Starting today, Mailroom is available with PayPal support.

Nope, I am not talking about us accepting credit cards via PayPal. What I am talking about is the ability for Mailroom to provide you with a summary of your user’s PayPal transactions with you, while you are answering their support email questions.

This is very useful for anyone who currently does use, or is thinking of using, PayPal to process their credit cards on their site. Since this is more geared towards business use, we have designated it to be available on our $19 plans and up. So, if you have a Basic, Plus, Premium, or Enterprise plan, you know have PayPal support built right in.

Now, to get it to work, you will need to login to your PayPal account and change some settings, but it shouldn’t take you more than 2 minutes to do it. You can see what needs to be done here – http://sproutit.com/support/paypal This is a set of step by step instructions on how to set it up.

So, what is in this summary? You are going to be able to see how many times someone has purchased from you in the last year, and what the total of all of their purchases amount to. This should help you know if your support email needs to just answer a quick first time purchase question, or might include some ‘upsell’ ideas as well.

So, go ahead and give it a try. The way we see it, the more you know your customers, the better.

SUNNYVALE, CA, February 26, 2008 - Sproutit, a Silicon Valley web based start up providing web based support software, has added PayPal support with Mailroom, its simple web-based help desk software for website email. Mailroom is the first web-based help desk to integrate PayPal support, enabling users to quickly reference purchases made using PayPal while responding to customer emails.

“For a company to offer good customer support, you need to have as much information about your customer as possible” Charles Jolley said, CEO of Sproutit. “Integrating with PayPal just makes sense for a small business. If you can have your customer’s purchase history available when you are answering their email questions, then you are one step ahead of the game.”

Using PayPal’s open application programming interface (API), Sproutit will tie incoming sales and support email addresses of customers to their transactions with that vendor. The PayPal support feature will be made available to current and new Mailroom accounts that subscribe to the $19 per month plan, and above.

PayPal, the global leader in online payment solutions with more than 164 million accounts worldwide, is currently used on over 100,000 websites, in addition to the largest online auction site, eBay, to process payments.

Mailroom by Sproutit is a web-based email help desk application designed specifically to help companies manage website email. Integrating with both PayPal and Basecamp, Mailroom provides companies the most complete and affordable help desk solution for website email.

Founded in 2005, Sunnyvale based Sproutit creates web-based help desk software for website email. With thousands of clients, Sproutit caters to web app companies, e-commerce websites, non-profits and political campaigns.

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Chris Bauman
Sproutit
chris@sproutit.com

SUNNYVALE, CA, February 25, 2008 - Sproutit today announced that Mailroom, has been selected by the editors of Webware, a CNET site, as a finalist in this year's "Webware 100" Awards for Communcations. The Webware 100 Awards recognize the best Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation. Finalists are selected by the editors of Webware, but the ultimate winners will be picked by the public. Winners will be announced on Monday, April 21, 2008.

Mailroom by Sproutit is a web-based email help desk application designed specifically to help companies manage website email. Integrating with both PayPal and Basecamp, Mailroom provides companies the most complete and affordable help desk solution for website email.

"We are very honored to have been nominated by the Webware readers and to be named a finalist" said Charles Jolley, CEO of Sproutit. "While we are also very humbled to be among such great companies within the Communications category, we think we've got something worth voting for."

The ten categories include Audio, Browsing, Commerce and Events, Communications, Productivity, Publishing and photography, Search and Reference, Social, Utility and Security, and Video.

Webware (www.webware.com) provides the latest information on Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications. Its timely and relevant blog entries about hundreds of web-based services, such as wikis, blogs, and social networking sites, help users determine the best products for them to use in their daily lives. Webware is led by veteran tech journalist and CNET Editor-at-Large Rafe Needleman, with additional entries from the CNET editors. Webware editors received and reviewed thousands of entries. Voting is open to the public beginning Monday, February 25, 2008 at noon PACIFIC and closes on Monday, March 31, 2008 and can be accessed at http://www.webware.com/100

Winners will be invited to celebrate at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco (http://www.web2expo.com/) held April 22-25 at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco. Web 2.0 Expo is the official partner of the 2008 Webware 100 Awards.

More than 480,000 votes were cast in the 2007 Webware 100 Awards. Last year's winners can be seen here: Http://www.webware.com/html/ww/2007.html

Founded in 2005, Sunnyvale based Sproutit creates web-based help desk software for website email. With thousands of clients, Sproutit caters to web app companies, e-commerce websites, non-profits and political campaigns.

# # #
Chris Bauman
Sproutit
chris@sproutit.com

Vote to make Mailroom one of the top 100 web apps of 2008! How? Click here to vote

Wednesday morning I awoke to an email from the editor of Webware.com congratulating us to being selected as a finalist for this year’s 2008 Webware 100.

Over 4,600 Web 2.0 services were nominated by Webware readers over the last couple of months and Sproutit Mailroom was selected as one of 300 finalists.

While we are going against some big names in the ‘Communications’ category, I think that you’ll agree that Mailroom is one of a kind one that list. Voting starts today at noon, and will continue until March 31.

So go ahead! Vote for Mailroom and tell everyone you know. In fact, send them this link – http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2008/vote_comm.html?compid=103374 so that they can help put Mailroom into the top 100 web apps of 2008!

From time to time I get a chance to actually meet in person, some of our clients. When that happens I am very eager to hear what they have to say about Sproutit, Mailroom and how they tackle the inevitable job of support. So, I sat down for a bit of fish ‘n chips with Ryan MacCarthy, co-founder of Uloop, and picked his brain.

What is Uloop?

Uloop is an online classifieds platform for colleges.

Classifieds? But, what makes you different than every city’s newspaper online classifieds?

We have created a college specific classified site that thousands of students are using to sell textbooks, find roommates, events, housing, full-time and part-time jobs, internships and even rides home. Take textbooks, for example. Not too many people using the local Herald, or Times will be needing the same biology text book.

So, what are the audiences and customers that you deal with

99% of our support comes from students. It is a mixture of feedback, suggestions, comments, and problems. We also work with employers to provide college specific job postings and housing management to provide housing listings for students.

Do the responses that you provide take on a certain tone and feel?

Absolutely. We make it a point to respond to every single email that we get. We try to be very straight up with students and respond with a casual, and youthful tone. Many of the ideas we build in, come straight from the student feedback. But, if we don’t think an idea is beneficial to more than one person, we’ll let them know what we think.

What do you think is the best feature of Mailroom? Why?

By far it is the multiple user support. This way, we don’t have to have a specific support person, but we can share the load. And, this also closes the gap between the students making requests and the team that creates new features. Less is lost in the middle and keeps our whole team more connected with our users.

Got a favorite company for support?

I like Apple. It fits they way I live.

I tend to work in a mixed software environment of old reliables, and the latest and greatest. The same applies to my web browsers. But, usually I find myself sticking to the tried and tested versions of browsers because so much of my work is done online. I can’t afford to have hiccups.

But, today we received a bug report from a client regarding Firefox 3 beta 2 (latest and greatest…not for the faint of heart). Well, to sum it up, there were some changes made to Firefox 3 that threw off Mailroom. But, without fail, Charles was able to spot the change in no time and applied a fix, and voila! Mailroom is compatible even with the cutting edge.

So for all of you that were thinking about making the switch to Firefox 3 and worried about all of your web apps working… rest assured that Mailroom will keep on truckin’.

While most of our audience knows how Mailroom can help you answer sales and support email from customers, few know of its political life. About 1 year ago, we had a client that represented a new segment of users. It was the Obama 2008 Campaign (Sproutit was an initial vendor). As they continued to grow in popularity, so did the sheer number of emails that were receiving from curious , individuals, voters, and supporters. Gray Brooks, the head of their email correspondence said:

This is my third major campaign and I have to say that I am very excited using Sproutit. It’s simply a big step forward from 4 years ago.

Here at Sproutit, we enjoy celebrating in the success that all of our clients, current and former, experience. As you already know, the Obama 2008 campaign faired rather well in the Iowa caucus last week. We hope in some small way, Sproutit Mailroom was able to lend a helping hand. And, we wish them well for today in New Hampshire. Good Luck!

If you know anyone running for public office, local, state or national, or already in office, let them know about Mailroom’s ability to help them connect better with their potential voters (even if they are Republicans, Democrats, or Independents).

We will be upgrading our servers and are needing time to switch them over. So, Mailroom will be down for 6 hours, beginning Sunday October 28, at 7:30 am PST. We apologize for this outage, but we know that you will be happy with the increase in performance once the service has been completed.

If you keep your Mailroom account open for long periods of time throughout the day, and want to see when a new customer writes you, this new feature is for you.

Most web based email programs require a page to be reloaded before any new information is displayed. Many of us use Mailroom throughout the day and, subsequently, leave that browser window open. The draw back was having to refresh the page anytime you wanted to see new emails that had been received from your customers – until today.

Now, your Needs Attention page will automatically refresh every 5 minutes.

Why every 5 minutes?

Here are a few ways to look at that reasoning.

• Let’s just assume that you have 10 emails that you need to answer when you first login to Mailroom. Let’s say it will take you 30 seconds for each email, using the Reply menu, tagging it, and customizing each response with a name (yes, it can be done). That will take you 5 minutes.
• Get up, got to the coffee maker, pour a cup, add sugar and cream, stir…. yeah, by the time you get back to your seat, auto refresh will have run.
• The numbers 1 – 12 on your watch divide the time in 5 minute increments.
• One for each finger on your right hand (or left for that matter).

Regardless of how you look at it, auto refresh was designed to keep you up to speed and responding to your customer questions at a pace that is enjoyable and sustainable.

So, sit back. Get a cup of coffee. And, let auto refresh work for you.

After having the pleasure to work with so many neat companies over the past 2 years, I thought it would be fun to tell you about some of them. If you would like to hear about some of these unique and interesting organizations you can find them here each weekend. (And if you are a customer and would like us to write about you, drop me a note and we’ll interview you.)

I just finished speaking with André Cymbalista at CAN – Cyclist Advocacy Network. It is a New Zealand-based not-for-profit that works to influence local and national policy in support of cyclists. The end goal is to encourage health and happiness through cycling as well as help the planet with a few less cars on the street.

Long ago CAN took a look at countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, which benefit from large cyclist communities, and decided they would like to see the same in their own country. Over the last decade they have been very successful in establishing good relationships with local and national governments. Because of their direct efforts there has been a noticeable drop in cycling incidents and an increasing view of cycling as a means of transportation; not to mention all the great people who have been connected through their various groups within the network.

André, who is in charge of their digital communication initiative, explained their latest efforts involving the creation of an entirely new web platform where each of the user groups will receive a “fully customizable, ready to use, cycling user group website template, and training workshops to upskill group members in web publishing.” The idea is to continue to encourage more cycling by using these communication tools. What’s really great is that their government is completely on board as CAN was given an $80,000 grant to complete the project.

With 3 to 6 people (volunteer and paid) who try to answer all the incoming email from their website, CAN is using Mailroom centralize their email and standardize some of their responses. That way, their volunteers can log in at anytime from anywhere to help respond to the needs of their local user groups.

All of us here at Sproutit love to ride our bicycles around Silicon Valley both for pleasure and as an alternate means of transportation. We really appreciate things like marked bike lanes and courteous drivers. That’s why we jumped at the chance to work with CAN in their efforts to make a more cyclist-friendly world. Besides, you never know when you might want to visit the beautiful islands of New Zealand.

BONUS We haven’t officially announced it yet but if you work with other great not-for-profit organizations like CAN we would love to help. Send us an email in exchange for a free basic account.

Well, ready or not, here it comes. Introducing Mailroom 2.0, the fastest, easiest way to handle your sales and support email. Mailroom 2.0 is an all new application in many ways. We rewrote our entire interface as an advanced JavaScript application, which means it feels almost like you have a desktop application running in your web browser.

We’ve also made an incredible number of other number improvements. I’m going to post more about this later today, but for now I just want to say that this is the best version of Mailroom we’ve ever produced and I’m incredibly excited to finally get to share it with you. I think you are really going to love the changes we’ve made to this product.

Now, this new version of Mailroom has required some massive changes to the database that holds your email. We want to ensure the safety of your data, so we are bringing things back online in stages. Because of that, there are a couple of things I want you to know about the next few days:

First, we are bringing accounts back online one at a time as we get each of them upgraded. We are bringing paid accounts back online first and free accounts thereafter based on when you last logged in (so if you haven’t used your account in a while, it might be the afternoon before you have access again.) If you go to your account and it says you are still being upgraded, come back again in a few hours and try again. It will probably be available. We are doing this as fast as we can, I promise. We have over a million messages to go through through. It’s a big job.

Also, when you do get access to your account, we are upgrading some stats used for More About and the People page separately. So the conversation counts on these pages might be wrong for part of today. They should be back to normal by the end of the day, however. We could have waited until this was ready to activate your account, but we thought you would prefer to have your email.

Finally, we are expecting to receive a higher than normal level of traffic over the next few days. While we are going to do our best to keep your service as fast as possible, we really appreciate your patience as you have to share your server with some extra visitors. We will be adding resources and making improvements actively over the next few days to keep up with the demand as it hits us.

Mailroom 2.0 has been a long time in the making. In many ways, it is really the first realization of the vision we had for a polished, well designed business tool for small businesses when we started Sproutit two years ago. We think you’re going to love it and we would love to hear from you when you try it. Send us your raves and feedback at contact@sproutit.com and we’ll get right back to you. (Using Mailroom of course.)

Cheers, -Charles

I promised erwin a more in-depth look at what’s coming with MR2 within a week or two. That was a few days ago, so now here it is: The first public demonstration of Mailroom 2, coming in January from Sproutit:

It’s not very flashy. I did something quick so I could actually get it out to you and get back to the project. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it though (especially if you are excited about the updates. ;-)

Cheers!

Speed has always been one of the most important areas for Mailroom. Our goal is to help you get through your email as fast as possible so you can get onto other things. We’ve been making steady improvements in this area since our launch and this next release will be no exception.

This blog has been a ghost-town lately, and I apologize for that. The reason is that we have been pretty heads down for the last several months working on some major upgrades to Mailroom and (gasp) another app. We’re not alone actually. Some of our friends from Omnidrive and Riya took some time from their blogs this summer to get some work done.

But that is about to change. Over the next few weeks I’ll post a bit more about the features coming with our new release. Mailroom is getting a major overhaul, so big we’ve sometimes internally been calling this “Mailroom 2.0”.

More soon…

When we explain to people what we are building at Sproutit (especially when we talk about our next product), they often nod their heads and say “right, its like CRM”.

Sproutit is not CRM. CRM is about helping you keep all the information you have about prospects and customers organized. It’s about tracking sales pipelines, or verifying sales track records.

CRM is about management, Sproutit is about caring for your customers. It’s about helping you make sure that every experience your customers have with you is personal, timely, and helpful. Sproutit is about making you look good to your customer.

That’s the reason Mailroom is designed the way it is. For example, Mailroom does not issue “ticket numbers” or anything like that for emails your receive from customers. Instead, Mailroom tracks conversations just like tickets in other systems, but every email you send through Mailroom will appear personal and individual to your customers.

Ticket numbers are the waiting lines of the internet; they make the customer feel like you don’t care enough to give them individual attention. Mailroom emails, on the other hand, are like private consultations. They send the message to your customers that you really care about them.

The same thing goes for our More About feature. Sure, other systems make it possible for you to dig up all the emails you or anyone else have exchanged with a person, but only Mailroom puts a summary of that info right next to the email when you view it along with a picture of the person if we have it.

Context and personality means better service. It puts you in the right frame of mind to treat your customer like a person even if you never meet them face to face.

Sproutit is not CRM.