Nimble sent an email to customers, letting them know that LinkedIn has revoked Nimble’s API access.
API’s (application programming interface) are the protocols that let one software easily communicate with another software. Nimble’s not alone in this, nor is LinkedIn. There’s a number of companies (sorry I don’t have a hand list) that decide to LIMIT or not share at all, their data with others.
Not sharing data with others software, means an upstart company (or an established one) can’t easily share data with another software. For example, in Nimble’s case it could integrate a contact’s LinkedIn profile into Nimble directly – a great feature.
So, what does this mean?
It’s always best to maintain your own database of a customer’s email address, cell phone and other things. Just relying on “social connectivity” is not enough.
Even if LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks restrict how you can use them, you can always email, fax, call or send them a letter via US Postal Service directly to your customers or prospects.
Don’t let a company get in the middle of you or your customers.
If you’re a Nimble customer, just make sure you keep your customer information up to date and use Nimble to store their email and other direct contact information! To be clear, this is NOT a ding or negative at Nimble – this a ding at LinkedIn and even more so a realty check of companies, like LinkedIn who have precious data wanting to monetize it as much as possibly.
Make sense?
The post LinkedIn Says No To Nimble CRM: Yet Another Reason Why Capturing Customer Contact Information Is Important appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.