With so many of the top iPhone (News - Alert) apps firmly in the fun and games category, I enjoy finding applications that simply make business users more productive.

 

My favorite this month is QuickView from Constant Contact. Even if you don’t recognize the Constant Contact brand name, you have probably heard from them since they deliver billions of permission-based e-mails every month for more than 320,000 small business, organization and nonprofit clients.

 

QuickView for the iPhone and iTouch is a recently released free app that gives those clients a new way to manage their mailing and contact lists and e-mail marketing campaigns without having to log on to a PC.

 

I asked Len Bruskiewitz, senior director of partner programs at Constant Contact (pictured right), how the company came up with the idea for QuickView and how he expected clients to use it. According to Bruskiewitz, the typical Constant Contact client – a small business owner or organization director – is hardly ever sitting at a desk in their office.

 

They are usually on the go and many of them are relying on mobile communications to do business and stay in touch with their customers. A mobile tool to manage their e-mail marketing campaigns and e-mail contact lists seemed like a natural extension of the Constant Contact campaign management service.

 
“So far, our customers seem to love it,” he said. “Managers are using QuickView to see results of their email campaigns in real time. If they are running a promotion or a getting close to a sign-up deadline for an event, they can see new responses from minute to minute. On a personal productivity level, the app makes it easy to add new contacts to one or more mailing lists as soon as a person expresses an interest in getting e-mails. Instead of waiting to get back to the office and risk being distracted or misplacing the prospect’s information, it can go right into the mobile app to update central contact lists. That’s a critical advantage for a small business.”

 

The app was developed using the public Constant Contact API, making it easier for current clients to use, and even to replicate.

 

“There’s nothing secret in the design of QuickView; anyone could build it using our published API. In fact, we invite clients who are interested in building their own versions to go ahead,” Bruskiewitz said. “It would be great to see some of our customers build in even more features and make the app more powerful over time.”

 

QuickView is designed for use by existing Constant Contact customers. New users can register for a free, 60-day trial of the service to give QuickView a spin. Given that audience limitation, this all-business iPhone app is holding its own in the App Store crowd. Just a week after publicizing QuickView’s availability, Constant Contact has seen thousands of downloads. That may not put it on any top ten iPhone and iPod Touch app lists, but it’s making life easier for a lot of small organizations.