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Would anybody have a recommendation for a piece of CRM software which could handle both email and MSM messages in an automated manner? This would be for a medium-sized restaurant, which would like to be able to blast out notices about leftover pizza at third price as MSM messages and, also, send out blurbs as email. Customer lists would be kept as a spreadsheet or small database and, ideally, an incoming email with the word unsubscribe in the subject line should automatically remove that sender from the database.

I have been using Bento as my CRM tool for years. Although made by Filemaker and considered to not be very robust, it did have one key feature lacking in its big brother program... it synced with Address Book. That meant I didn't have to maintain separate databases of people and it was very convenient. To my understanding, the newest version of Filemaker released this week still does not have this functionality. As of the latest iOS refresh, Bento will no longer sync across devices (so I lost the mobile notes I had made since last sync). Filemaker ceased support...

NOT CONTENT with hypergrowth in the business world, ubiquitous on-demand software pioneer Salesforce.com is moving into politics after providing the underlying CRM program for US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s ComMitt fundraising efforts. Political campaigns have traditionally been concocted using a ham-handed combination of chewing gum and string but the face of the Salesforce platform probably fits for anybody seeking a highly distributed and shareable programme that is accessible over the web. Having done the deed for Romney, Salesforce wants to productise its work in a programme called CampaignForce that will be distributed on the AppExchange trading site for Salesforce-compatible...

A PROFIT WITH HONOR Walk into any Gap clothing store this holiday season and expect to see red T-shirts, red hats and red bracelets. Of course decorating with red is nothing unusual this time of year, but the merchandise is meant to remind customers of something not often associated with the holidays: the global AIDS epidemic. Gap is one of a number of companies this year who are tapping into consumers' growing desire to do good deeds with their purchasing dollars. Other retailers selling products to benefit humanitarian causes include Bath & Body Works, a division of Limited Brands Inc.,...

Salesforce.com Inc., which has posted strong growth in offering customer relationship management software over the Internet, said Monday that investors of rival Siebel Systems Inc. were put "out of their misery" with Oracle's planned acquisition of the software maker. Salesforce.com, which is holding its Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco this week, has reported strong revenue growth as the CRM market shifts from in-house deployment to offering the sofware as a web service. For the second fiscal quarter ended July 31, Salesforce.com reported a fourfold increase in profits and a 75 percent jump in revenue. The number of subscribers topped...