Version 2.0 of Nimble, a relationship manager dubbed the “social CRM” by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company of the same name, was released in mid-February. The update includes multiple new features and a “freemium” pricing model. The Personal Plan remains free; the new Business Plan costs $15 per user per month and provides more contacts in the database, multiuser access, and advanced integration features.
“Nimble 2.0 includes a cleaner, simpler, and more powerful interface,” says Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara, who founded and later sold Goldmine, an early success story in the CRM market. “We added social notifications from your other social apps, and improved our social discovery.”
Tight integration with Facebook, Twitter, and Google makes Nimble a kind of portal for social interactions, and allows users to easily follow multiple conversations and even import social information about others. A few clicks, and the social history of a new prospect can be integrated into your Nimble database. And if you prefer different fields in your database, Nimble 2.0 allows custom fields and tabs.
“If you are a Google user, your email is in one program, your calendar another, and your contacts in a third,” says Ferrara. “We put all that information together.” Improved privacy features enable users to make all Facebook comments private, and then tag some for public viewing, or the reverse.
The Business Plan includes integration with third-party social tools like MailChimp for email marketing, WuFoo for website forms, and HubSpot marketing software. “Names pulled from your website in a WuFoo form will go to Nimble, and can be added automatically to a MailChimp drip marketing email program,” says Ferrara.
Now with an office in the UK to penetrate the European market, Nimble now has about 250 resellers in the United States. About 100 are “great resellers,” says Ferrara. “We turn old school resellers into social media consultants. With Nimble, they teach their clients how to stay top of mind with their customers, and help them manage the conversation and engagement with customers throughout the customer acquisition and support lifecycle.”
Ferrara says Nimble will always focus on their reseller channel. “Some vendors think software sells itself via the cloud. We know that business owners are too busy to go find, install, and configure software on their own, since these applications are getting more complex all the time.”
Up next for Nimble are APIs and development kits to let resellers provide customized solutions for their customers, and mobile support.
