Our first “baby step” in that direction is our recent integration with Salesforce.com and Highrise (37signals’ CRM product). If you’re a MailChimp user, you can now give us your Salesforce or Highrise information, and we’ll import your customers into a list, so you can send an email campaign to them (and track opens, clicks, etc).

We call this a “baby step” because for now, it’s a one-way conversation. In future releases, we’ll introduce functionality to sync data “both ways.” Stay tuned.

Batchbook is an exception to all this. Their CRM is MailChimp-ready right out of the box, so the integration is easy and seamless (check out their demo video here). You can quickly build segments within Batchbook by searching your customer “tags” and “super tags.” Then, you pass the list over to MailChimp with the click of a button. MailChimp gives them two opposable thumbs up!

Their dashboard is nicely laid out, so I can see my “things to do” and quickly enter new contacts and log communications (you know, if I were important enough to have to do such things). It’s all really simple and fast. WebWorkerDaily has a nice review of Batchbook, and I totally agree re: the “Super Tags” feature. Awesome.

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use CRM for your small business, you should give Batchbook a try.

Especially because Batchbook just announced they’ve integrated their service with MailChimp.

I setup my own Batchbook account and linked it over to my MailChimp list in about 1 minute. It was reee-DICULOUS-ly easy (and a little fun).