The news

On April 3, 2025, Nimble introduced e-mail marketing capabilities including a template editor to power scalable campaigns and outreach. This new capability empowers businesses to send unlimited, HTML-powered, and trackable emails, enabling large-scale outreach. This can be used e.g., for newsletters, webinars, product announcements, seasonal promotions, and more — all from within the Nimble platform. According to the press release, Nimble Email Marketing allows users to send unlimited e-mails and to create campaigns using a drg-and-drop editor or pre-delivered templates. Jon Ferrara, founder and CEO of Nimble says that “With Nimble Email Marketing, our customers can now scale their outreach and strengthen relationships like never before.”

The e-mail marketing tool leverages existing features like group messaging and sequences. This enables teams to manage outreach, nurturing of leads and deepen relationships.  With the combination of these capabilities, Nimble offers the ability to send one-off e-mails to larger audiences as well as to automate a multi-step outreach.

Nimble’s e-mail marketing capabilities including the template editor are available as an add-on for Nimble users for the price of $15 per company per month. For this, each user gets an allocation of 1,000 e-mails per month with the option to purchase additional packages as required.

The bigger picture

There is a lot of scope for full-fledged CRM solutions targeting smaller businesses. Many of the existing solutions correlate smaller companies with lower complexity of requirements. Most of these solutions also cover only a part of the CRM processes, be it marketing, sales, or service, sometimes even being more niche, focusing on engagement only.

Although pronounced dead multiple times, e-mail is still one of the dominant communication channels, According to statista, there are around 240 million e-mails sent every minute at the end of 2023 by around 4.4 billion e-mail users with a projection of almost 5 billion e-mail users in 2027. For comparison, statista estimates about 3.5 billion messenger users in 2025.

Having said that, conversational interactions become more and more important. I attribute the growth of e-mail partly to it being used “messenger-style”.

With this goes along the other trend, which is increased automation, which is important not only for bigger companies but probably even more so for smaller ones that do not have the scale for manual work. Although this trend these days is highly connected to AI and AI agents,

My point of view and analysis

Nimble goes marketing.

For the longest time, Nimble focused on personal social outreach to facilitate relationship building and sales. A while ago, sequences and workflows got added to the mix, helping organizing work better.

However, the personal outreach of a salesperson, important and powerful as it is, has a significant challenge: scalability. Therefore, it is a very important step for Nimble to add scalable marketing and inbound capabilities.

Combining the new e-mail marketing feature with the existing sequences and workflows offers a very powerful package. It allows for the creation of multi-step campaigns and the triggering of a variety of internal actions based upon customer’s reactions to these campaigns. Combined with actually useful pre-delivered templates for e-mails, webforms, sequences and workflows, this helps users hit the ground running.

Still, the main challenge that I see is that this combination of powerful tools, sequences and workflows, can appear overwhelming to users. A business process potentially consists of a combination of all four elements: e-mail templates, web forms, workflows and sequences. Getting this right requires some thinking and planning beforehand although the tools invite to “just do it”. They are deceivingly simple. Nimble addresses this to some extent by offering very regular webinars, tutorial videos, documentation, even sessions with the team. However, I see some further scope here to keep things nimble for the users. One possibility could be an ability to create a process based upon prompts. After all, we are living in the age of generative AI and Nimble is built on the Azure stack that offers the tools necessary for it. A simpler possibility would be to offer pre-built business processes as templates.  

Pricing stays competitive with a company-wide, as opposed to seat-based, pricing for the e-mail marketing add-on that comes with a quota of 1,000 mails per user and month. If there is a need for more e-mails, then there is the option for a pay-as-you-go option for buying additional e-mail packages. This offers a blend of fixed price and consumption-based pricing with what I’d call speed bumps that gives an extent of budget control by making purchases a conscious act.

With the e-mail marketing feature, Nimble makes a foray into the world of marketing, thus getting closer to what “CRM” means. Doing this, Nimble focuses on the still most important communication channel. Having said that, messengers, chat and voice as a consequence of increased AI muscle, are becoming more important, and fast. This means that Nimble needs to extend its outreach, template, and form capabilities to support these channels soon. This is on the roadmap.

The e-mail marketing feature offers to create the all-important consolidated view on the customer for both, marketing and sales teams. What is more, it also offers the potential of simplifying the tech stack to an extent by removing the need for e-mail outreach tools.

All in all, a thumbs up to Jon Ferrara and the Nimble team for this new capability. While maintaining a focus on SMBs, Nimble grows up and potentially moves upmarket a bit, too.

The News

I haven’t written about Nimble in a while. Probably a mistake, because there is always something interesting going on in the Nimble world.

Already on October 19 2021, Nimble announced the availability of a workflow functionality that is targeted at enabling teams to replace spreadsheets with a when following through processes.

Nimble workflows support

• Relating workflows to contact records with the objective of getting a complete overview of the relationship, including interaction history, attachments and custom fields
• Managing business workflows across departments to support more than sales and marketing needs
• Pre-built workflow templates that are delivered by Nimble to already support a variety of common workflows for short time-to-value
• Creating own workflows by modifying the delivered templates or creating new ones from scratch
• Visualization in a Kanban- or spreadsheet style with inline editing for making quick changes
• Offering the ability to add contacts to workflows from emails, websites, web forms, social media, business apps or via Zapier/Integromat and Nimble’s API

In the words of Jon Ferrara, Nimble founder and CEO: “Repeatable processes are key to scaling a business, but managing external contact-related workflows across an entire company has historically been very difficult. Most CRM’s are built for salespeople while non-sales teams end up using spreadsheets to manage people processes. Since Nimble is in the business of relationship-building, we realize the importance of effective collaboration. With Workflows, every department in your organization can now manage all people-related processes within your CRM!”

As part of the announcement, Nimble emphasizes on its enhanced positioning as being built for the whole company and “not just sales and marketing teams.” 

The bigger picture

Workflows are something that all companies need for efficient management of non-trivial activities and tasks. They are a basic foundation of repeatable processes and are also important for collaboration between people. Workflows also often stretch across several departments and different applications. Younger and/or smaller companies normally do not have systems in place that allow to manage workflows across departments or only systems, hence the use of spreadsheets or tools like Trello, the planner in MS Teams, Zoho Projects, etc. They also often use communications tools like Slack, MS Teams or Zoho Cliq to further facilitate collaboration. This means that workflow tools need to be able and be built to seamlessly work with communications tools, either via federated logins or, better, by direct integration. To add to complexity, workflow tools need to also support different kinds of communication. For example, how about colleagues that prefer e-mail to an in-app solution?

My PoV and analysis

It is true that many businesses in the market that is addressed by Nimble did not yet implement solutions for workflows that extend departments. Instead, they often have different systems in place. These need to get connected, so the approach of directly opening up workflows via integration tools and the Nimble API is important.

With Workflows, Nimble starts to close one of the bigger functional gaps that prevent users from receiving more value from the system by creating visibility and (later) reducing tedious work by triggering automations. This way, Nimble supports a business’s growth. The workflows as offered by Nimble are following the same principle as the already existing lead pipeline and are generalizing it, which creates instant familiarity. The delivery of pre-built workflows that support many common use cases as part of the solution already increases time-to-value for users. In addition it is easy and straightforward to build additional workflows that meet more specific requirements.

Having a kanban-style overview that supports drag and drop to move activities from one stage to another is the first step away from using spreadsheets to keep an overview. For the system to be of real help to its users it also needs automation. Of course, Nimble is aware of this. Consequently, there is more to come, from the simple to the more complex, including changes that are based on user interactions and then changes that happen triggered by field changes. These additions will create significant additional value for the users. 

Nimble’s enhanced positioning as being built not only for sales and marketing teams is quite noteworthy as it shows Nimble’s increasing maturity. The system started in the sales force automation area, as a social selling tool for small teams, and now starts to target whole (SMB) companies, where people related processes are affected. Commercially, this step also opens up Nimble to additional user groups within customer companies.

With Nimble being one of the few applications that are available where the user is, I am curious to see how Nimble workflows will work with collaboration and communications tools in later releases, i.e. not requiring users to go into the Nimble app. Another interesting point is in how far Nimble Workflows can include users that else do not use Nimble.

Technically, with Workflows Nimble is taking steps outside the SFA market. Positioning Nimble generically as the tool for relationship building is a straightforward, yet interesting step.

It will be equally interesting to see how the supported corporate scope and Nimble’s positioning evolve over time.

I haven’t written much about Nimble recently; actually I haven’t written too much about anything lately. Now it is time to have a look into some interesting news that hit my desktop.

The News

On June 30, 2021, Nimble announced an integration with Microsoft Teams to streamline workspace collaboration.

The integration offers Nimble users to prepare meetings and provides the tools to help getting information on meeting participants from their contact records, the ability to take notes that will be synched to Nimble as well as the ability to send trackable follow-up emails.

The capability will be delivered via an add-in to MS Teams.

For your convenience, the press release is also copied below.

Nimble Integrates with Microsoft Teams to Power Virtual Business Meeting Engagements

Nimble Offers Microsoft Teams Add-in to Help Teams Thrive in The Hybrid Workspace

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- June 30, 2021 -- Nimble, the simple CRM for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace teams, announced today that they have integrated with Microsoft Teams to give teams a shared view of every customer, and to streamline collaboration between teams.

Improve Collaboration and Build Better Customer Relationships

Customer data is the most important asset for every organization. The success of every customer relationship management application lies in the data accuracy. Business owners and professionals rely on Nimble to offer a 360 view into the relationships with their customers.

Integrating with collaboration applications and seamless synchronization of information and the history of conversations is crucial to improving customer relationships and team productivity.

“Our customers rely on Microsoft Teams to work effectively across their organizations and to build and nurture relationships with customers. It’s necessary that we enable them to easily access existing Nimble contact records and create new ones directly from the MS Teams interface.” said Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble. “It’s the basics that win big deals and we are excited to make it easy for our customers to add notes and send timely and trackable follow-ups.”

Nimble allows its users to be productive while preparing for events by utilizing the Nimble add-in for Microsoft Teams meeting experience. This integration provides Nimble users with the tools that they need to successfully prepare for meetings, take notes, and ensure proper follow-ups.

Streamline Workflow and Close More Deals with Nimble and Microsoft Teams

Prepare for Meetings - Access information on meeting participants from existing contact records including their bios, history of communication, and business insights needed to engage effectively with prospects and customers.

Take & Sync Notes - Take notes during Microsoft Teams meetings and sync them directly to Nimble to ensure completeness and accuracy of contact record history.

Follow-up & Follow Through - Send trackable and templated emails before, during and after meetings and stay on target with prospects and customers.

“It’s your job as a business professional to find out everything you possibly can about the people you are meeting with. Coming into the meeting prepared shows your prospects and customers that you value them and their time. This part is crucial, but what’s even more important is a timely and proper follow-up. Our Microsoft Teams add-in allows you to achieve all that before, during, and after your meetings directly from Teams,” says Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble.

 The screenshot below gives a good idea of Nimble's new capability.

Image source: Nimble

The bigger picture

Virtual meetings have become extremely important for salespeople since the Covid 19 pandemic hit. Initially, the main winner was Zoom with stellar growth numbers. This was soon countered by Microsoft beefing up its Teams software to something that became actually useful.

And teams is widely available, as it comes with Microsoft’s office suite and as said, it has become an essential tool for businesses.

Also, having conversational capabilities as part of the CRM system becomes more and more important. Cases in point are Salesforce having acquired Slack last year or Oracle having entered a strategic partnership with Zoom.

At the same time, accurate data becomes increasingly important. This is, where the automated takeover of data into the CRM system that feeds the ability to provide information that is aggregated from multiple sources, becomes important.

My analysis and point of view

Microsoft’s Dynamics software of course has an integration with Teams. Nimble understands itself as an entry point for small and growing businesses into the MS business software. With its prospector toolset it integrates into MS Outlook for quite some time already.

This move to integrate into MS Teams is a pretty important one as it caters for the increasing importance of virtual meetings and follows Jon Ferrara’s mantra of the CRM software being available where salespeople are working; and they are by far not only working in their CRM software but use e-mail, office documents, web sites and, of course, MS Teams. It covers some main use cases by providing information on meeting participants and enabling note taking and follow-up mails right out of MS Teams. This provides users with an efficient way to take and meeting minutes immediately, thus increasing accuracy and reducing the number of mistakes.

With this ability Nimble addresses two of the levers that are important for the acceptance of CRM systems: The CRM system must be available where the users are actually working, which is not always within the frame of the CRM system. Consequently, the CRM system needs to embed itself into other applications. With MS Teams, Nimble now addressed another crucially important external application.

I would expect the ability to create and manipulate further business objects in the next months, too. An upcoming integration with PowerApps & Flow will likely enable this.

There is one scary fact in the CRM world. Out of roughly 25 million businesses, only 1 percent has a CRM system. Imagine this! It is a huge waste on one side and a tremendous opportunity on the other side. If vendors find the way into the future of CRM. Nimble seems to have found a way.

The CRMKonvos team discussed these and other challenges of CRM systems with Jon Ferrara, founder and CEO of Nimble. We are following his path for quite some time now, how he built Nimble from very small beginnings and always with the thought of enriching an ecosystem with his solution that is formed around simplicity and making life easier not only for the salesreps but for other employees, too.

Learn how a philosophy of giving and sharing enables own growth by helping others to grow - from someone who achieved this repeatedly.

And yes, Jon also knows why social selling and social CRM are not things anymore - if they have ever been.

Jon is a true role model. Learn from him how to scale while being yourself, thinking outside-in.

The News

• Seamless conversations across social channels —Expanding on existing support of Facebook pages and Twitter, small businesses can now have real-time conversations with their customers over Facebook Messenger. For example, when a customer sends a company a question via Messenger, the message is routed to an employee who can have a live conversation over Messenger, directly from within Salesforce Essentials. With Instagram and YouTube, the employee gets notified when the customer makes a comment on a post or one of its videos, and can respond from Salesforce.
• Real-time chat conversations from website or help center—Small businesses can add a Salesforce chat widget to their website, and have the chat routed to an employee who can maintain multiple chat conversations from Salesforce. This provides the employee with a complete view of the customer’s profile so they can step right into the conversation and view features like previous interactions, case history, open sales opportunities or other information within Salesforce.
• Native phone support built into the #1 CRM — Make and receive customer calls with Lightning Dialerfor Essentials, an out-of-the-box call center solution built right into the product. When an employee makes or receives the call, the customer’s profile and account information is immediately available with a pop-up screen in Salesforce, giving them the full context and customer history to provide fast and personalized service. Calls are automatically logged within the contact and account activity history of Salesforce, reducing manual data entry and making sure that information doesn’t get lost.
• Easy channel setup with walkthroughs and live help — Salesforce Essentials offers small business customers a library of simple walkthroughs within the product to easily get set up with all of these new features in minutes—including guided overviews on key channels like Facebook Messenger, chat and phone. A team of Essentials Coaches are included in the U.S. and Canada during trials and the first 90 days of purchase to provide customers with any support needed via 1:1 live chat to get set up in no time.

• G Photography— Owner and photographer Gwendolyn “G” Houston-Jack is a portrait artist specializing in creating lifestyle wall art of families and individuals. As G Photography began growing, the company outgrew all of the systems it was using and spent significant time on deals that were dead to begin with. Houston-Jack knew she needed to find a solution that grew and scaled with her company. “When I switched over to Salesforce Essentials, I literally screamed with happiness in my home office! It’s definitely life changing. I never want to feel overwhelmed with my customer interactions. Rather, I want to feel aware and present,” says Houston-Jack. G Photography uses Salesforce Essentials to accelerate sales with a multi-touch work stream. With the standard sales dashboards in Salesforce Essentials, G Photography is able to keep all of her high priority deals, accounts and goals front-of-mind and never let these interactions fall through the cracks.
• org— Founded by CEO Chad Grills, his wife and COO Stephanie Postles, and Chief Content Officer Ian Faison, Mission.org brings stories and sponsors together to create high-quality podcasts and shows around evergreen business, tech, health and self-improvement topics. With just 10 employees, Mission.org turned on Salesforce Essentials to track their roster of guests, manage their sales pipeline and focus on the customer experience—whether in the office or working remotely from their phones. “Salesforce Essentials helps us prioritize customer service and growth. As a small business, it’s important to build trust with your customers while also making revenue predictable,” says Grills. Mission.org launched their first podcast in March of 2018, and now they operate a network of nine podcasts and a daily newsletter that reaches millions of business, tech and self-improvement fans.
• PepTalkHer— Founder and CEO Meggie Palmer wanted to find a way to help women supercharge their success and close the gender pay gap. She created the PepTalkHer App, a coach in your pocket that helps women track everyday career wins and provides data to back up pay raise and promotion conversations. As a small business owner who is always looking for ways to save time, Palmer needed a technology and automation system to do the work for her and keep track of leads and potential revenue, so she  turned to Salesforce Essentials. “Salesforce allows us to have a central hub of all of our prospective and current clients so that we can effectively market to them, talk to them and sell to them now and also into the future,” said Palmer. The PepTalkHer team uses Salesforce every day to help grow their community and empower women to reach their full potential.

• Instagram and YouTube are generally available today. Both are included in Salesforce Essentials at $25 per user, per month.
• Facebook Messenger and chat are generally available today. Every Salesforce Essentials organization includes 1 license. Additional licenses can be purchased at $15 per user, per month.
• Lightning Dialer for Essentials is generally available today in the U.S. and Canada at $2 per 100 minutes.

• Read the blog post about New Conversation Channels here
• Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Salesforce Essentials: Salesforce Essentials trial
• Learn more with Trailhead: Discover Salesforce Essentials

The bigger Picture

MyPoV and Analysis

• It needs to be easy to set up
• It needs to be simple to operate
• It needs to integrate well with the main communications channels
• It needs to work for the users and not the other way round
• Finally, it needs to be able to grow with the business

A little history of CRM

So, what’s the problem?

1. Originally, CRM systems were built more with a control focus. While their inherent emphasis on process also helped structuring work the systems obviously gave management a better insight into the individual salesrep’s performance and activities.
2. Entering data into a system makes ‚their personal information’ organizational information, which is something that can create the fear of losing an advantage instead of raising the awareness that a team is usually stronger than an individuum.
3. CRM systems regularly force their users to work inside the system as opposed to being available where the users work.

The way out of this dilemma

The News

The Bigger Picture

• Technical Platform, covering IaaS and PaaS
• Ecosystem
• Insight
• Productivity

My Analysis and PoV

So, what comes next, Jon?

MyPoV and Analysis

The News

• Deals
• Events
• Tasks
• Highlighted Contacts
• Signals
• Stage Funnel

The Bigger Picture

• Platform as a Service (PaaS). The platform itself must support current and future technologies that enable the fast and easy creation of value through applications that are developed within its ecosystem
• A broad ecosystem. This creates the reach and relevance that is necessary to become and remain a relevant player in the enterprise software market.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). While IaaS in itself is a commodity, it can become an asset when it is combined with a strong application platform (PaaS) and ecosystem. The right combination affords the tremendous opportunity to provide (anonymized) data for machine learning models that can then provide value to all customers

My PoV and Analysis

The News

The Bigger Picture

My PoV and Analysis