Do People Want a Relationship with a Business?

The CRM industry is built upon the premise that businesses have ongoing relationships with their customers. But do the people on the other end really want to have a relationship with that business? Does a website visit, contest entry or even purchase mean the customer wants a long-term relationship? Do they want a lifetime of newsletters, e-mails, calls and text messages from that business just because they had a first date?

Yes. But only a few of those people. And only some of the time.

Most People are Consumers

The majority of people who have bought a product from your business do not consider themselves in a relationship with you. Many people just want a pleasant transaction, and then to go anonymously on their way. Think about all of the different products you use during the day. Just writing this blog post I am “consuming” a Macbook Air, HP monitor, WordPress software, Safari browser, Pandora audio, Sony headphones, an Ikea desk & chair, Gap shirt, Banana Republic sweater, Lee jeans, Sanita clogs, Dove deodorant, Davines shampoo, Paul Newman coffee in a Weirdgirl creations cup. Of these many brands, the only one I consider myself to have a personal connection with is Weirdgirl, not because they send me the most coupons or use my first name in their newsletter, but because it is the local pottery store where my kids and I spend some crafty afternoons. I’ve come to know the owner and her daughter and have a cupboard full of memories her business has provided.

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GetResponse Now Integrates with Batchbook

GetResponse, an easy to use email marketing solution, has announced an new integration with Batchbook. This integration makes it really easy to import your Batchbook contacts into a GetResponse campaign. All you need to do is grab your Batchbook API key and account name, choose which fields to bring over (currently you can import Batchbook’s default contact fields), and you are good to go! The integration keeps your campaign list up to date by automatically importing in new contacts every seven days.

GetResponse provides a lot of cool features for its users, including 350+ newsletter templates, Inbox Preview, Email Analytics, Multimedia Center, iPhone App, extensive social media integrations, List Booster and more.

They also do a lot to educate their users on how to effectively use email marketing. They have a large and continually growing Learning Center, which provides PDF and video tutorials, case studies, white papers, reports and more.

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Notebooks from Batchbook, via Riverzedge Art Project

We’ve got some new schwag around the Batchhaus, these nifty little notebooks:

While we love printing our logo on stuff and giving it away, these notebooks are special, in a couple of ways. First, they are kind of symbolic for us. We are launching a new version of Batchbook pretty soon, and with it are looking forward to turning a new page in our company history. Our books are already being filled with the future plans of our company, and we hope that they will help you ring in the new year with your most exciting plans too!

These notebooks are also special for us because we were able to have them printed by a pretty great group of people at the Riverzedge Art Project.

Riverzedge is a design firm that does screen printing, graphic design, art, photography, and more. In that, they are pretty normal, but their story gets more interesting. Riverzedge is also a social enterprise staffed by students.

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Batchbook – now with Live Chat!!!

The title pretty much says it all… we have a Live Chat feature now!

We have implemented a new page that houses all of our support: Forums, Screencasts, FAQs, On-Boarding Sign Up, and my personal favorite is the Live Chat!

To access it, just head on over to the Batchbook Community Page and look for the Contact Support button in the lower right hand side of the page.  Once you click it, you’ll see a window that looks like this ->

Just fill in your email address and then type your question!  If one of the Customer Experience Team members is available you will see the “Chat with us” button.  Pressing it will start a live chat, and we’ll do our best to help out with any questions or issues you may be experiencing.

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The New Batchbook: Focusing on Relationships

As our regular readers know, we are in the process of rewriting Batchbook. We are finishing up the first set of features to be released in the new BB2 product, so I want to give you all an update on where we stand.

First, I want to share with you a little of the philosophy behind the new Batchbook. As I have mentioned many times here on the blog, Batchbook is designed to help small businesses (like us! and you!) better keep up with the relationships that are most important to us: the ones we have with our existing customers. Seems like an obvious concept, but is actually counter to the traditional CRM model. Rather than focus our own sales efforts around the “funnel” management process of finding and converting unknowns, we focus our efforts around the relationships we have with those folks already familiar with our product and benefit from their efforts to help us spread the word on Batchbook. This has been extremely successful (and a lot of fun) for us, so the rewrite of Batchbook will reflect this customer friendly approach. With this release, we are introducing tools for Batchbook customers to more easily find and stay better connected with those folks already in your network who are eager to help you spread the word on your product or service.

But before we get too detailed on what is coming, a few important things to point out about the transition from the existing Batchbook to the new version:

1. We will begin introducing the new Batchbook at the end next month. We will start migrating accounts shortly thereafter, and it may take up to several months for all existing accounts to be migrated.
2. The initial release will contain those features used by the greatest number of account holders. We will continue developing the additional features and releasing them in the new Batchbook as they are available.
3. We will prioritize the order in which existing accounts are migrated to the new design based on the feature set currently being utilized by that account.
4. You will be notified directly and will be able to preview the new Batchbook before you are migrated, though you will not be able to switch back and forth between the old and new systems.
5. We will be maintaining and supporting the old Batchbook accounts until all have been migrated.
6. If you are using the Batchbook API, you will be given early access to the new API. We will be contacting those accounts in the next few weeks. If you do not hear from us, please write in to support@batchblue.com to let us know you need the access.

Please let me know if you have any questions on the migration process and schedule. We will keep you updated on the rollout of the new Batchbook and the release of features on the new system.

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