

The CRM strategy is a blueprint for how to create and maintain a customer base that is an asset to the company. It needs to integrate with the overarching corporate strategy, and requires the segmentation of customers by attributes such as value, loyalty and satisfaction. Adding a social dimension to a CRM strategy does not technically change anything, it just expands the options available for each segment and each phase of the customer life cycle.

3. Social Valued Customer Experience

A successful customer experience management initiative ensures that feedback is continually used to help design and refine the customer experience. When adding a social dimension, organisations need to consider how social media can be used to better set/reset expectations with customers, to positively influence the customer experience directly and to collect feedback on the customer experience and then act on it in an appropriate and timely manner.

4. Social Organisational Collaboration

Once an organisation begins to embrace external social media, new guidelines and policies for employee participation need to be created, and associated aspects (such as its governance and enforcement) embraced. With social CRM and the emphasis on having a true relationship with customers, in which they contribute through activities such as co-creation, support, lead generation and campaign feedback, these "customers" have a far more influential role to play within each department.

5. Social CRM Processes

Customer process re-engineering to ensure each process flows down a logical path from the customer's perspective is a common investment area and a key influencer of the customer experience. When executing against a social CRM strategy, specific processes spanning sales, marketing and customer service will potentially be impacted. The key is to determine what processes are most appropriate to be driven socially, and where mass collaboration adds value, ensuring that there is an upside to the customer, as well as the business.

6. Social CRM Information

In addition to the sheer volume of social data that can be collected from customers and prospects from social environments, the subsequent challenges associated with determining its meaning and importance are the major hurdle to tying that data to individual customers within the existing customer database. The ability to capture the comments made by an anonymous customer called "Jimbo" and then to retrospectively assign them to "Mr Jim Davies" once a linkage can be determined is a key development area. However, there are lighter-weight approaches that can provide some degree of value and should be explored; for example, looking at participants' follower numbers on Twitter to determine the importance/impact of their comments.

7. Social CRM Technology

Most, but not all, CRM initiatives require some form of technology to enable the CRM strategy. Within the social CRM area, the marketplace is extremely fragmented, with over 100 vendors, each providing a specific functional capability. Most have annual revenue of less than $1 million and are not profitable. No one vendor can yet provide a holistic social CRM suite that can facilitate execution of socially driven sales, marketing and customer service processes. However, over the next two years we expect significant market consolidation and much tighter integration between social processes and traditional processes across sales, marketing and customer service.

8. Social CRM Metrics

The health of any CRM strategy can only be assessed through the provision of appropriate metrics. Once social CRM is embraced, new metrics need to be applied, which are often much harder to measure. Very few organisations have measured the return on investment of their social CRM activities, but this will begin to change in 2011 in line with growing maturity.

In another article Davies identifies the fact that the social media technology landscape is very fragmented, "populated by the likes of community builders and social media monitoring firms", with no one vendor having a full suite of tools. He states that "next year the true social CRM suites will start to emerge as acquisitions happen [and the market consolidates] and as R&D happens then [vendors] will start to get broader in their capabilities." He finishes this article by saying;

"In the meantime, [companies] absolutely should not wait. Because there is going to be value to be had by buying SaaS-based, pay-as-you-go service for a tool that may be acquired in a year’s time or they may not want to use in year or two’s time. So they need to think about it strategically and long-term, but don’t delay investment in the software because they are incumbent and can’t do it yet.

"It is a learning curve. If they are running vendor X for their core CRM platform and are going to wait until 2015 for that vendor to come to market with that offering then there are three years of learning that they are not going to have benefitted from. They are going to start to lose out from a competitive point of view because if all their competitors are having social activity, talking to customers socially, using it as a lead generation or marketing tool, then they are going to start slipping behind. So there is a risk of choosing a vendor now that isn’t going to be around in two years time but I think the benefits outweigh those risks."

So the message is, define clear Social Media strategies and goals and get moving quickly. Experiment and learn because, if you don't, your competitors will.

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Author - Michael McKenna

Mike has been working in the CRM arena since 2001. With a BA in Economics and a BSc. in Financial Information Systems from Trinity College Dublin, plus a background in project management and sales, Mike is a recognised CRM expert with over a decade of experience in delivering cost-effective solutions that work.

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SmartCloud works with progressive small and medium sized businesses to help them improve their lead generation, sales execution and customer retention.
For over a decade we have been building a strong reputation for delivering practical business solutions that enable organisations like yours to streamline internal and external business processes and to build stronger relationships with staff, suppliers, prospects and customers.
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Our 'sweet spot' clients are businesses with 5 to 500 employees; primarily in the web, high tech, financial services, media and distribution sectors.