Best Customer Engagement Software for 2021
Customer engagement software is an important tool for businesses to assist new and existing customers.
By utilising the power of customer engagement software, users discover your value through personalised engagement, across every step of the customer journey.
In this article, I will be sharing a variety of the best customer engagement software solutions available for SaaS in 2021.
My comparison is based on four crucial metrics: analytics and tracking, segmentation, customer engagement automations, third party integrations.
Contents
- What is a Customer Engagement Software?
- Benefits of using software for Customer Engagement
- Essential features of a Customer Engagement software
- Best Customer Engagement Software for 2021
Userpilot
Mixpanel
Pendo
Appcues
Intercom
Hubspot
ActiveCampaign
Drip
Drift
TL;DR
- Customer engagement software lets you track and analyze customer behaviour
- It allows you to contextualise your data to optimize the experience your customer has to drive engagement and sales
- Good customer engagement software lets you track user identification and engagement data alongside custom events specific to your product
- User segmentation capabilities let you break down your audience based on how and why they use your service, to tailor the marketing they receive
- Customer engagement automation allows you to offer a consistent brand and product experience
- Third party integrations make it easier to optimize your tech, to create seamless experience
- When deciding the right customer engagement software for you, consider all of the metrics before making a decision
- Take up trial and demo opportunities to connect with each customer engagement software to see what is right for you in practise to achieve your current and future goals
What is a Customer Engagement Software?
Customer engagement software helps you track and analyze customer behaviors, at every stage of the customer journey.
Through automated interactions, you can engage with your customers at each touchpoint.
Customer engagement software is not ⛔ a CRM, although both do collect data.
The main difference is that a CRM collects data about your team’s interactions with customers, and customer engagement software allows you to create automated engagements across the user journey.
So what are some of the benefits of using customer engagement software? 👇
Benefits of using software for customer engagement
Customer engagement software allows you to use data in a contextual way, by enhancing the customer experience at each step of the journey.
By enhancing the customer experience, customer engagement software leads to increased adoption of your services which helps you to retain your customers.
Essential features of Customer Engagement software
1. In-depth analytics
Customer journey analytics showcase who you should be interacting with and when, to provide the best CX and move customers through their lifecycle.
Any good customer engagement software should allow you to track:
- User identification data (who your customers are)
- User engagement data (who they are)
- Custom events (those which are specific to your product)
2. User segmentation
User engagement software allows you to segment your users based on their interaction with your product, so you provide a more tailored engagement for each of your users.
Personlization is important, your users value being considered as an individual and your engagements should reflect that, which is why user segmentation is important to consider when assessing which customer engagement software is right for you.
3. Customer engagement automation
Customer engagement automation is useful as it allows you to offer a brand and product experience that is consistent across every touchpoint, and across all of your user segments.
4. Third party integration
The best results are achieved when you are able to integrate the tools in your marketing stack, so you can utilise the same user data across multiple channels.
Best Customer Engagement Software for 2021
Userpilot
Userpilot enables you to build engaging onboarding flows into your product with ease, and without the need to code, simplifying the process.
Analytics
- When examining from an analytics perspective, Userpilot helps you to track and analyze your: user identification data, custom events, as well as in-app behaviours and NPS survey quantitative and qualitative data
- Userpilot allows you to set goals and track how your user engagement influences success
- In-built feature tagging lets you monitor how many users are interacting with your apps features, without the need to implement any code (this is all done through the Userpilot chrome extension.)
Segmentation
Userpilot utilises advanced segmentation, allowing you to engage with your customers in a highly personalized way.
Customer engagement automations
Userpilot lets you create multiple in-app linear or branched experiences, which are connected to your goals, allowing you to easily track how each impacts your results through: tooltips, modals and driven actions.
Userpilot offers NPS functionality, this enables you to launch NPS surveys, build an in-app resource center, and guide users through simple checklists.
Userpilot’s A/B testing functionality enables you to test your goals to see which ones work best, optimizing your marketing to improve customer experience through tailored, and tested, solutions.
Third party integrations
Userpilot is always on the look out for new integrations to help improve your workflow, right now you can integrate with: mixpanel, kissmetrics, amplitude, GA, intercom, GTM, Segment and Heap.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel provides customer insights that add value, improving decision making times by keeping you well informed through advanced analytics functionality, which is focused around unique events tracking.
You can use Mixpanel to learn more about why and how your customers use your products, with clear insights into the health of each account.
Analytics
- Mixpanel analytics have been designed to enable teams to become more efficient through real-time user data analysis
- You can use Mixpanel to help identify trends through customer engagement, understand user behavior, and make key decisions about your product
- Customizable dashboards allow you to tailor which analytics you see for faster decision making
- Measure group analytics to calculate metrics at an organisation level, useful for B2B SaaS companies
We recently compared Mixpanel’s analytics with Google Analytics, if you’re curious to see who comes out on top click here 🥊.
Segmentation
Mixpanel prides itself on its event tracking and segmentation capabilities.
Analyze the actions which your users perform through their platform to gain greater insights into user behavior and drive retention, engagement and conversion.
Customer engagement automations
Through Mixpanel’s ‘MoEngage’ functionality, you get detailed personalization at scale across mobile, email, web, as well as SMS and other messaging channels.
Third party integrations
Mixpanel has a directory of 50+ third party integration software capabilities, which is available to view on their website.
Each integration software is broken down by category, tier and integration capabilities.
Platinum members include: Airship, Iterable, mParticle, One Signal, and Segment
Pendo
Pendo has two main solutions focused capabilities: product experience and digital adoption.
Get data driven results through Pendo’s extensive product analytics capabilities, to help your users make key decisions.
Its goal is to showcase what your clients consider key features, and the ones they don’t whilst sharing the path they tread through your products.
Analytics
- Pendo enables users to capture customer activity and engagement across all of your products
- With Pendo you can learn what your users are adopting, ignoring, and see how they navigate your product portfolio through tracked usage
- These analytics focus on the areas of your products which drive user engagement, broken down at both the account and individual user level
Segmentation
Pendo’s user segmentation factors in a number of metrics to deliver useful insights about how your clients engage with your products.
Through side-by-side comparison capabilities, Pendo compares user behaviours to uncover new opportunities to improve your overall product experience.
Customer engagement automations
As part of its customer engagement automations, Pendo’s in-app self service resources are a tool to increase customer satisfaction.
With a variety of tips, walkthroughs and in-app resources, users can navigate some of the more complex areas of your products, with more clarity, as part of the in service experience.
Third party integrations
Considered as partners on its website, Pendo’s third party integrations are varied including some big names such as: Zendesk, Salesforce, Segment and Zapier.
Appcues
Appcues is designed to make product adoption easier, and is a great onboarding tool to consider.
Offering leads through its user onboarding solutions, as well as empowering product teams to measure and strengthen product adoption, all this without the need for a developer.
With Appcues, you can design highly personalized experiences for your products that feel organic all through their no code builder, which simplifies the process.
Analytics
- Design centric focus allows you to personalize your dashboards, combining stylish easy-to-read visuals with highly measurable analytics
- It’s click-to-track functionality is how Appcues users can capture user data around product engagement, with no need to code
- Create flows and track new events as well as adding tracking over your product for identifying important user behaviours
Segmentation
Appcues studio lets you to identify user segments based on a myriad of behaviours, and link them up with the event tracking through the Appcues Builder offering.
Customer engagement automations
Considered as patterns on its site, Appcues’ customer engagement automations include: checklists, tooltips, slideouts, hotspots, resource center and NPS.
Third party integrations
Appcue’s offers a variety of integrations with some well known names, with clear listings for their ‘premium integration’ services including: Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack , Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell.
Intercom
Self referred as a ‘Conversational Relationship Platform’, Intercom is helping organizations develop stronger relationships with their customers, through personalized message-based interactions.
Intercom conversational capacity extends from customer engagement, to support as well as marketing capabilities.
Analytics
- Intercom combines your customer and behavioural data to enable a more tailored interaction with your users
- Through a combination of company, behavioural, and conversation data Intercom’s analytics focus on giving you the information you need when you need it
Segmentation
Intercom helps you to target specific customer segments.
You can filter and select important user groups to send targeted and tailored messages, and break down the data based on who they, where they are based and how they have engaged with you.
Third party integrations
With its own standalone website, Intercom’s integration capabilities are vast.
With 250+ listed on site, you can search for the specific integration capabilities or filter and search based on your criteria.
Through powerful API functions, custom integration capabilities are also offered to ensure Intercom works with your services in the best way possible.
Hubspot
Hubspot offers a varied service, leading with its CRM offering that focuses on inbound marketing support, it tracks and monitors user engagement through its marketing .
Its customer engagement elements focuses on scaling customer support, whilst empowering front-office teams on a single platform.
Analytics
- With Hubspot you can focus on both quantity and quality of traffic to your website both by big picture thinking and on a page-by-page basis
- You can filter analytics either by country or URL to identify key traffic sources that are driving engagement
Segmentation
Content mapping through Hubspots’ marketing software allows you to segment your audience based on their engagement and experience with you, ideal for lead generation.
Customer engagement automations
Hubspot’s engagement automations focus on supporting your customers through: conversational tools such as chatbots, help desk automation, knowledge base functionality, as well as customer feedback surveys and reporting.
Third party integrations
You can connect with many notable services through Hubspot’s app ecosystem, which includes: Zendesk, Eventbrite SurveyMonkey and Wistia.
ActiveCampaign
Active campaign combines email marketing and automation with a CRM system that allows you to create customer experiences.
Through ActiveCampaign’s drag and drop automation builder, you can simplify your marketing process without hassle.
Analytics
- Set goals and track your success, including conversions, to know what works and what needs to be optimised
- Create events that track all activity across your website, to improve the processes around marketing and sales initiatives
Segmentation
Active Campaign’s segmentation capabilities deliver specific content that your clients need to see.
You can automate and tailor your follow-ups with Active Campaign through dynamic email content as well as A/B test flows. Its segmentation capabilities can also make your drip campaigns more effective.
Customer engagement automations
Focused on four pillars (orchestration, segmentation, personalization, automation), Active Campaign provides a spectrum of services to improve your customer engagement automations across email marketing, marketing automation, CRM and account management.
You can also utilise the event tracking to create trigger automations.
Third party integrations
Over 860 apps can integrate with Active Campaign, the comprehensive breakdown is optimised to ensure you can find what you need in an easily searchable way.
Drip
Drip is a marketing automation platform that focuses on ecommerce automation, through a combination of email, SMS and third party integrations that help organizations really drive their revenue.
Analytics
- Drip’s analytics tab includes a variety of reports and metrics, that allow you to measure the impact your work in Drip has across your customers as well as your business
- You can view consolidated email metrics, to export key metrics specific for your reporting
- See clicks from new users or existing subscribers, track events, conversions and monitor recent activities
Segmentation
Drip lets you personalize the marketing which your audience receives, which is tailored based on their historical engagement with you.
Custom campaigns and workflows enable you to market clearly to each segment of your audience.
Customer engagement automations
With Drip you can send emails and texts with personalized and dynamic product recommendations, which can all be automated through Drip’s visual workflow builder.
Third party integrations
Drip boasts over 100 third party software integrations, with a dedicated page on their site that is highly searchable.
You can connect to different e-commerce platforms including: Shopify, Magento and Woo Commerce.
Drift
Drift identifies as a revenue acceleration platform which recognizes your users from their initial interaction, right the way through to close.
Through identifying each visitor, Drift lets you personalize your customers visit in ways that are unique to them, to drive conversion rates, it also helps your team to engage more productively with your users.
Analytics
- Drift identifies knowledge as both power and performance. Through website engagement metrics, insights and analytics, Drift lets you continually optimize your sales and marketing strategies
- Drift’s analytics capabilities provide a clear picture of website performance, analyzing which conversations on which pages offer the highest lead conversion
- You can set your qualification and engagement strategy at different levels for multiple audience types, to analyze website performance and take action to drive revenue for your site
Segmentation
Through Drift segments, you can filter contacts based on attributes and events, allowing you to provide a great buying experience for your customers.
Drift’s platform provides both static (only lets you see those accounts as part of your filter criteria) and dynamic (which grows as you add more accounts to match your filter criteria) segmentation functionality.
Customer engagement automations
Where Drift stands out is its ability to offer in-built communication integrations for your customers.
Through Drift Automation, powerful and customizable chatbots harness strong communication AI to engage with your customers, and move them through the sales process both quickly and effectively.
Third party integrations
Drift integrates with over 50 different third parties to get the most out of the tech which you are already using.
All third parties are listed one their website but some big names include: Salesforce, Slack, Zendesk, Hubspot and Zapier.
Are you ready to chose your customer engagement software?
2021 is a big year for customer engagement, and customer engagement software is becoming more intelligent and more personalized than ever before.
Consider your analytics, and your goals, the segmentation capabilities you need to tailor your content to maximise your customer engagement, what customer engagement automations the platform provides and what feels right for you and your customers, as well as the third party integrations that match your set up for a streamlined onboarding process.
It is important to try the software out before you commit to anything, so do take the free trial opportunities to see how effective each customer engagement software is in practise as well as theory.
Ensure that the right customer engagement software for you, supports your current challenges as well as those in the future!
If you’re interested in learning more about UserPilot, you can book your demo today! We’d love to lend a helping hand!
