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What's New in Podium: February 2022

Welcome back to What’s New in Podium where we share all the latest and greatest enhancements to Podium.
February at Podium HQ is all about showing your customers some love. We’re releasing our highly anticipated Contacts page, meaning it’s never been easier to keep a pulse on every customer to give them an amazing experience. We’re also sharing early access to our Voice beta and updates to managing conversations in Podium, because your phone and Podium Inbox are the heartbeat of your business’s customer communication plan. 
Finally, we love helping you learn from other local businesses. In our Shop Talk video series, we give tips and tricks to level up your text marketing. Read on to see our latest video, “8 text marketing ideas for beginners”. 
<h4>Introducing: the Contacts page</h4>
Contacts page. Contact Profiles have been an exciting addition to your Podium experience. And we’re just getting started. Now, searchable, actionable customer knowledge is a foundational part of your Podium experience. 
The Contacts page, accessed from the navigation bar, provides a centralized place in Podium to manage, search, upload, and interact with leads and customers. Users can interact with their contacts immediately, with the full context of their past interactions readily available. 
You can use the Contacts page to:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Look up contacts by name, phone number, or email address</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Quickly view a contact’s profile to gain context around their previous interactions with your business</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Send a message or payment request to any contact in your system without leaving the page</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Add and edit tags to one or multiple contacts to track important details</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Create a new contact or upload a list of contacts via CSV file.</li>
</ul>
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-20730" src="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Feb-1.gif" alt="" width="512" height="361" />
For more information on the Contacts page, visit our <a href="https://help.podium.com/hc/en-us/articles/4416846575507">help center. </a>
<h4>Phone ringing off the hook? Get early access to Podium Voice!</h4>
The Podium product team has been hard at work on an exciting new product that will help increase your team’s efficiency, modernize your phone call strategy, and increase flexibility in how you serve your leads and customers. To ensure our Voice offering meets the needs of local businesses everywhere, we’re giving a limited number of customers early access – including free desk phones – in exchange for their feedback over the coming months. 
If your business is currently using an outdated phone system that doesn’t meet your needs, we highly encourage you to apply. If you’re interested, please complete this <a href="https://podium.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3CoOIMBQgy1yybQ">5-minute application form</a>. We’re excited to have you join our select group of early access users!
<h4>Notice anything new to the Conversation view?</h4>
Updated designs in Inbox. We’ve made some changes to the inbox design, with refined message bubbles, updated messaging timestamps, and new avatars in the conversation view. Check out the updates below! 
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-20731" src="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-857x1024.jpeg" alt="" width="640" height="765" srcset="https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-857x1024.jpeg 857w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-251x300.jpeg 251w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-768x918.jpeg 768w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-418x500.jpeg 418w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-335x400.jpeg 335w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-134x160.jpeg 134w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-293x350.jpeg 293w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-84x100.jpeg 84w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2-287x343.jpeg 287w, https://cms.podium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/February-2.jpeg 1285w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
<h4>Let’s talk shop about text marketing</h4>
8 Text Marketing Ideas for Beginners. There’s more to text marketing than just offering discounts or coupon codes. Text marketing offers an opportunity to strengthen your brand, educate, and personally connect with your customers. We walk through 8 ideas to help get you started in this week&#8217;s Shop Talk episode.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weH_YrGuZlA"><span style="font-weight: 400;" data-rich-links="{&quot;fple-t&quot;:&quot;8 text marketing ideas for beginners.&quot;,&quot;fple-u&quot;:&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weH_YrGuZlA&quot;,&quot;fple-mt&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;first-party-link&quot;}">8 text marketing ideas for beginners.</a>
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