The Relenta blog

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!

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.

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.

Seth Godin suggested today that you use a question, “Why am I here?” as a simple mantra that you should chant (inside your head, I hope) when you attend every conference for the rest of your life.

How’s this for an answer: To keep millions of workers employed. Airline pilots and stewardesses, cab drivers, hospitality workers, designers and web developers, printers, PR and advertising agents, conference organizers, you get the idea.

Leo Babauta at Zenhabits points out that our eating habits are similar to conference-attending. Not exactly Zen. But, every time you grab a bite, it triggers a chain of events that keeps gazillions of people around the globe busy.

In a recent conference call, the VP of sales of a major email newsletter marketing company, when presented with the benefits of using Relenta (such as being up to 50% more efficient and productive) said “but people like to be inefficient.”

Do they?

If Relenta lets a team of three do the work normally done by seven, and do it twice as fast, and not pay office rent to boot, is it good or bad in the grand scheme of things?

Any ideas?

Great news for all of you Outlook (and Gmail, and Yahoo mail and…) die-hards: You can now have your cake and eat it, too! This new feature lets you use any desktop, mobile or web email client with Relenta. Simply blind carbon copy (BCC) any email to your Relenta account, and it will automatically be placed in Sent folder and filed against the appropriate contact. Life is too short to copy and paste any special “dropbox” email addresses, isn’t it? Simple is beautiful, Relenta style!

To start using this feature, you will need to auto-forward email to your Relenta account, so copies of all incoming messages are received in Relenta and other clients you want to use, such as Outlook, iPhone, etc.

Next, create identity (Settings > Identities) with email address that matches sender (From:) address you use to send email from other clients.

As is often the case with Relenta, things are as simple on the outside as they are complex on the inside. Below is the set of rules used to sort and file the incoming email.

We pay 20% commission for the direct referrals (1st tier) and 5% commission for your referrals’ referrals (2nd tier). We use every method known to man to give you credit for your referrals:

1. Browser cookie. When a person clicks on your referral link (http://account_id.relenta.com/invite), she will be redirected to www.relenta.com, and a permanent cookie will be sent to her browser.
2. “Who told you about us?” This is the first question we ask when people sign up. We will attempt to match responses to your account by the answer provided, so please make sure your contact name and company are correct in our system.
3. Referring URL. If you place a link to Relenta on your site (you can link directly to www.relenta.com, without the special referral link), we will remember the referring URL using the cookie, and will credit your account based on this information. You will have to let us know which site(s) correspond to your Relenta account ID.

Your account is credited the same day when your referrals make a payment. We provide detailed daily reporting on the number of clicks, sign ups (free and trial), paying accounts and commissions due.

Commission payments are made to you via PayPal when the balance exceeds $100 USD. Let us know if PayPal service isn’t available in your country and we’ll figure out how to get you paid.

We no longer require a credit card to sign up for a free 14-day trial with as many users as you want.

Our free account includes 1 user, 100 contacts and 100 MB storage. Exceeding any of these limits will start a 14-day free trial. We will ask you to provide the payment if you decide to continue the service after the trial period ends.

Once you become a paying customer, we charge you monthly for the next month in advance. The invoice for the next month is created 5 days before your billing date. You can view it in the Dashboard > Billing section of your account. It is your responsibility to make sure that the credit card we have on file is valid and has sufficient funds. If the charge is declined, a 7-day grade period automatically starts, and $10 late payment fee is added to your bill. After the 7-day grace period, your account access will be suspended until you provide the payment.

When you add users to your account, we will charge you the amount prorated to your next billing date.

It goes without saying that we are constantly looking for ways to perfect Relenta. We want the best speed and uptime for you, reduced costs and maintenance for us, and peace of mind for all. Greedy? Unrealistic? Impossible? These words aren’t in our vocabulary.

Sergey Gondrya, CTO at Relenta

To our astonishment, we quickly found the perfect solution that meets our seemingly conflicting requirements (its name is Slicehost). On the other hand, convincing ourselves that this is the right choice took quite a bit of time. And that’s what this post is all about.

“We” really means Sergey Gondrya, Relenta’s CTO and system architect extraordinaire. I just wrote it all down.

We’ll start with our wish list, talk about the Relenta system architecture, the process of elimination we went through, and the tests we ran to justify our decision.

What matters to us

Because Relenta hosts your email and sensitive business data, we take availability, security, and performance much more seriously than providers of less mission-critical software services might be able to afford.

As Winston Churchill, we are “easily satisfied with the very best.” Here is our wish list. In no particular order, we want to…

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever wondered how much the information overload is costing you? Research company Basex created a nifty information overload calculator. Eye opening, isn’t it? 

The Radicati Group estimates that you will spend 41% of your time managing email in 2009. The good news is that Relenta users will 1) spend much less time and 2) do it in style! Yeah.

Speaking of Relenta, last week there were a few very nice articles about us on TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, and Mashable. Folks posted tons of mighty interesting comments. I hope you too will join the lively discussions.

Many comments are related to Relenta pricing. Those who use Relenta as a business productivity tool tend to think that $25 per user per month is a steal. Then there are other folks wouldn’t even try Relenta because it’s not free.

So who’s right and who’s wrong? 

Our handy ROI calculator shows that for any established, commercially viable business Relenta pricing is irrelevant. Even with the most concervative assumptions. To make it more fun for everybody, don’t forget to post your numbers in comments.

If, on the other hand, you’re running a startup, non-profit, or socially conscious business, you can join our brand spanking new Relenta Incubator program at zero or reduced cost.

We’re giving away unlimited free accounts to qualified start-ups and socially innovative businesses. I believe that entrepreneurs are the key to economic salvation and hope that our modest contribution will help in some way, shape or form.

Eligibility

1. Any start-up under that is under two years old is eligible. No preference is given for the line of business, funding or revenue status.
2. A start-up must have already created at least two full-time salaried jobs, not including the founder(s).
3. If your business is not a start-up, it must be a service, community project or organization, or any other entrepreneurial venture that exists to help others. No age limitation in this case.
4. You must describe your business or project and its current communication and productivity problems. A horror story about not getting things done in a proper or timely manner will do the trick.
5. You must describe how you will use Relenta to overcome challenges and change the world.
6. Applications are accepted only in the form of comments to this post. We will use the email address you use to post to get in touch with you. In addition, you can also submit a form with your full contact details and personal message if you’d like.

Let’s change the world together!