Yesterday I explored the notion of your photo business in the cloud with my look at FreshBooks for invoicing and payments. Today let’s look at another online service I use and love: BatchBook, a CRM (customer relationship management) tool. Continue reading to learn more and for a special offer at the bottom of this article.
While photography has a technical component, the business of photography is very much a people business and photographers that shoot weddings, events, portraits, corporate work, sports, and any other number of subjects all depend on working with clients and maintaining those relationships. BatchBook is the tool I use to keep track of my interactions with customers.
BatchBook’s website does a great job of showing the main features of the product – you’re able to capture client contact information, record communications, keep track of pending deals, and track tasks. My most common way of getting information into BatchBook is by sending it to BatchBook via the bcc: field of email messages to clients.
In addition to information placed into BatchBook directly, the service can also synchronize contacts with others systems such as GMail, and there is integration with FreshBooks which lets me quickly view outstanding invoice information in the same place I’m tracking other client activity.
One huge strength of BatchBook when compared with many other contact management systems is the social media integration. From a client record, BatchBook can scan popular social networks and automatically display recent information from your contact. As I look at someone’s information in BatchBook, I can also see the most recent things they’ve posted to Twitter, Flickr, and LinkedIn.
It’s easy to try BatchBook. They offer a free trial to everyone, and if you use the code BatchPhoto when signing up, you’ll get an extra month of free access to evaluate the system. Check it out!
