With further expansion, software company Ann Arbor targets marketing industry giants

Nutshell, an Ann Arbor-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform, is targeting large companies like MailChimp and Constant Contact with expansion into an area Nutshell has dubbed “growth software.”

“Growth software is what we call the fusion of sales software and marketing software,” says Andy Fowler, CEO and co-founder of Nutshell. “Tools like MailChimp would probably call themselves email marketing software. We used to call ourselves sales software three years ago, but what we’ve realized is that the sales and marketing teams are working more and more closely together.

Nutshell started making headlines in 2009 as a relatively small new startup that has managed to compete with CRM giants like Hubspot and Salesforce by focusing its software and user design on small businesses and other startups underserved by customers. big names.

“One of the ideas that we were founded on is that small and medium businesses deserve the same access to technology as large businesses,” Fowler said. “But it can’t be the same software. If you’re trying to give someone all of Salesforce’s capabilities, you’ll need to hire a couple of people to manage Salesforce just for that small business. “

Nutshell, on the other hand, is designed to be more accessible and user-friendly for one person or a small team where members may wear different hats or may not have the same sales experience as a career sales professional. . Fowler says Nutshell is now applying that same concept to marketing, as many of its users already occupy both spheres. He says he and his staff “got really excited” when they realized that over 70% of their customers were integrating products like MailChimp or Constant Contact with Nutshell products.

“We can’t go further with integration,” says Fowler. “The best thing we can do is do it ourselves and give people what MailChimp and Constant Contact have to offer – the ability to send email marketing – but right inside Nutshell. C ‘was really something where our customers kind of paved the way for us and showed us that this is where they saw our product and our company. “

While Nutshell still offers integration with MailChimp, its latest features allow users to create and control their own email marketing campaigns directly through Nutshell. Emphasis, as with Nutshell’s sales features, is on a simple, user-friendly design created to help guide those who may be new to marketing and advertising.

Fowler says Nutshell owes its success in the face of established CRM and email marketing giants to the thousands of small businesses it serves.

“Most of our customers have fewer than 50 employees,” says Fowler. “Small businesses are a big part of this country and its economy, and helping them is really important to us, so we’re excited to be able to offer them more. “

Sabine Bickford Brown is a freelance writer and writer based in Ann Arbor. She can be reached at sabinebickfordbrown@gmail.com.