Nimble Contact Brings Social Media to Small Businesses
Nimble last week launched Contact, a new social CRM platform that integrates contacts, calendar, communications, and collaboration (“the 4Cs”) under one umbrella.
By integrating LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, email contacts, and conversations, Nimble Contact aims to help small businesses stay socially connected to attract new customers and retain existing ones.
“I have been in relationships all of my life,” says Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble. Ferrara is also the founder of GoldMine and describes his background as “half technology and half sales.” “I spent time in both areas at various companies, and in the process of doing that, I came to the realization that sales people don’t work in a vacuum; they work as part of a larger team, and everybody keeps in touch with the customer.”
After he sold GoldMine, Ferrara says he “began to swim in the social river and saw the immense power of it.” “I started to look at the CRM products in the marketplace, and I quickly recognized that most CRM systems don’t really help you with relationships as much as they are management tools to keep track of their sales team,” he recalls. “I was inspired to come back to the marketplace and create a tool that empowered individuals to build better relationships and work more effectively together.”
Nimble Contact’s key features include:
- one unified solution with the 4Cs;
- social listening by letting companies monitor popular social networks from one screen;
- social engagement with a unified inbox that allows companies to communicate by email and social media outlets;
- the ability to work with existing tools by synchronizing with Google Apps;
- an easy-to-use interface;
- a Web-based solution that requires no set-up or maintenance; and
- encrypted security to keep information safe.
The new application was created by Nimble, a relatively new company founded in 2009 with the mission to help small businesses transform their communities into opportunities while making it fun and simple to nurture both personal and business relationships. Nimble Contact is currently free as a standalone product and is available online at www.nimble.com.
Gerhard Gschwandtner, editor of Selling Power magazine, believes Nimble Contact is a “visionary product.” “Finally someone has figured out Social CRM and made it simple, fun, and efficient,” he said in a statement. “I predict that Nimble will leapfrog all traditional CRM solutions.”
Laurie McCabe, a partner at SMB Group, echoes Gschwandtner’s praise for Nimble Contact’s commitment to offering a variety of social media solutions “all in one place,” and believes the new application could be an indicator for future CRM developments with a focus on catering to small businesses.
“Small business is the business of America, the business of the world, and the business that I love,” Ferrara says.