…and you shall command
Egyptian sage Ptahhotep wrote in 2400 BC:
One that reckons accounts all day passes not a happy moment. One that gladdens his heart all day provides not for his house. The bowman hits the mark, as the steersman reaches land, by diversity of aim. He that obeys his heart shall command.
A more modern version is “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” But what if work is play? If you are like most of our customers, you know little distinction between the two. And so it is that you’re looking forward to getting some work done in the next couple of weeks. Because you won’t take a break, we’ll give you one: between now and January 3, 2010 you can sign up for the whole year of Relenta service for only $100 (per user):
http://www.relenta.com/allplay.html
May your holidays and year 2010 be productive, happy and full of joy. Obey your heart!
New features and fixes
New features
- Integration with FreshBooks (Twitter is coming right up!)
- Customize activity types: edit existing and/or add your own
- Create rich-text and plain-text Identity signatures
- Drag-and-drop email message(s) into folders
- Drag-and-drop to rearrange email folders (Groups are soon to follow!)
- Hide endless quoted text in emails under single -Quoted text- link
- Made links in Notes clickable
Performance improvement
You should notice marked improvement in the overall system and interface responsiveness. In addition to much optimized interface code, we are now loading our JavaScript libraries (jQuery, jQuery UI, Prototype) from Google CDN (content distribution network) which means you spend less time waiting and more time working. Split seconds add up!
Bug fixes
- Contact group count update after contact removal
- Gravatar image display with secure URL (https)
- Default identity auto-select
That’s it for now. More good stuff is on its way. Watch this space.
CRM for the Small Biz: Turning Agony Into Ecstasy
Relenta is featured today in the CRM Buyer article CRM for the Small Biz: Turning Agony Into Ecstasy by Maria Verlengia.
Choosing the right CRM solution for a small business greatly increases the chances of a successful implementation. Simple CRM systems work best for small businesses.
Amen!
Relenta + Twitter + LinkedIn = Hustler’s Power Drill
This ReadWriteWeb post by our user Bernard Lunn may well be called The Hustler Manifesto. You definitely should read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts that are music to our ears:
So, email is the drill. It is the basic component. Don’t even think about working without it. You can use email to close a deal and to get a phone and/or face-to-face meeting. … My personal CRM system of choice is Relenta, precisely because it is so email-centric.
CRM and LinkedIn are about hustle. Twitter is about flow.
I avoid using Twitter DM. Twitter is great for flow, but lousy for hustle. Twitter DM only adds to messaging fragmentation and has been polluted by spam. For now, @bernardlunn mode is useful, but methinks spammers will ruin that soon, too. But the basic Twitter service is perfect. I follow until I decide to unfollow. No one can spam that.
<…>
The integration we need is not another Twitter client for people who live in the Twitter flow. It is integration of this flow with the traditional hustle tools of email and CRM.
Specifically, I want to see in my CRM system the Twitter flow of my contact, what they are writing about and who they are communicating with. If they have DM’ed me, I want to see that in my CRM.
Thanks, Bernard! Your wish is our command. The Relenta-Twitter integration is already under construction.
Improve email deliverability: SPF records and Relenta
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records let you specify which servers are permitted to send email on behalf of your domain (i.e. using you@your-domain.com“From” address).
If you’re using Relenta mail.relenta.net SMTP server to send email from your Relenta account, we strongly encourage you to publish SPF records for your domain. This way your recipient’s servers or ISP will be able to check your SPF record to make sure you’ve authorized Relenta servers to send email on your behalf.
To set your domain’s SPF record, you must have access to your domain’s DNS settings (usually via your web-hosting control panel). On your DNS resource, publish the following text record:
v=spf1 include:spf.relenta.com ~all
That’s it!
Relenta and WordPress play well together
Got a WordPress site? Here’s a tutorial that shows how easy it is to set up Relenta with WordPress, courtesy of ever-helpful Foliovision. Thank you Alec, Peter and the gang!
Video: Using Relenta to build a ravenous real estate buyer list
It’s showtime again! Watch how Kurtis Squyres, our customer extraordinaire and founder of investment real estate firm FarBelowMarket.com uses Relenta to build a ravenous buyer list. Thanks Kurtis. You rock!
“Don’t be fooled when you look at it, it seems overly simple, but it does THE RIGHT THINGS, WHICH ARE MONEY MAKING THINGS.”
Kurtis Squyres
Video: Relenta and Gravatar integration
Sometimes we’re having trouble explaining to our users the mysterious appearance of photos in their Relenta contact database. Many thanks to our user Lee Walsh of The Full Service Loan Officer for creating this 2-minute video that shows the magic of Gravatar and its integration with Relenta. Enjoy!
Relenta integrates with Gravatar
Now Relenta automatically displays avatar images of your Relenta contacts who are Gravatar users.
A gravatar (globally recognized avatar) is an image that follows people on blogs and forums appearing beside their names when they comment on gravatar-enabled sites.
If you upload your own avatar image to a contact, it will override Gravatar’s.
Gravatar is the project of Automattic, the folks behind popular blog publishing software WordPress.
Using Relenta with any email service, client and mobile device
You can use Relenta to handle your incoming and outgoing email exclusively, or mix and match it with any number of other email services, clients and devices. As always, we give you the tools and get out of the way.
Relenta plays well with…
- Any mobile device: iPhone, Blackberry, Android
- Any email service: Gmail, Google Apps, Exchange, Yahoo! Mail, yourcompany.com
- Any email client: Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, Apple Mail
We assume you’re already set up to get your email from your email service to your mobile directly. If not, first get email working on your mobile.
The rest is really simple. You want to do two things:
- Get some or all of your incoming email into Relenta (from any number of email services or accounts).
- Get some or all of your outgoing email into Relenta (from your mobile, web or desktop email client).
Why? You want to be sure that your team can access relevant client information from your client profiles. Once those emails are attached to your client profile in Relenta, they are on file forever for whomever needs that info. Never see a team member make a customer service mistake again, due to a lack of information about the client.
Incoming email
If you want all your incoming mail go to into Relenta, set up automatic email forwarding of all email to your Relenta account.
If you don’t want to get all email into Relenta, simply forward individual messages to your Relenta account. If there is an identity (Settings > Identities) that matches your From: email address, the message will be filed against the person who sent the original message to you, based on From: address in the body of forwarded message.
Outgoing email
To get an outgoing mail into Relenta, BCC it to your Relenta account. If there is an identity that matches your From: email address, the email will be placed in Sent folder and matched with the appropriate contact.
For additional details on the rules and logic of email association, refer to the scenarios table in the Drop it like it’s hot post.