by Scott on August 23, 2008
Here is a summary of PlaybookIQ updates this week.
List Export
PlaybookIQ users can search by any contact field, by tag, and by combination of tags. The search results can then be exported as a csv file. This is a powerful way to create lists for email or postcard mailing providers such as Vertical Response.
Live Search
Live search was expanded to include first name, last name and company name. It was also made faster by some database index tweaking based on log analysis.
Flexible CSV Import
PlaybookIQ users can now specify field mappings during csv import.
As always, full details are at the product blog, http://aboutplaybookiq.com.
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by Scott on August 10, 2008
There is an interesting panel discussion with Tim Ferriss and Derek Sivers at Tim’s blog and a transcript at Derek’s. For micro-ISV owners, business owners, or anyone looking to take a different approach to their career: Tim and Derek are two worthwhile people to watch. Being a New York Times best selling author, you’ve probably heard of Tim Ferris. You may not know Derek Sivers’ story though. From Tim’s Blog entry:
Derek is a programmer who lost his stage fright by doing more than 1,000 gigs as a circus ring leader. He is also the musician who started CD Baby, the world’s largest online music store for independent musicians. Here are some current numbers:
- 242,846 artists sell their music at CD Baby
- 4,574,622 CDs sold online to customers
- $83,590,381 paid directly to the artists
With more than 2 million digitized tracks under management, CD Baby is also the largest provider of independent music for iTunes… and it all started as a hobby.
I recommend listening to the discussion and reading The 4-Hour Workweek (less than $12) and Derek Siver’s e-book (free). Tim’s book is for anyone that wants to “escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich”. Siver’s advice is targeted at independent musicians, but is relevant to anyone that wants to get the most out of their time and talents.
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by Scott on August 09, 2008
Enhancement: Search results
Management of PlaybookIQ search results got some attention and enhancements this week. Details at the product blog.
SSL for All!
We added SSL to all accounts, even the 30 day free trials. Blogged here.
Lighthouse and Github
Moved the product’s repository to Github and our milestones and issue tracking to Lighthouse. Highly recommended products and also the tools used by Rails core team and contributors.
Twitter
Started playbookiq twittering at twitter.com/playbookiq
Sometimes, communication lacks because we do not want to take the time to crank up our blog editor or email client or we feel like a blog entry should be more substantial than just ‘system up!’. Twitter is the perfect mix of very fast to post to, easy to subscribe to, and with the expectation from the reader that entries will be short and focused.
Mor.ph
Investigating the reliability and scalability benefits of running in the cloud, and found Mor.ph to be a straightforward way to deploy Rails apps to a distributed environment. Their reliability history and 99.9% SLA gaurantee are encouraging. More details to come.
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by Scott on August 01, 2008
Looking for a more professional look to match our small business CRM target audience, the PlaybookIQ product site got a complete revamp this week.
The previous site was – in the tradition of web 2.0 – simple, sparse, and curvy. The new design is pleasant, yet more focused on the facts and geared toward business users. Out with simple, in with informative and useful.
It also includes plenty of blue – a color associated with business, trust, and reliability. The primary font is Georgia, a serif font that dresses the site up a bit from a t-shirt into business-casual, at least.
As a technical aside: Blueprint grid is used for css and layout. Images are heavily used for a consistent look across browsers.
Overall, our new product site more clearly communicates the small business crm and sales team collaboration benefits of PlaybookIQ.
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by Scott on July 25, 2008
As we continue to improve our products we added two new features to our small business CRM software, PlaybookIQ this week.
Message Templates
A consistent company image and messages to customers and prospects is an important part of your customer relationship and marketing efforts. PlaybookIQ now supports this aspect with Message Templates.
Use message templates to:
- Be efficient: no need to retype the same email over and over.
- Be consistent: ensure everyone on your team is putting forth a consistent company image.
- Be effective: spend your time writing well authored email responses that can be used over and over.
- Be personal: include the contact’s name in the message template.
Copy Playbooks
In PlaybookIQ, playbooks contain your sales team’s best practices. Each playbook is a series of repeatable and measurable steps that can be easily applied to a contact. Each step is assigned a timeline and responsible user. Now, we have made it super easy to duplicate the series of steps in a playbook, but assign tasks to different users
All the details are at the PlaybookIQ product blog.
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