November 1, 2013
By Leonard Klie, Editor, CRM magazine and SmartCustomerService.com

Nimble Integrates with Hootsuite for Social Selling

Social media platform provider Nimble yesterday released the Nimble Contacts App for HootSuite, a social media management platform.

The new App enables users of both Nimble and HootSuite to surface rich information about contacts and prospects to leverage social selling. From inside the main HootSuite screen, users can see and act on any of their contacts using their Nimble accounts. As they use HootSuite to monitor and build their social media presence, establish credibility, and communicate, now they can take any actions they would normally do in Nimble, without leaving HootSuite. With the new integration, Hootsuite users can do the following:

Check on any of their contacts' social networks and reach out on other channels;
See how they and their teams are connected to anyone in their networks;
View a complete communications history with any contact, regardless of channel;
Assign a tag to segment contacts;
Use Nimble's Mark as Important star system to keep timely messages front and center;
Set a schedule with the Stay in Touch reminder system;
Add and assign activities;
Add task reminders for future actions they need to remember; and
Add, edit, or update their Nimble contact records.

According to Eric Quanstrom, chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing and sales at Nimble, the Hootsuite integration cements a partnership with the company that has been going on for a number of years.

"Hootsuite has an amazing reach as far as the number of people using it," Quanstrom says. "We view Hootsuite as the leading [social media monitoring] app, and we are happy to partner with them."

The Nimble widget within Hootsuite, he adds, "is a really useful functionality that closes the loop on how people handle social media. The advantage is that all the information in Nimble is right there in front of you."

The widget is primarily geared for social selling, but it can be used by business development, customer service, and marketing personnel as well, according to Quanstrom. "We're bringing the social relationship management function to the leading social media management tool on the market today," he says. "After all, the goal of monitoring [social media] is to find folks with similar affinities, connect with them, and build on those relationships."

Quanstrom also pointed out that Nimble is working to integrate Nimble data into other social media monitoring and business applications. Earlier this week the company announced an integration of its Nimble Contacts to Microsoft Office 365, bringing contact management, social selling, and intelligent insights across all Microsoft Exchange email messages.