Customer Profiles: Anisa from Kidoinfo.com

Anisa Raoff of Kidoinfo.com

Organization Profile: An online parents’ guide to Providence, R.I., and beyond, Kidoinfo.com is brimming with information, creative ideas, things to do, places to go and links to local family resources. Visitors regularly learn what’s new in books, music, food, schools and more, search the calendar for ongoing and special events and read the A-List to see the editor’s and other parents’ picks for the best products and services from A (arts and crafts) to Z (zoos). This essential online guide for parents, caregivers, and families living in the area, or just visiting, is full of insider information and real parent recommendations.

Summary: Since her 7-year-old twin boys were babies, Anisa Raoof, founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of Kidoinfo, has gotten a lot of great information from parents she meets at the playground, in emails from friends, and at her favorite coffee shop. Like Kidoinfo itself, Batchbook social CRM software helps Raoof collect and manage all her valuable information and contacts in one central location. Just as other parents help make her job as a parent easier, BatchBlue Software helps her make the business of running her business easier.

Website: Kidoinfo.com

Batchbook Social CRM Connects Kidoinfo.com’s Community

With more than 2,000 subscribers to her newsletter, 750-plus unique daily visitors to her Website, Kindinfo.com and her community of hundreds of contributors, advertisers, contacts, friends and family, Anisa Raoof knows a lot of people who have a lot to say. She manages these relationships in just one place — Batchbook social CRM by BatchBlue Software.

Running an online parents’ guide to Providence and beyond in a state that is only about 50 miles tall and 40 miles wide, Raoof said “Everybody seems to know everybody in Rhode Island. The trick is how to track all of the relationships to better network your network.”

Building the Relationship

One summer Wednesday in 2007, around the time she founded Kidoinfo.com, Raoof commented in passing to her husband, a manager at a large, high-tech company, that she was having difficulty keeping track of everybody she met and talked with on a daily basis in the course of running her business. That night, after work, her husband happened to be attending the monthly Providence Geeks meeting, where digital innovators connect and collaborate, at which BatchBlue Software was demonstrating its customer relationship management (CRM) software. Raoof’s husband listened and learned about the software, congratulated the co-founders of the company, Pamela O’Hara and Michelle Riggen-Ransom, on their presentation and traded business cards. Remembering what his wife had said earlier that day, he later mentioned to her that BatchBlue might be able to help her manage her “keeping track of too many people” problem.

After electronic introductions to O’Hara and Riggen-Ransom, many e-mail exchanges about mutual interests such as parenting and entrepreneurship and a friendly sushi lunch, a synergy had been built. Riggen-Ransom asked Raoof to be an “official” beta tester of the Batchbook software. What followed was a lot of back and forth, discussion, praise, wish lists, to-do lists, trial and error, developments, improvements, new versions and ultimate, across-the-board satisfaction with the features and functions of the software. Raoof soon became a customer.

Managing Relationships

“Gathering and managing information from a variety of people and places, every day, was a bear before Batchbook,” said Raoof. A typical day, according to Raoof, might include:

• Her husband’s friend’s-friend recommending a new ice cream shop where he had taken his kids;
• Happening to strike up a conversation in line at the local Whole Foods store with a person starting their own small company online and trading business cards with them;
• A nursery school, a new Kidoinfo advertiser, e-mailing her a digital image of the new ad to be posted;
• A contributor sending her a new story about Helpful Tips for New Moms; and
• Planning the Kidoinfo Two-Year Anniversary and “Thank You” party.

With Batchbook, Raoof can manage, make sense and maintain all of her contacts quickly and easily.

“It’s my job to keep Kidoinfo in the know. Batchbook is, essentially, my single-source contact, communications and to-do list manager,” said Raoof.

As an example she offered an inside look at the Kidoinfo Two-Year Anniversary and “Thank You” party she recently planned, and how she used Batchbook to help.

• Contact Management

  Batchbook’s contact management allowed Raoof to create a flexible, easy-to-use invitee database from scratch, capture contact data using pre-existing fields such as contact name, address and/or email; and use SuperTags to create customized fields to capture critical information that was important in deciding who would get an invite to the limited-seating event.

• Communications Management

  With Batchbook, Raoof logged e-mails, phone and in-person communications with her contacts. She knew the last contact she had with all of her subscribers, contributors and advertisers and what was discussed. From that data, she tagged contacts as invitees and generated mailing labels from their Batchbook records.

• To-Do List Management

  Batchbook’s to-do list management allowed Raoof to sort the party planning and execution tasks by day, week and month. E-mail reminders notified her the day a task or deliverable was due. She emailed her to-dos directly to BatchBbok and created printable lists for when she was on the go; and crossed items off when they were completed.

“The party was a great success for Kidoinfo, its family, friends, subscribers, contributors and advertisers,” said Raoof. “I couldn’t have organized it, or for that matter, managed my relationships and daily activities as efficiently, without Batchbook.”

Over the last two years of using Batchbook, Raoof said the software has saved her hundreds of hours of time and she has received a return on her investment in the software many, many times over. With the software, she said, she has also has gained valuable insights and expanded her network of contacts, developed innumerable efficiencies in her business, and built and managed a priceless Kidoinfo community.