…until today.

We built Argyle Contacts to help Community Managers and social professionals build stronger customer relationships that drive revenue and retention.  We’re excited to ship the core feature today and look forward to building on this foundation in the coming months.

Much more info below. Let us know what you think!

Argyle Contacts Feature Demo

Manage Your Social Contacts

Argyle automatically populates the new Contacts tab with with people you’ve recently interacted with on Twitter. Every social action in Argyle enriches your contact database – new followers and mentions automatically create new contact records.  All of your social interactions thread together to provide a full conversation history with each contact.

Know Your Audience

The individual contact card provides a comprehensive overview of your relationship and social interactions.  You can augment social history and data with additional information. Write notes to provide additional context to your contacts. Add email address, phone, and other personal information to round out a profile. Look out for exciting integrations in the near future that will augment your social contact with data from your core CRM!

Use Tags To Build Context & Workflow

Context matters in social. Did that last tweet come from a high value customer? A valuable prospect that is in the final stages of the sales process? A customer that has an outstanding high priority ticket? Not knowing could be the difference between a win or a loss, a happy customer or a lost customer.

We integrated tags into Contacts to solve this problem. Use tags to organize your contacts into strategic groups. Tag your largest customers to make sure that you’re keeping tabs on them. Tag strategic influencers and target them with personalized content on a regular basis. Work with your sales team to tag key prospects to ensure that you’re engaging them as they advance through the sales process.

Obviously this topic is near and dear to our hearts at Argyle – plus I did a call with Susan as a part of her research process – so I thought that I would share a few thoughts.

The report’s “Six Ways of Measuring Revenue Impact of Social Media” is pretty much spot on:

It was refreshing to see that “Anecdote” made its way onto the list. Even though it is decidedly low tech and not much fun to talk about as an industry analyst or technology vendor, anecdotal measurement is the right place to start and the ideal practice until a more integrated/automated approach becomes apparent and/or necessary.

The marketing immaturity reflected in the report aligns with our day-to-day experience at Argyle. Most social marketers have their hands full solving urgent problems around workflow, automation, and management. Revenue attribution is important, but it isn’t always the top priority when there are other pressing productivity problems.

That said – it is encouraging the data in the report underlines the ongoing quest of revenue attribution. 56% of the social professionals surveyed stated that “inability to tie social media to business outcomes” is a challenge. 70% scored themselves a 3 or less (on a scale of 1 to 5) when asked about their effectiveness at mapping social media to revenue generation. We obviously believe that these are important problems worth solving.

A 5-star effort from Susan, Andrew, and team – well worth the read.

Eric

Thanks for the idea!

In the months since we launched Argyle Ideas we’ve seen an overwhelming demand for a social media content calendar. So we made one. We’d like to say there was more to it than that, but really we just want to make our customers happy. Watch the video below to get a full tour, or pop into the app and start using it first hand.

Help us make Argyle better. Submit new ideas and vote on new features.

The Social Signals API represents the beginning of a new era for Argyle, our customers, and the social media marketing business as a whole.

I’ll tell you a few reasons why.

Social Professionals Have A Massive Blind Spot

The Community Manager’s function is already a cross-functional juggling exercise – a little bit of marketing, a little bit of services, a little bit of sales, and so on.  When done well, strategic social programs should be a part of a business’ core strategic framework, tracking prospect and customer interactions at all stages of their life cycle.

The products that have enabled Community Managers to perform their primary function – including Argyle Social – to date have not aligned with this fragmented reality.  Instead, single-function social media management products have created functional silos and – as a result – massive data management problems.  Most Community Managers get by with swivel chair product “integrations” and multi-spreadsheet copy/paste marathons.

Social has emerged as a critical business function, yet it remains fragmented across systems, spreadsheet, and people.  And marketers are flying blind as a result.

We wrote about this “blind spot” problem at length in our newest whitepaper – “If You Teach A Community Manager To Fish”.  You can download the social marketing automation whitepaper here.

Argyle Routes Social Into Your Org’s Central Nervous System

Argyle’s Social Signals API resolves the blind spot problem by routing social data directly into your organization’s central nervous system: the customer database.

In short, we’ve built technology that takes all of those social marketing touchpoints – clicks, likes, retweets, shares, comments, conversions, etc. – and maps them to the individual contact.  The Signals API then makes this data accessible to your business systems.

This technology bridges the gap between your business systems and your social media marketing efforts.  Your “single view of the customer” can now include social activity history.

To avoid over-sharing all of the nerdy marketing details, I’ll just show you a picture of the Social Signals API and how it works:

Social Data Drives Smarter Marketing

So what are the implications of a non-blind-spot, social-data-integrated world?

Here are a few scenarios for your considerations:

• You can map social directly to revenue.  You can have a monthly pipeline conversation with your Dir of Marketing and Dir of Sales in which you can point out the exact leads, prospects, and opportunities that have had social touchpoints.
• You can build targeted email campaigns that trigger off of social activities.  For example, a customer may interact with brand offsite on social, but has not interacted onsite in the last 3 months.  You can target this customer with an email offer to drive onsite action.
• You can target custom offers to site visitors on their first visit.  For example, a visitor’s first interaction with your brand may occur on social.  When they visit your site, you will already have information about their activity history and can target offers accordingly.

Integration Will Drive the Next Phase of Social Business Innovation

The drive for integration in our business is undeniable.  The Community Manager’s fragmented job responsibilities obviously require it.  The tenets of effective, integrated digital marketing require it.  Argyle Social enables it.

The companies that successfully integrate social throughout their organization, organize themselves to programmatically capture key social data, and then leverage this data to make smarter marketing decisions will be the companies that win big.

We’re excited to roll out these exciting products and look forward to building on these foundations in the coming months and years.

Let me know what you think.  And let me know if I can be helpful!

Eric

Jill @ Argyle.

——

Argyle Social today announced two significant enhancements to its social media marketing platform. The new products – the Social Signals API and Argyle for Salesforce.com – enable community managers and social professionals to integrate social data across marketing channels and business systems.

“When it comes to enterprise marketing maturity, social media is light years behind other channels like email, search, and display,” Argyle Social CEO Eric Boggs said. “As a result, marketers operate in a dangerous blind spot – they don’t understand how their social media investments map to key business outputs.”

“We believe that the cross-channel integration enabled by our new products will drive the next wave of social business innovation,” Boggs added.

Social Signals API

Argyle’s Social Signals API maps activity data like social interactions, short URL clicks, shares and website conversions to individual contact records and social profiles. This powerful social data feed augments customer intelligence and enriches cross-channel marketing programs.

“The days of fragmented social data and swivel-chair integrations are over. The days of social business automation are here,” Boggs said. “Our Social Signals API provides a contact-centric data feed to augment CRM, email marketing and customer service systems with social data. As a result, marketing executives can run smarter marketing programs and make socially-informed business decisions.”

Argyle for Salesforce.com

Argyle also announced a plug-and-play Salesforce.com integration – the first of many products to be built on its Social Signals API.

“Argyle for Salesforce is a revolutionary step forward for the B2B community manager,” Boggs said.  “We expect to announce integrations with additional CRM and email marketing systems in the very near future.”

Argyle’s Salesforce.com integration maps social activity data directly into Salesforce Lead and Contact records and highlights the community manager’s role as a sales enabler and revenue accelerator.

Customer Quote

“By tying directly into the CRM, Argyle surfaces which leads, opportunities, and sales have had social touchpoints in ways that you can’t with other tools like Google Analytics that stop once the customer leaves your website,” said Argyle customer Christopher Penn, Director of Inbound Marketing at email marketing software provider WhatCounts.

“More social data in the sales funnel gives sales and marketing teams the ability to follow up with prospective customers via social channels,” Penn added.

There are things that matter in our business, like working out your monthly social reporting process or figuring out your social business strategy.

Then there are the things that REALLY matter in our business, things that make the other “important” stuff seem very, very small.

A few months ago, Bill Powell – one of our sales guys at Argyle – revealed that he has an inoperable tumor on his brain stem. He has three to five years of medically controlled symptoms before things will begin to take a turn for the worse.

As you might imagine, this was like a punch in the stomach for our team. And certainly for Bill and his wife Jessica.

Bill’s response to the situation has been nothing short of amazing. He immediately resigned from Argyle and announced that he’s fulfilling his lifelong goal of completing a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail. He begins his trek next week. You can follow all of the action on Bill’s blog “Going South”, his Twitter account, and his Facebook Page.

What’s more – Bill raised more than $10k on Kickstarter to fund a book and photo journal that will chronicle his adventure. And he’s bagged several sponsors that have comped him some top-quality gear worth thousands of dollars. He’s obviously a pretty good sales guy, but his wife Jessica deserves some of the credit for rallying the Fark.com community to support the effort.

Last night, Argyle threw a “Happy Trails” party for Bill – complete with a campfire cake, chubby bunny, a champagne toast, and a rousing set from the Argyle house band, The Bill Powell Admiration Society. You can see our photo below and some to the side, a few of which I’m sure I’ll regret publishing. (I swear that we’re a legitimate, enterprise-grade software company!)

We have 5 core values at Argyle – Passion, Productivity, Transparency, Self-Awareness, and Goodness. We talk about them frequently, including every Monday during our weekly team check-in.

Last night was the best yet reflection of our Goodness – from Jill’s and Claire’s quick planning and clever execution of the shindig, to the team’s gracious applause after the band’s decidedly sub-par cover of “Eye of the Tiger”, to – of course – all of the hugs and farewells to Bill.

It made me feel very proud of my team and very lucky be an Argyler.

Happy trails, Bill. See you later this year!

Eric

New and Improved Post Report—Now with Facebook Insights!

Data-driven marketers are gleaning information from Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and their trusty Argyle Social reports. We’ve cut out one more step for you by pulling Facebook Insights into Argyle. Now, you can see the reach, viral impressions, people talking about this, as well as like and comments per post. Check out the screen shots below to see the beautiful rendering of Insights data in a clean, pretty Argyle fashion.

Want to know what posts are generating the most buzz on Twitter? The new post report also will help you there, too. It shows interaction metrics for all Twitter posts so you can easily see what posts generated the most conversation. It also presents that conversation history to you in-line so that you can see exactly what responses a particular post generated.

Track Your Social Shares

Social media marketers are forever chasing the answer to the eternal question “How is social moving the needle for my business?”. Argyle Social now helps you answer that question even better with our new social shares feature.

There are two primary types of social activity: things you post, and things other people post about you. Argyle has always done a great job tracking the performance and the impact of things you post. But we’re now also tracking things that other people post about you via the share buttons on your website and blog.

This will give marketers a more holistic view of the value that social media is creating. Every link shared via an Argyle share button will track a share count, as well as the number of clicks and conversions that these shares have generated.

Do you know how much value your advocates are creating for you?

Google+ Integration

In your engage tab, along with keeping up with all the latest conversations about your brand, search terms, and competitors, you can now import the news feed from Google Plus pages. Whether you’re a full G+ convert, slowly trying it out, or just getting started, this new integration will make sure you’re keeping up with chatter on G+.

1. What’s the best part about being a leap baby? It’s an instant ice-breaker when I first meet people. Also, it gives me a pretty amazing excuse to celebrate in an over-the-top kind of way every four years.




2. What’s the best present you’ve ever received for your birthday? My last birthday, when I turned six, a bunch of my best friends and I went to Vegas! I’d tell you more… but you know the rules. Then, my dad came out when all my friends left, and we did our father-daughter thing, hiking and exploring, but best of all going skydiving! That’s right, they let a 50+ year-old and a six-year-old jump out of a plane. The whole week was worth not having another birthday until…. now!




3. Does your birthday even appear on Facebook? How does that work? Facebook came to my college the spring of my Sophomore year, so it wasn’t until the following year when I was turning 21 (aka no bday) that I noticed that my birthday was listed as “upcoming”. But it wasn’t on February 28th or on March 1st in the “Today’s Birthdays” box. Needless to say, this was not going to fly. I emailed Facebook, and they were such a small operation back then that an actual person replied to my message that they hadn’t considered leap babies on non-leap years yet, and so would change the birthday box to include us in years to come! So, I can’t be completely sure that I was the one to change Facebook’s leap day policy…but I’m not going to stop saying it until they send me a cease and desist letter.




4. You’ve done so much for a six year-old. What will you do now that you’re seven? Seven’s the big leagues. I’m going to learn how to write in cursive. I’m hoping to take the training wheels off my bike… really though, my birthday is a great marker in my life. When I turned four (16) in high school my girl friends and I went on a beach weekend. Five (20) was in college, and I went to my favorite cousin’s wedding and a sorority cocktail party. Six (24) was in Washington, DC and I took that infamous trip to Vegas. Now I’m seven (28) and I’m living in Raleigh, NC taking a surprise trip to ____ with my mom (she’s only told me to pack a swimsuit!). So, when I turn eight (32!!) a LOT could have changed in my life, so seven’s going to be a big year(s) for me! I’m determined to make it lucky number seven… and I’m seriously going to practice my cursive.

Do you know any leap babies or leaplings? If so, wish them Happy Birthday from the Argylers!

How do you think this might change in the next six months? Let us know in the comments.

How is Argyle different at year 2 as compared to year 1?

Eric: There are a thousand differences. The contrast between our 1st and 2nd birthday reflects a few of them:

Our 1st birthday was full of uncertainty. We had raised a $325k seed round a couple months prior and Mike and Josh just joined the team. We were in the midst of a massive product cycle and we weren’t sure if we’d be able pull it off. We had very few customers and we were very worried about our ability to deliver on the pitch we made to our investors. Everyone was stressed to the breaking point, so our 1st birthday party kinda sucked.

Our 2nd birthday is much less stressful! We’ve got a great product, hundreds of happy customers, an amazing team, and plenty of cash in the bank. I’m still stressed to the breaking point, but I’ll probably manage to have a good time tonight!

Adam: Yeah, we’re definitely more focused and that’s a huge win. Focus lets us work harder, faster, and smarter and cut out a lot of extra crap that we just don’t need.

What’s been your biggest win in the past year?

Eric: Recruiting and it isn’t event close. We’ve grown our team from 4 full-time in Dec 2010 to 20 full-time in Dec 2011. There is no way we would have gotten as far as we have – and certainly no way we’ll get where we’re going – without the efforts of our passionate, productive team. I’m inspired every day by the talented people that I get to work with.

Adam: It’s not easy to grow a team and especially not as quickly as we have. Having the right people on the team is crucial to us moving forward.

Where will Argyle be 2 years from today?

Eric: We’ll be in Downtown Durham executing our purpose: building powerful, beautiful products that empower online marketers to drive meaningful outcomes for their organizations. But we’ll be doing it bigger, faster, stronger, etc.

Adam: Hopefully, we’re still kicking ass and taking names!

Eric: Absolutely, and we will also drive to work in flying cars and eat entire meals in pill form.

What surprised you about this past year?

Adam: There have been a lot of surprises, so it’s hard to say which has been the biggest. It’s probably how big we’ve become in the market. We actually have a pretty strong presence and it can be a bit surprising considering how young and small we are. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise considering the energy, excitement, and intelligence that we have in here.

Eric: For me, it’s how quickly it happened. Seems like yesterday that Adam and I were arguing with Josh about whether we should have a vertical or horizontal navigation. (Josh finally won the argument by slapping the table and shouting “NO!”.) Turns out that the old parenting yarn is true – the days are long and the years are short.

Today’s Adam & Eric are transported to this date last year. What would you tell 1-year-younger Adam & Eric?

Adam: Since we are both new fathers I would tell us to get as much sleep as we can but also to relax a bit and enjoy the ride more.

Eric: “Ignore the crap. Get close to the customer and build the product that solves their problems.” Also, I would tell myself last year, “Don’t schedule the Christmas party in the midst of a massive product cycle.”

What are the best & worst parts of being a founder?

The Best

Adam: Best part is piecing together a phenomenal team watching them grow far beyond what you asked them to do what you thought they could do.

Eric: The team! The team! The team!

The Worst

Adam: The worst part is probably the lack of sleep and worry about whether your choices have been the smartest and best for the company & team.

Eric: The hair loss.