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Have you ever been caught off guard by a boss asking, “Which customers are likely to buy again, and which ones are slipping away?” It’s tough to answer without the right tools. And trust me, saying, “I’m not a mind reader!” doesn’t go over well. Luckily, I found a much better answer: RFM analysis.

RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value — three key metrics that help businesses understand and segment their customers based on buying behavior. To understand how RFM can transform customer relationships, I spoke with several industry experts, each with unique insights that helped me see RFM analysis as more than just numbers — it’s about building lasting customer loyalty.

Analyzing these data points can give you a fuller picture of your customer base, so let’s dig into what RFM means, why it matters, and how to conduct an RFM analysis.

In this article:

• RFM
• What is RFM analysis?
• How RFM Analysis Works
• Benefits of RFM
• How to Calculate RFM
• RFM Analysis Example
• RFM Analysis for Customer Segmentation
• Real-World RFM Analysis Case Studies

• Recency. How recently did the customer make a purchase? If they made a purchase recently, they are likely to make another purchase. However, if the customer hasn’t made a purchase in a while, you may need to nurture them with new promotional offers or even reintroduce your brand.
• Frequency. How often does the customer make purchases? If they purchase frequently, you’ll know their spending habits and preferences, but if they make one purchase and never return, they could be a good candidate for a customer satisfaction survey.
• Monetary Value. How much do your customers spend per purchase? Don’t get too caught up on the number here — all purchases are valuable. However, the first two letters in the RFM acronym can be visualized more clearly by this third component. If they’ve made many recent purchases at a high price point, you’ve got a returning customer who can turn into a brand loyalist.

You can use these three factors of the RFM model to reasonably predict how likely (or unlikely) it is that a customer will re-purchase from a company.

How RFM Analysis Works

On the surface, RFM analysis might seem pretty straightforward — just apply the metrics, and you’ll get results. But like any good strategy, the magic is in the details. Executing an RFM analysis takes a deeper dive. Let’s break down each step.

Pro tip: While RFM analysis can transform your customer relationships, you need to pay close attention to data privacy. With 75% of consumers considering data privacy a human right, it’s vital to implement RFM analysis responsibly.

Step 1: Collect and prepare data.

Start by gathering and preparing the right customer data. In my research, I’ve discovered that this foundational step often makes or breaks the entire analysis. As Ani Ghazaryan, Head of Content & Marketing at Neptune.AI, a platform that helps machine learning teams manage and track their experiments more effectively, told me, “Getting clean, consistent data required significant upfront effort, especially as customer data was scattered across multiple systems.”

Successful RFM analysis starts with collecting essential data points, such as:

• Purchase dates for each customer.
• Number of purchases per customer.
• Total spend per customer.
• Customer identifiers (e.g., email, customer ID).

Cache Merrill, Chief Product Officer at Zibtek, a custom software development company that helps startups to Fortune 500 businesses build tailored software solutions, shared his technical approach:

“We combine several tools specific to the client’s data and CRM requirements. Some of the core tools include SQL-based data lounge for data management, custom scripts for threshold analysis, and visualization tools for assessing the performance of segments like Power BI or Tableau.”

Pro tip: According to Twilio’s research, only 51% of consumers trust brands with data security. Start with solid privacy practices and data governance to build that oh-so-integral trust.

Step 2: Create your scoring framework.

Before you start scoring customers, you need to set a framework that makes sense for your business model. This means defining what “recent,” “frequent,” and “high-value” mean in your context. “We determine these predominantly based on the data distribution, most often by quantile splitting each RFM parameter for upper and lower-tier clients,” Merrill explains. “For example, the top 25% in Recency would get the highest score in that category, and so on.”

Key decisions include:

• Scoring scale (typically 1-5 for each component).
• Periods for recency.
• Purchase frequency thresholds.
• Monetary value ranges.

Pro tip: Ronan Walsh, Managing Director of Digital Trawler, a B2B SaaS digital marketing agency, recommends having at least six to 12 months of customer data to establish meaningful scoring thresholds.

Step 3: Set up automation.

Modern RFM analysis isn’t a one-time manual process — it needs to be dynamic and automated. At Neptune.AI, Ghazaryan’s team found success by integrating their analysis with their existing tech stack: “We used Python for analysis and visualization, which allowed us to really dig into the patterns of customer behavior.”

Automation should handle daily score updates, segment transitions, communications triggers, and performance tracking. This ongoing process keeps RFM analysis fresh and in tune with the latest customer behavior, allowing businesses to quickly adjust to any shift that comes up.

Pro tip: According to HubSpot’s research, 76% of consumers are concerned with how companies use their personal data. Make sure your automated systems support privacy compliance.

Step 4: Develop a segmentation strategy.

In my interviews with industry experts, I’ve found that successful segmentation isn’t just about grouping numbers — it’s about understanding customer behavior patterns. With your scoring framework and automation in place, it’s time to create meaningful customer segments. Walsh’s team at Digital Trawler achieved a 15% increase in customer retention by “identifying those with a high likelihood of churning and proactively targeting them.”

Common segments include:

• VIP customers (high scores across all categories).
• At-risk customers (declining recency scores).
• Lost customers (low scores across the board).
• Potential loyalists (high recency but lower frequency).

Pro tip: Neptune.AI’s team succeeded by “recalibrating scoring to reflect both revenue and activity level so that we didn’t overlook loyal users in lower tiers.”

Step 5: Implement targeted actions.

The final step is turning your analysis into action. Making targeted moves based on your analysis can help you spend your marketing budget more wisely, use customer service resources better, create promotions that really hit home, and take full advantage of automation. It’s a good idea to regularly check in on your segmentation criteria to ensure your strategies keep up with what customers want and need.

Pro tip: Walsh achieved the best results by personalizing offers based on recent engagement data, which helped move customers to premium tiers.

Benefits of RFM

You might be thinking, “This sounds like a lot of work.” And you’re right — it is. But in my conversations with experts and analysis of real implementations, I’ve discovered that while setting up RFM takes some initial effort, the clarity and insights it provides make you wonder how you ever made marketing decisions without it. Let’s explore these benefits, backed by data and expert insights.

1. Increased Revenue and ROI

The most compelling benefit I’ve found is the direct impact on revenue. When done right, RFM analysis helps you target the right customers with the right offers at the right time. In a recent episode of the “Send It” podcast about retention marketing, Jimmy Kim, CEO of Royal Prospect and retention marketing expert, highlights a common mistake: treating all customers the same regardless of their spending patterns.

“Why am I sending the same offers to a $20 customer that I would give my $100 customer?” he asks. This targeted approach pays off. According to Twilio’s research, businesses report that customers spend 38% more on average when their experience is personalized through proper segmentation.

Merrill shared that his team boosted campaign performance by 25% in just three months by using RFM analysis to effectively target high-value customer segments.

Pro tip: I’ve learned from the experts that starting with your highest-value segments first often provides the quickest ROI.

2. Higher Customer Retention

RFM analysis is particularly effective for keeping valuable customers from slipping away. As Kim explains, building loyalty with frequent buyers by recognizing their continued purchases and rewarding them with targeted offers can significantly enhance customer relationships and boost retention.

Ghazaryan’s team at Neptune.AI saw a 15% reduction in churn by identifying and proactively engaging with at-risk customers before they left.

Pro tip: Use RFM scores as an early warning system. Declining scores often signal churn risk before other metrics show problems.

3. More Effective Marketing Campaigns

One benefit that surprised me was how much more efficient marketing becomes with RFM insights. “After segmenting based on RFM scores, our engagement rates jumped by over 20%,” Ghazaryan told me, particularly in their high-recency, high-frequency customer group.

RFM analysis enables more targeted messaging, better timing of communications, more relevant offers, and reduced marketing waste.

Pro tip: Test your RFM-based campaigns against your regular campaigns to see where to focus your efforts.

4. Enhanced Customer Experience

In today’s market, I’ve found that personalization isn’t just nice to have — it’s expected. Salesforce’s research shows that 73% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. RFM analysis helps deliver on this expectation.

Interestingly, 56% of consumers become repeat buyers after receiving personalized experiences. Better customer understanding leads directly to better business results.

Pro tip: Use RFM insights to adjust not just your marketing but also your customer service approach. High-value customers often warrant premium support options.

5. Better Resource Allocation

Finally, I’ve discovered that RFM analysis helps businesses make smarter decisions about where to invest their time and resources. Merrill’s team reviews the segmentation criteria every quarter to better target customers as their behavior changes, ensuring their efforts focus on the most promising opportunities.

Allocating resources more effectively means optimizing marketing spend, enhancing customer service efforts, targeting promotions more precisely, and leveraging automation where it makes the most sense. Regularly tracking segment responses to different investments allows for continuous refinement and better overall efficiency.

Pro tip: Track which segments respond best to different types of investments and continually refine your resource allocation.

How to Calculate RFM

Step 1: RFM Scoring

Start by classifying customers by a numerical ranking for each category: recency, frequency, and monetary value. The ideal customer earns the highest score in each of these categories. This scoring is crucial to determine which customers are most valuable.

For example, you might evaluate recency on a scale of 1-5, with a score of 5 meaning the customer made a purchase within the last month, while a score of 1 means their last purchase was over a year ago. RFM scoring helps businesses pinpoint and prioritize high-value customers to target.

Step 2: Run an RFM analysis.

Once each customer has been assigned a score for each category, you can calculate the combined RFM score by summing the individual values for Recency, Frequency, and Monetary. This combined score allows you to segment customers into groups based on their likelihood of making future purchases.

Step 3: Crystalize customer communications.

RFM analysis offers a snapshot of which customers have purchased most recently, most often, and spent the most money. However, it’s important not to bombard high-score customers with too many offers. Instead, use their high RFM score to learn about their preferences and fine-tune your approach.

Pro tip: High RFM scores should serve as a guide for deepening relationships — focus on learning from these customers and enhancing their experience rather than overwhelming them with sales pitches.

RFM Analysis Example

To better understand RFM, I’ll walk us through an example of how RFM analysis can be applied in practice. Let’s say I’m running an ecommerce store called Ruff Riders that sells dog supplies and accessories. Here’s how I would use RFM analysis to better understand Ruff Riders’ customers.

Step 1: Gathering Data

I’ll collect a year’s worth of customer purchase data, including customer IDs, purchase dates, order values, and the number of orders per customer. I can use a simple spreadsheet for this analysis or a more sophisticated tool like a customer data platform or CRM system. Data accuracy is critical here — any inconsistencies would directly impact the analysis results, so I need to get this step right.

Step 2: Calculating RFM Scores

Next, I’ll score each customer based on Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value, using a scale from 1 to 5:

• Recency. Customers who purchased within the last 30 days scored a 5, while those who purchased over 180 days ago scored a 1.
• Frequency. Customers who made 12 or more purchases in a year scored a 5, while those with just one purchase received a score of 1.
• Monetary Value. Customers who spent over $500 scored a 5, while those spending less than $50 scored a 1.

Assigning these scores allows me to generate an overall RFM score for each customer, which helps determine who my high-value customers are and who needs more attention.

Step 3: Identifying Key Segments

With the RFM scores calculated, I can segment customers into different groups:

• Champions (555). These are the most engaged, highest-spending customers. I can focus on nurturing their loyalty through exclusive offers and early access to new products.
• Loyal Customers (4xx, 5xx). These customers buy frequently but don’t spend as much as champions. To keep them engaged, I developed loyalty programs and offered referral incentives.
• At-Risk Customers (3×1, 3×2). These customers purchased frequently in the past but haven’t made any recent purchases. I can create win-back campaigns to re-engage them with personalized offers.

Step 4: Implementing Targeted Strategies

For each segment, I’ll tailor specific strategies to drive engagement:

• Champions. I can offer early access to new products, personalized thank-you messages, and VIP customer service.
• Loyal Customers. I can launch a loyalty rewards program with discounts and special referral incentives.
• At-Risk Customers. I can send reactivation campaigns, including exclusive discounts and product promotions aligned with their previous purchases.

This hands-on RFM analysis shows the value of segmenting customers based on their buying behavior, which allowed me to focus on building stronger relationships and driving growth effectively.

Pro tip: Start simple. Initially, I tried to create too many segments, making it difficult to manage. Focusing on a few key groups that align with your capabilities is much more effective.

RFM Analysis for Customer Segmentation

Once you’ve calculated RFM scores for your customers, the fun part begins! Use these insights to create customer segments to help you tailor your marketing and customer service strategies to each group’s specific needs and behaviors.

1. Define your scoring criteria.

Start by defining your RFM scoring system based on your business model. This helps you identify the most important criteria for each customer group and ensures consistency.

2. Create customer segments.

Based on RFM scores, define key customer segments, such as:

• VIP Customers. High scores in Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value. These customers are your most valuable and should receive special perks, personalized communication, and priority support.
• At-Risk Customers. High Monetary scores but declining Recency and Frequency. These customers may need re-engagement campaigns to renew their interest and loyalty.
• New Customers. High Recency scores but lower Frequency and Monetary scores. Focus on building a strong relationship and providing onboarding support.
• Loyal Customers. High Frequency scores. Offer loyalty rewards to encourage continued engagement.

Merrill highlighted how regularly reviewing segmentation criteria helps better target customers as their behavior evolves, ensuring strategies remain effective. Ghazaryan also emphasized how recalibrating scoring helped ensure they always reflected each customer’s true value.

3. Integrate customer service strategies.

Customer service plays a big role in maintaining these relationships. For example:

• Provide VIP customers with dedicated support channels or priority service to keep them happy.
• Set up alerts for your support team to proactively reach out if at-risk customers haven’t engaged lately.
• Offer additional onboarding support to help new customers get the most value from their initial purchase.

4. Develop targeted actions.

Once segments are created, develop targeted strategies for each group. For VIP customers, consider providing exclusive offers and personalized messages to reinforce their value to your business. For at-risk customers, implement re-engagement campaigns that specifically address their needs and encourage them to reconnect with your brand.

Using these tailored approaches allows you to craft marketing and customer service strategies that resonate with each audience. This way, your efforts are more effective, leading to better retention and stronger customer relationships.

Real-World RFM Analysis Case Studies

To demonstrate the power of RFM analysis, let’s explore how four different companies transformed their customer engagement and business performance using this approach. Each story highlights unique challenges and the strategic insights that drove their success.

A SaaS company increases retention by 15%.

Ronan Walsh from Digital Trawler shared the story of a mid-sized B2B SaaS provider with around 2,000 active customers. Like many companies, they faced a pressing challenge: improving customer retention and maximizing lifetime value. Over six months, they implemented an RFM analysis strategy to tackle these goals.

The turning point was personalizing offers based on customers’ recent engagement data. By doing so, they were able to encourage customers to upgrade to premium subscription tiers, driving up their average order value (AOV) without inflating acquisition costs.

“By personalizing offers based on recent engagement data, we encouraged users to move up to premium subscription tiers, driving higher AOV,” explained Walsh. This focused strategy resulted in a 15% increase in retention and a 10% boost in AOV, illustrating how precise, data-driven actions can make a difference.

Ecommerce fashion retailer revitalizes engagement.

A fashion ecommerce brand with significant repeat purchase potential set out to deepen its connection with high-value customers and drive repeat purchases. They adopted RFM analysis for a three-month campaign designed to target their most valuable buyers.

By focusing on those who had made recent purchases, they crafted campaigns that resonated with this high-value segment. According to Cache Merrill from Zibtek, “We concentrated on high-value buyers who had made a purchase very recently. Customized RFM cutoffs helped us target segments with high revenue potential while identifying at-risk customers.”

This strategic focus led to a 25% boost in campaign performance, with noticeable gains starting within just 6-8 weeks and major successes by the end of the quarter.

Neptune.AI boosts user engagement.

Neptune.AI, a SaaS company providing tools for machine learning teams, was facing a challenge in keeping users engaged. To tackle this, they combined RFM analysis with their CRM to focus on improving user engagement.

Their success really came from creating targeted educational content and webinars for users in the “high-recency, high-frequency” group. Ani Ghazaryan mentioned that this approach allowed them to boost user engagement and cut down on churn. As a result, engagement rates shot up by 20%, churn dropped by 15%, and customer lifetime value increased by 10%.

The company also rolled out targeted reactivation campaigns to reconnect with users in the “low-recency, high-value” segment, showcasing the latest features of their platform.

Retail re-engagement campaign revives inactive customers.

A retail business was dealing with a typical issue: A bunch of customers had gone quiet and hadn’t engaged in six to 12 months. Wanting to win their customers back, the company kicked off a four-month re-engagement campaign using RFM analysis. It pinpointed 1,500 dormant customers and reached out with personalized incentives and content to spark their interest again.

The outcome was pretty impressive — 22% of those customers returned, making a tangible difference in their quarterly revenue. This scenario really highlights how important it is to get to know your customer segments well and create offers that really resonate with them.

Pro tip: While these case studies show impressive results, remember that each business requires different scoring criteria and segmentation strategies. Adapting RFM analysis to your specific business model and customer behavior patterns is key.

An RFM Analysis to Grow Your Customer Base

When I first started diving into RFM analysis, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. But it quickly became apparent that it’s more than just a bunch of numbers. Conducting an RFM analysis is all about figuring out how much of your revenue comes from loyal, repeat customers versus new ones and finding ways to keep those loyal customers happy. It’s about seeing where things might be falling short and how to better meet customer needs so that they keep returning for more.

Hearing from the experts showed me just how adaptable RFM analysis is — whether it’s used to drive engagement in a tech company or boost retention in retail, the principles work everywhere.

What really stood out to me is that while RFM analysis might look like a data exercise, it’s really about building relationships. It’s about turning those customer scores into personalized actions that make people feel valued and understood. The more you understand your customers, the better you can serve them. The magic of RFM lies in combining data-driven insights with a genuine human touch. It’s that mix of personalization and proactive engagement that turns customers into loyal fans.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in October 2018 and has since been updated for comprehensiveness.

Making sense of customer data in today’s digital landscape often feels like piecing together evidence in a crime scene. In fact, when our team started exploring composable CDPs as a solution, I found myself at a whiteboard drawing circles and lines between all our different data sources and looking suspiciously like something from an episode of Law & Order.

Traditional customer data platforms (CDPs) promised to help make sense of it all, but these legacy solutions often fall short as they try to do everything at once. Sometimes, you need a solution that lets you pick and choose exactly what you need, which is where composable CDPs come in. It’s like upgrading from a Swiss Army knife to a fully customizable tool belt.

Whether your customer data is scattered across a dozen systems or you’re just starting to think about better ways to manage it, this guide will help you understand if a composable CDP might be the solution you’re looking for.

Table of Contents

• What is a Composable CDP?
• Advantages of a Composable CDP
• How Legacy CDPs Work
• Composable CDP vs. Traditional CDP
• Composable CDP Use Cases
• CDP Implementation Examples

After my whiteboard revelation about our scattered data sources, I learned that a composable CDP takes a fundamentally different approach to managing customer data.

The name “composable” comes from its ability to let you “compose,” or build, exactly the customer data platform solution you need. As Arvind Rongala, CEO at Edstellar, an AI-powered skills management platform, puts it: “Composable CDPs give organizations the most freedom because they can add only the parts they need, like data storage, identity resolution, analytics, and involvement, based on their own needs.”

Source

I think of it like building with LEGO blocks rather than buying a pre-built toy. I can choose which pieces to use and how to put them together.

Robin Grochol, vice president of product management at Twilio Segment, explains the core purpose: “Businesses need a clean and consistent view of each customer across every function, from marketing to ecommerce to customer support and more.”

A composable CDP includes several key elements:

• Direct integration with your existing data warehouse.
• Modular components you can mix and match based on your needs.
• Flexible data modeling capabilities.
• Tools for activating your data across marketing channels.

Source

How Legacy CDPs Work

Traditional customer data platforms, or legacy CDPs, have been around for years, acting as the go-to solution for companies trying to wrangle their customer data. If a composable CDP is like building with LEGOs, a traditional CDP is more like buying a pre-built playhouse — it comes with everything included, whether you need it or not.

Every legacy CDP vendor offers several bundled features, including:

• Data Collection. CDPs provide proprietary code you can run on your website/app to capture behavioral data or user events like page views, purchases, or signups.
• Storage and Modeling. Built-in identity resolution features help you connect data from various sources to create single customer profiles.
• Data Activation. You can define and build custom audiences using your behavioral data for downstream marketing use cases.

Because CDPs integrate with various SaaS applications and databases, you can sync your customer data and audiences to these downstream systems.

As Brendan Fortune, director of product at Customer.io, points out, “Traditional CDPs provide an all-in-one suite. They aim not only to ingest your data but also to clean, govern, and analyze it.”

The fundamental problem that CDPs solve — helping you manage and activate your data at scale from a single source of truth — isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, CDP demand continues to increase.

However, with the rapid adoption of modern cloud data warehouses like Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, and Databricks, many organizations now realize it no longer makes sense to maintain an architecture that creates two conflicting sources of truth: one in the CDP and one in the data warehouse.

Source

With data and marketing teams working off two independent sources of truth for customer data, several problems are introduced. These include inconsistent data between BI and operational tools, inflated storage costs, security concerns, and an inability to activate all available customer data.

That’s why organizations like Warner Music Group and Chime are choosing to implement an architecture that enables them to activate data directly from a single source of truth: the cloud data warehouse. This shift has given rise to what we now know as the composable CDP.

To understand which approach might work best for your organization, I talked to experts from leading CDP providers and companies that have made the switch. Here’s what I learned about how these two approaches compare.

Composable CDP vs. Traditional CDP

When I started asking industry experts about the key differences between these two approaches, I discovered it’s not just about features but fundamentally different philosophies in handling customer data.

Alex Schlee, founder and CEO of Anamap, broke it down clearly for me. “The key difference between traditional CDPs and composable CDPs is the ability for companies to define their own data structure and use their own data warehouse as the resting place for the data,” Schlee explains. “Traditional CDPs have a separate database with a specific format that needs to be accommodated to correctly store events.”

Here’s what each approach brings to the table.

Traditional CDP

• Lives separate from your data warehouse.
• Requires duplicate data storage.
• Fixed data models and schemas.
• Longer implementation time (6-12 months).
• Higher total cost of ownership.

Composable CDP

• Integrates with your existing infrastructure.
• No duplicate data storage.
• Flexible data modeling.
• Faster implementation (typically 2-3 months).
• Pay only for what you need.

Must-Have Features When Evaluating Any CDP

Twilio Segment’s Robin Grochol sees CDPs as more than just data tools — they’re enterprise-wide solutions. As she explains, “Instead of each business function operating in its own silo, with a unique set of tools and an incomplete view of the customer’s experience, a CDP can act like an enterprise service, creating customer profiles, journeys, and predictions that drive use cases across the business.”

With this enterprise-wide impact in mind, Grochol outlines the critical features to look for in any CDP solution:

• Data Collection. Can the CDP collect data from anywhere, including all the tools in the data stack?
• Data Governance. Can the CDP ensure data is clean, consistent, and compliant so it is trusted across the business?
• Data Unification. Can the CDP create unified customer profiles at scale that provide a complete view of the customer?
• AI Capabilities. Can the CDP predict, recommend, and generate journeys, audiences, and other customer insights with AI?
• Data Activation. Can the CDP activate customer data anywhere, not only for marketing teams but for any part of the business?

Pro Tips for CDP Evaluation

When evaluating CDPs, I gathered some crucial advice from industry experts. Brendan Fortune from Customer.io suggests starting with a simple audit.

“Identify in what departments your customer data lives today. If there are more than three departments with data sets you intend to unify, CDPs are a must. As is a full-time Project or Program Manager!” Fortune shared.

He also recommends asking vendors about their best customers and why. You should be able to see your company fitting that profile.

Sebastian Gierlinger, vice president of engineering at Storyblok, emphasizes two additional critical areas:

• Map your integration landscape first. “Map out exactly what tools you would like to connect to estimate what can be covered by pre-built integrations and what needs to be part of an implementation project.”
• Prioritize security and scalability. “Definitely always ask about security and scalability. There is nothing more problematic than a vendor who is struggling with these two topics.”

So when should you choose one over the other? Gierlinger strongly advocates for composable solutions when building modern tech stacks.

“If you are building a modern stack and you are not bound to any obligations already, I would always opt for using the composable solution no matter if it is CDP, ecommerce, CMS, or any other component of your infrastructure,” he explains. “Composable systems allow you to already be prepared for future developments like new distribution channels, new frontend technologies, or additional requirements.”

However, Customer.io’s Brendan Fortune offers an important counterpoint: “If you don’t have a team dedicated to consolidating, cleaning, governing, and analyzing your company’s data, you’re better off with a traditional CDP.”

Pro tip: Before making your decision, ask yourself these key questions:

• Do you already have a modern data warehouse?
• Does your team have data engineering resources?
• How quickly do you need to implement your CDP?
• What’s your budget for both implementation and ongoing costs?

Before You Consider a Composable CDP

Sebastian Gierlinger from Storyblok emphasizes the importance of having essential elements in place first: “Make sure that you have systems in place that produce relevant data. The best CDP cannot fix a broken process or an unreliable product. Once the basics (web, product, CRM) are working, a CDP can be the boost your business needs.”

After learning about both approaches, I was curious about what makes organizations choose a composable CDP over a traditional one. The answers from industry experts revealed several compelling benefits backed by real results.

As mentioned above, Twilio Segment’s Grochol emphasizes that a composable CDP breaks data silos by creating customer profiles, journeys, and predictions that can be used across all departments.

Compared to a legacy CDP, there are many benefits to this approach. Here are the key advantages that stood out in my research.

Flexibility

Legacy CDPs have very rigid modeling capabilities, locking you into a strict user and account-based model. Composable CDPs break free from these limitations by supporting multiple entity types and related models.

“When companies are choosing between standard and composable CDPs, they should think about how flexible they need to be,” notes Arvind Rongala of Edstellar. “A composable CDP is the best choice if you expect to have complicated data ecosystems or a lot of component updates.”

Data Availability

Legacy CDPs only focus on event-level clickstream data, creating a fragmented view of your customer. Composable CDPs have access to any and all of the data living in your data warehouse — not just clickstream events (e.g., data science models).

Improved Data Accessibility

Since composable CDPs can integrate with a wide variety of existing systems, they improve data accessibility across departments.

“Data can be directly accessible in a data warehouse or BI tool, which makes it easier for data and business analysts to derive insights from it,” explains Sebastian Gierlinger from Storyblok. “A traditional CDP is often accessed through a single interface and would not allow such flexibility.”

The shift toward composable architecture brings up another important consideration. “The single biggest benefit to composable CDPs is avoiding vendor lock-in,” Alex Schlee of Anamap points out. “When the same data structure can be used across any composable CDP vendor, it makes your company data more portable.”

Enhanced Privacy Compliance

Gierlinger also highlights a crucial advantage, “Composable CDPs allow businesses to keep sensitive data in localized storage systems, which can be critical for complying with data residency requirements.” This flexibility ensures companies can meet specific compliance needs and adjust quickly as requirements change.

Cost

With a legacy CDP, you pay twice to store and process the data that you already have within your own warehouse. With a composable CDP, you can use your existing data investments rather than purchasing another off-the-shelf tool.

Implementation Agility

Composable CDPs enable an iterative approach rather than one massive project. As Gierlinger notes, “Instead of executing one big project that will show results once everything is up and running, you will have multiple smaller projects that show partial results immediately.”

Time-to-Value

Legacy CDPs can take over a year to implement, and that’s not even accounting for the onboarding time it takes for your teams to learn how to use the tool. The modularity of a composable CDP allows you to start activating your data immediately with the tools your teams are already familiar with.

Security

Legacy CDPs force you to store data outside of your own cloud infrastructure, giving you little control over what happens to it. With a composable CDP, your data is never stored outside of your existing data infrastructure, giving you full governance and control over how it’s managed.

Composable CDP Use Cases

Here are a few ways composable CDPs help businesses create hyper-personalized omnichannel campaigns and workflows that drive better results.

Profile Enrichment

Using a composable CDP, you can access any and all of the custom data models living in your warehouse — such as lifetime value, last login date, active users, active tickets, features enabled, lead score, likelihood to purchase, etc.

You can then sync that data directly to objects and fields that you can leverage in your CRM for personalization and segmentation.

Audiences

Let’s say your marketing team wants to target a list of shopping cart abandoners with a special coupon to encourage them to check out. Or maybe your product team wants to send an email to inform inactive users of a new feature.

In either case, a composable CDP can easily deliver the data from your data warehouse to your CRM.

Workflows and Sequences

It’s easier for your teams to build more comprehensive workflows and sequences using the audiences that your data team defined in your warehouse.

For example, you can automatically enroll users into marketing campaigns based on their audience type or the attributes that you’ve outlined in your CRM. You can also use these attributes to create different branches of the workflows based on user activity, engagement, or attributes.

This has huge implications from a sales standpoint because you can use workflows to route new leads to individual sales reps so they can take action faster.

CDP Implementation Examples

When researching composable CDPs, I found it helpful to look at how different organizations are actually using them in the real world. Here are some of the most interesting examples I discovered.

Streamlining Marketing Operations

LegalZoom offers an excellent example of combining modern data warehouse infrastructure with CDP capabilities. As Twilio Segment’s Robin Grochol shares:

“LegalZoom centralized their data in Snowflake to gain a unified view of business operations and customer behavior. With Segment integrated on top of Snowflake, marketing teams can self-serve, creating audience segments and personalized customer journeys without needing technical assistance.”

Check out this video to learn more.

Boosting Sales Performance

Sebastian Gierlinger from Storyblok describes how a composable CDP transformed its sales operations.

“We introduced a composable CDP with a custom presentation layer for the sales team, which led to a huge increase in upsell since the team was able to identify active customers that are operating close to the next plan level.”

Real-Time Customer Engagement

A fascinating example comes from Brendan Fortune at Customer.io, who shares how CDP architecture choices impact user experience. When a large design software company wanted to send personalized messages to users trying new features, they had to weigh their options carefully.

While a traditional CDP could trigger messages within seconds through direct API streams, a composable CDP pulling from their data warehouse would take a few minutes — an important consideration for real-time engagement scenarios.

HubSpot + Hightouch: A Closer Look at Composable CDP Integration

Let me walk you through a detailed example of how a composable CDP works with your CRM. HubSpot’s CRM platform offers a great illustration of these capabilities in action.

As a platform that helps businesses manage customer interactions, automate marketing workflows, and optimize sales funnels, HubSpot becomes even more powerful when integrated with a composable CDP like Hightouch.

This tool allows data and marketing teams to sync the valuable insights from their data warehouse to a CRM.

Source

Pro tip: Want to streamline your customer data management? Start with a solid foundation using HubSpot’s CRM platform.

The Bottom Line: The Future of CDPs

Through my research and conversations with industry experts, I’ve learned that CDPs are evolving far beyond their original role as data collection tools.

As Robin Grochol explains, the CDP landscape used to be only about collecting and moving data. “Now it’s about data activation,” she said. “CDPs today build customer profiles, create audiences and journeys, and recommend the next best product or action using AI.”

Looking ahead, Brendan Fortune predicts an even bigger transformation. “I expect to see CDPs evolve into customer experience suites,” Fortune said. “Rather than just moving data around, they will act on that data in ways that customers see, whether that’s an email, an in-app message, or part of your software’s user experience.”

Fortune believes that CDPs who don’t evolve will become true commodities. “In that scenario, the CDP industry as we know it today will become far less valuable,” said Fortune. “Transforming data from one source to multiple destinations will become a table-stakes capability competing only on price.”

Whether you choose a traditional or composable CDP ultimately depends on your organization’s specific needs, technical resources, and long-term data strategy. But one thing is clear: In an era where customer data drives business success, having the right CDP architecture isn’t just a technical decision — it’s a strategic must-have.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The other day, the igniter in my oven needed replacing. I called a nearby electrician, who came over and told me how he could fix it. After agreeing to the initial quote, I instinctively had my checkbook out ready to pay the paper invoice. However, the repairman said, “Don’t worry – our app will take care of this.”

Instead of sitting down for 30 minutes to review the paper invoice and pay, the app – or a point of sale (POS) system – cut the transaction time in half. Moreover, that electrician gained a loyal customer in me for finishing the job in record time.

In fact, digital payment is becoming so prominent that 90% of consumers have used some form of digital payment in 2023, according to McKinsey. Offering different payment options allows your company to reach more customers and simplify the payment transaction and customer experience.

Just like my example with the electrician, the POS experience is an important transactional moment for your customers. In this post, I’ll explain why, and then explore ways you can make your own POS experience better.

In this article:

• What is POS experience?
• Why is POS experience important?
• Six Ways to Improve POS Experience

Now, a POS system is what actually allows you to accept multiple forms of payment while connecting customer transactions to the back end of your business — thus creating your POS experience.

You can use your POS system to build revenue reports, transfer money to and from your bank account, check inventory, and track order history. A POS system can either be a hardware or software tool – making it flexible for use across multiple industries. It also collects data points centered around your buying preferences, order history, and frequency of purchases.

This versatility makes a POS system a vital conduit to influence a seamless POS experience.

Why is POS experience important?

A positive POS experience can bolster all of your interactions with your customers. Beyond the reports you can pull, a positive POS experience represents your company’s commitment to your customers.

This aligns with a trend – growth projections estimate the entire POS industry will be worth over $30 billion by 2032. This represents a huge opportunity for businesses to prioritize the investments they put in technology to engage with their customers and ensure they have a good experience.

But beyond the total addressable market, I’m going to review a few benefits that outline why the POS experience is worth placing importance on.

Satisfied Customers

A positive POS experience can create satisfied customers. A 2023 study from the Journal of Retail Technology Innovations noted an 18% increase in customer satisfaction when they used an effective POS system to enable a seamless checkout process.

Customers like it when your company’s POS enables them to purchase easily from your business. There’s also a benefit to logging your customers’ preferences, demographics, and other attributes for future interactions. Making it easy for your customers to interact with your business is one of several tips that defines a great customer experience.

Satisfied Employees

Your POS experience can influence more than just your customers. Your employee morale can be high when they know that the POS they work with daily is intuitive and causes minimal issues when working with customers. Happy employees mean that they are increasingly willing to work with customers, leading to higher rates of satisfaction and even revenue.

Prioritizing the POS experience is an opportunity for your company to invest time and resources in a particular tool. This tool needs to remove any blockers, make the checkout process seamless for employees, and reduce friction in the customer journey.

Repeat Purchases from Loyal Customers

A positive POS experience can influence your company’s ability to retain customers, influence future purchases, and garner customer loyalty. Customers are more willing to come back to you when they have a positive experience with your company. The POS acts as a key touchpoint for this positive experience to occur. Statistically, repeat customers spend 67% more than net new customers, consistently increasing your company’s overall revenue.

Your POS can also be the conduit to develop a customer loyalty program. POS systems can quantify the products and services customers have purchased, represent that in a membership program to monetize customer loyalty, and provide your marketing team content for promotional campaigns and further re-engagement ideas. If this is something you want to explore, grab this free guide that we at HubSpot put together with Calendly.

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Six Ways to Improve POS Experience

As I have discussed above, the POS experience is a crucial touchpoint for creating satisfied customers and employees, and retaining customers to drive repeat business.

Now, how do you successfully improve your POS system and experience? Here are six actionable ways.

1. Make the checkout process seamless.

Simplifying the checkout process is key to delivering an effortless POS experience. By removing friction, you ensure your customers can quickly and easily complete their transactions, leaving them with a positive impression of your business.

Implementing features like barcode scanning, minimizing wait times, and providing clarity through the purchasing journey can all aid this.

2. Offer multiple and flexible payment options.

Today’s customers expect payment flexibility. Ensure your POS system accommodates various payment methods like credit cards, mobile payments like Google Pay and Apple Pay, and even installment plans using technologies like Affirm.

By offering these diverse payment options, you not only provide convenience but also capture revenue from customers who may prefer alternate methods.

Pro tip: Analyzing payment trends through your POS system can give you further insight into evolving customer preferences and help you refine your strategy.

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3. Ensure uninterrupted operations with power backup.

A reliable POS system should function seamlessly, even during internet outages. Look for systems with a robust offline capability to maintain consistent service. This lets your team remain productive and mobile, ensuring customers can complete transactions without a hitch.

Consistent performance under all conditions strengthens customer trust and protects your business from operational hiccups.

4. Leverage personalization at the POS.

Personalization is central to a superior POS experience. Use order history to suggest relevant products and services, tailor touchpoints based on preferences, and develop targeted customer touchpoints in loyalty programs. A well-optimized POS experience sees your team applying data you have collected from customers to inform customer interactions, turning one-time customers into repeat buyers and brand advocates.

5. Ask for and act on customer feedback.

Feedback is always a valuable resource for continuous improvement. Incorporate short surveys into your POS experience to gauge customer satisfaction.

One way I often see this done is to ask customers to rate their experience for that particular engagement or transaction. You can also leave space for customers to type in additional comments.

I recommend using this feedback to identify areas for improvement in your customer interactions. This can demonstrate your commitment to enhancing the POS experience. The HubSpot Blog has loads of resources on this, too — things like how to design a customer satisfaction survey, how to actually get customer feedback, and then what to do with it — so don’t sleep on this great way to improve your POS experience. Hearing directly from the people involved is a no-brainer.

6. Offer options for receipt delivery.

Customers appreciate flexibility in how they receive receipts, just as they do with payment options. Whether it’s email, text, or a physical copy, offering multiple options aligns with modern and evolving customer expectations. Moreover, the method of receipt delivery adds another data point that allows you to personalize future interactions based on their preferences.

A positive POS experience can be your conduit to success.

I used the word conduit in this piece – a driver or channel – to describe POS systems. These are powerful tools that can be used to collect customer data points and measure their preferences against your company’s overall performance. Furthermore, an effective POS system can influence customer satisfaction, increase staff morale, and capture a consistent amount of revenue.

By implementing strategies to improve the POS experience, your business can ensure smoother transactions, generate happier interactions, and increase customer loyalty. Investing in your POS system is not merely a technical upgrade but a commitment to delivering superior customer experiences that set your business apart.

If you want to create a better workplace environment for your employees, it pays to spend time brainstorming DEI survey questions to evaluate your company’s ability to create a welcoming, inclusive workplace.

As a former classroom teacher, I saw firsthand the importance of creating an equitable and inclusive classroom for all of my learners. An inclusive classroom meant my students could thrive in an environment tailored to meet their individual needs.

Just like in the classroom, a commitment to creating an inclusive workplace and diverse workforce ensures your employees can better flourish in their roles in a way that works best for them. When your employees are set up for success and are given equal opportunities in the workplace, you’re working to reach your business’s full potential, too.

It’s clear that creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is critical to your brand’s success, but how do you measure the success of your commitments?

Recently, I chatted with Jim Coughlin, founder of Remotived, to gain his perspectives about DEI, creating a workplace diversity questionnaire, and fostering inclusivity in the workplace. In this post, I’m sharing what I’ve learned from talking with Jim and giving you a list of questions you can use in your own surveys.

In this article:

• What is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)?
• How to Create a DEI Survey
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Survey Questions

I find it helpful to break down the terms further:

• Diversity means that there is widespread representation of people with different backgrounds (race, age, gender, etc.) within an organization.
• Equity means fair and impartial treatment for everyone. At work, employees have access to the same opportunities and are held to the same standards.
• Inclusion means creating a welcoming environment at work where employees are empowered to participate equally.

The concept of DEI continues to evolve, and many organizations have also started recognizing “belonging” as part of their DEI(B) efforts.

When you think about it, belonging is the outcome of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s the feeling of comfort, connection, and acceptance.

The Impact of DEI

While I haven’t managed employees, I have managed a classroom. From my classroom experiences, I’ve found the quality of your DEI initiatives can set the tone for your work environment — whether that’s a classroom or an office.

When I asked Coughlin about the impact DEI initiatives have in his workplace, he told me that creating an environment where collaboration and innovation happen is important — and not just for underrepresented groups.

He said, “We’ve found that without intentional inclusion efforts, employees from underrepresented groups can feel isolated or disconnected from growth opportunities, regardless of workplace model. The amazing thing is that the positive impact on culture is not limited to diverse employees themselves. Everyone at the company reports a higher feeling of psychological safety, engagement, and well-being when companies implement authentic DEI programs.”

For the workplace, DEI can be the difference between retaining and acquiring highly qualified employees or losing them. Research shows that 53% of U.S. employees consider diversity at work an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers.

A Greater Competitive Advantage

DEI also gives you a competitive advantage, too. A 2023 McKinsey & Company study revealed that gender-diverse companies are more likely to outperform their competitors who lack diversity.

I asked Coughlin what he thought about this statistic, and he didn’t seem very surprised. “It’s a pretty simple case to be made that if you‘re hiring the best people from lots of different backgrounds with great ideas and you know you’re going to achieve better results,” he said.

This is likely to do with the fact that more diverse opinions are represented in the decision-making process. When everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute, your team is more likely to find creative, innovative solutions.

Organizations should make an ongoing investment in DEI to attract top talent. This is good for business.

(Pssst! Looking for help to create a presentation on your company culture and its values? Check out the free Company Culture Code template.)

When developing your DEI survey, be sure to keep the general best practices for creating a survey in mind.

That said, I asked Coughlin if he could share any tips or best practices for creating effective DEI survey questions for a workplace diversity questionnaire. Here’s what he told me.

1. Map it back to your organization’s DEI objectives.

Your survey should be a direct reflection of your overarching DEI goals. And not only that, but Coughlin suggests that you focus less on labels. He said, “We really try to help people approach it from the perspective of assessing the experience rather than labeling.”

For example, one of your goals may be to increase inclusivity and equity for neurodiverse people. However, if you simply ask, “Are you neurodivergent?” you just get a count of your neurodivergent employees, which isn’t a true indicator of inclusivity and equity.

Make sure there‘s a clear way to use your survey results to measure progress against what you’re trying to achieve.

2. Ask the right questions.

Coughlin told me it’s best to consider the design of your questions. He said, “We recommend focusing questions on three key areas: belonging, access, and voice. Do employees feel valued for who they are? Do all employees have equal opportunities for growth? And are diverse perspectives actively sought out and incorporated?”

Pay close attention to the wording and format of your questions. Also, consider how your audience may perceive them.

For example, asking employees, “Is our company diverse?” as a yes or no question forces participants into an answer. Plus, it doesn’t really give them a chance to voice their opinions.

You could rework your questions to include a rating scale (e.g., On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate diversity at our company?) and follow up with an open-ended question that asks why that rating was selected.

3. Keep your survey optional and anonymous.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep your surveys optional and anonymous. From personal experience, I’ve found that when people feel unsafe to share their thoughts, they won’t.

The same goes for your employees. They are more likely to share their honest thoughts and opinions if they feel they can do so without repercussions. Coughlin said keeping your survey anonymous is critical, but it might require finding a new tool to ensure privacy.

He told me, “It’s really important to take steps to make these surveys anonymous. Most survey tools don’t do this and it makes employees nervous to answer honestly. Leaders should be very transparent about how these answers are displayed and that no one in the organization will be able to reverse engineer who is who.”

He even mentioned that some surveys allow the administrators to watch employees answer questions in real-time. This defeats the purpose of anonymous surveys and can lead to serious repercussions.

Remember, your survey shouldn‘t focus on who is saying what, and people shouldn’t feel forced to take it. You’ll get more genuine responses if people feel like they can answer honestly while keeping their identity private.

4. Be an active listener with a plan.

At the end of our chat, I asked Coughlin if he had any more tips to share about DEI surveys. He made a point to tell me that workplace surveys are great, but you can’t just file the results in a folder and leave them there. There’s meaningful work to do once the results are in, especially if you want your employees to feel valued and heard.

He said, “It goes beyond listening and measuring. It’s actually going to be acted on. Because companies sometimes feel like listening just means listening. But that doesn‘t make people feel heard. You have to make a commitment to do something useful with that information. And when you’re giving something a value like that, then you’ll get that valuable data from people. People will be honest. They will feel compelled to take the survey rather than ignore it.”

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Survey Questions

I think it’s important to point out that workplace diversity questionnaires are different from employee satisfaction surveys. While employee satisfaction surveys are helpful to understanding how your employees feel about their work, they don’t always indicate the inclusivity of your workplace — which is why you need DEI survey questions in your questionnaire.

I’ve compiled a list of 24 diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging survey questions for employees. Feel free to use these or tweak them for your organization.

You can review the questions in order below or jump around:

• Diversity Survey Questions
• Equity Survey Questions
• Inclusion Survey Questions
• Belonging Survey Questions

Diversity Survey Questions

1. On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate diversity at our company?

Why I think this works: This is a great starter question that allows participants to quantify how successful your diversity efforts are as a whole.

2. Do you feel our company encourages diverse perspectives and ideas?

Why I think this works: If the answer is no, this tells you exactly where you need to focus your efforts (e.g., creating a forum for new ideas, additional DEI training for team leads, etc.).

3. To what extent do you feel you can relate to members of the executive team?

Why I think this works: This helps you understand if your employees can see themselves as part of leadership one day. Huge implications for retention and growth.

4. Rate on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree: Our organization hires people from all backgrounds.

Why I think this works: Even if your organization is setting diversity hiring goals, you’ll be able to see whether or not your employees actually see this reflected within their teams.

5. How comfortable are you discussing your social or cultural beliefs in the workplace?

Why I think this works: A big part of diversity is authenticity. If people aren’t comfortable talking about their backgrounds, this is an indicator that something needs to change.

6. What steps can we take to create a more diverse culture at our company?

Why I think this works: This question is actionable and gives participants the opportunity to tell you what they really want to see out of your DEI work.

Equity Survey Questions

1. Do you feel you have the same opportunities for advancement as your colleagues?

Why I think this works: Equity means that growth opportunities are available for everyone. This question tells you how employees feel compared to their peers in this area.

2. Rate on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree: Our company treats all employees fairly.

Why I think this works: Fair and just treatment is another key element of workplace equity. If employees disagree with this question, this is an easy red flag.

3. Have you ever noticed favoritism in the workplace? If so, please explain.

Why I think this works: Favoritism is the antithesis of equity. If this is happening at your company, this will allow you to capture real examples for further investigation.

4. Rank these equity initiatives based on how important they are to you.

Why I think this works: Employee rankings will give you direct feedback on your equity processes and program, and help you prioritize your efforts.

5. Does your supervisor show a commitment to workplace equity?

Why I think this works: The supervisor/direct report relationship is crucial. This can help you determine whether your people managers need additional equity training or support.

6. What else can we do to promote equity across the company?

Why I think this work: This is another actionable question that gives employees space to make suggestions based on their experiences with equity at work.

Inclusion Survey Questions

1. To what extent are you able to bring your full self to work each day?

Why I think this works: Inclusion means being comfortable showing your authentic self at work. If the responses indicate that this isn‘t the case, it’s clear you have some work to do.

2. Have you ever felt left out or excluded from certain activities in the workplace?

Why I think this works: If people feel excluded, they’re less likely to engage. The results of this question can help you proactively re-engage employees before they churn.

3. Rate on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree: I feel included in the decisions that impact the business.

Why I think this works: Feeling like you bring value to the business at large is another form of inclusion. This question tells you if employees feel like their day-to-day work matters.

4. How comfortable are you with voicing your opinions and concerns at work?

Why I think this works: This will help you gauge how confident employees are about sharing feedback and identifying problems in the workplace.

5. On a scale of 1-5, how strongly do you think our company values inclusivity?

Why I think this works: If your company values inclusivity, it‘s important to practice what you preach. This will let you know if your employees think you’re doing a good job.

6. Would you recommend this company as an inclusive place to work?

Why I think this works: If your employees answer yes to this question, this speaks volumes. Why? Because they would be willing to encourage their peers to join your work environment.

Belonging Survey Questions

1. To what extent do your personal values align with the values of our organization?

Why I think this works: If employees don‘t feel like your values align, this could be an indicator that your DEI efforts aren’t creating the outcome you anticipated.

2. Do you feel a sense of ownership over your work?

Why I think this works: If employees feel like they own the work they do, they’ll be more empowered to make decisions and bring creative ideas to the table.

3. Rate on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree: I can depend on my coworkers.

Why I think this works: A good sense of belonging gives employees the confidence to build relationships. And dependability means they’re comfortable confiding in their peers.

4. Do you feel like you belong at this company?

Why I think this works: This question is straightforward and to the point. It essentially tells you whether your employees feel like they should be working for you.

5. Rate on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree: Our company’s mission inspires me to do my best work.

Why I think this works: Similar to value alignment, this question gives you insight into how connected employees feel to what you’re trying to accomplish as an organization.

6. Can you see yourself working for this company in the next two years?

Why I think this works: A good indicator of belonging is that your employees want to stick around long term. If most participants say yes, that’s a win.

Get the Most Out of Your Next DEI Survey

From my conversation with Jim Coughlin, it’s clear DEI initiatives are critical for the success of any business, and the need for these initiatives will only continue to grow. Your employees invest their time and energy in making your business a success. So, you should go out of your way to create an environment where they feel safe, seen, and heard.

How? It’s easier said than done, but asking them for feedback is the perfect place to start. Take some time to think through your DEI survey questions to ensure you gain perspectives and not just a blanket, surface-level response.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Creating a successful cross-channel marketing campaign requires great effort. If I had it my way, I would always know how and when to reach our customers. I could have a single channel for interacting with them, converting them, and continuing to delight them. All of my marketing, sales, and service efforts could be easily tracked and enhanced as we created the ideal customer experience within this single channel.

Sounds perfect, right? Unfortunately, ideal situations seldom apply to businesses. As anyone who has ever tried to meet a quota of leads or customers can attest, if you only market in a single channel, you’re going to miss out on a large portion of your target audience. In fact, focusing on a single channel can even make for a poor customer experience and prevent you from successfully nurturing your leads.

Recently, I spoke with Nathaniel Miller, head of marketing at HarvestIQ, and Ruslan Halilov, chief marketing officer at BlueDotHQ, to learn more about how to nail cross-channel marketing effectively. Below, I’ll share their insights.

Table of Contents

• What is cross-channel marketing?
• Why use cross-channel marketing?
• Why Cross-Channel Marketing Can Be Challenging
• Cross-Channel Marketing Examples
• How to Get Started with Cross-Channel Marketing

I asked Ruslan Halilov and Nathaniel Miller to give me a quick definition of cross-channel marketing. Halilov told me, “Cross-channel marketing simply means incorporating multiple channels into your marketing strategy.”

Multiple channels means incorporating your social media accounts, websites, and email campaigns to reach customers where they are and offer them different but relevant experiences through the customer journey.

Miller suggested that cross-channel marketing only works well if you create a smooth experience across your entire brand. He said, “Whether it’s seeing an ad on Facebook, opening an email, or landing on your website, everything should feel connected. The idea is to keep your message consistent and relevant as people jump from one platform to another.”

If you’re in marketing or sales, you might be thinking, “What is the difference between cross-channel and omnichannel marketing? Isn’t that the same thing?”

Although these two tactics are closely related, they’re different. I asked Miller and Halilov to help me understand the differences between these strategies.

The Difference Between Cross-Channel & Omnichannel Marketing

It’s important not to confuse cross-channel marketing with omnichannel marketing. Both strategies depend on:

• Multiple marketing channels.
• Monitoring metrics.
• Customer interactions.

However, according to Miller, there is one key difference.

He told me, “Cross-channel is about getting all your platforms to play nice together — like linking your email campaign with social ads so your audience gets a cohesive experience. Omnichannel takes it up a notch by putting the customer at the very center. It’s less about channels and more about creating one ongoing, unified experience that feels totally personalized.”

I know it might sound like bringing all of your channels together is a challenge. Cross-channel marketing is somewhat simpler than omnichannel marketing.

With cross-channel marketing, you’re bringing each of your platforms into unison with each other so that they build off each other and amplify their impact. You’re creating content around the same message, but in a way that fits the platform. This might mean tweaking your copy for social media, creating video content, or sending emails.

For example, if a prospect reads one of your blog posts looking for a solution to their pain points, they might receive a related email later mentioning the same topic. Then, when they scroll through social media, they might see an ad with a catchy headline about how your product solves the problem.

Each platform functions differently, and your content supports those roles.

Why use cross-channel marketing?

Regardless of your industry, understanding your target persona is key to an effective marketing strategy. I have found that you can‘t market effectively if you don’t have a thorough understanding of who you’re marketing to. Otherwise, it’s like blowing on a dandelion — you’re just scattering marketing efforts into the wind and hoping that something lands correctly.

So, instead of scattering your efforts in various directions, take my advice: You need to understand your target persona and how they interact with brands and make buying decisions. This means plugging into the channels where your customers get the information to make these decisions and looking hard into how they want to receive information.

There are a ton of benefits to doing this, too.

Cross-Channel Marketing Benefits

When I asked Nathaniel about the benefits of cross-channel marketing, he told me, “Cross-channel marketing keeps your message consistent across platforms, creating a seamless experience for your audience. It means better engagement, higher conversions, and a more cohesive brand presence.”

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of deploying a cross-channel business marketing strategy.

1. Increased Engagement

With the sheer volume of ads consumers see in a day, many have gone (me included) what I like to call “ad-blind.” In other words, your customers scroll past your PPC ads, boosted posts, and marketing emails without giving them a thought.

However, if I’ve been working on figuring out a complex issue for my team and have already come across a brand that I view as an authority on that issue, receiving a marketing email or seeing an ad about that topic is more likely to catch my attention and not get deleted in my daily inbox cleaning efforts.

Consumers respond positively to personalized content. For example, calls to action that contain customized content perform 202% better than generic CTAs.

2. Proven ROI

As Miller told me, cross-channel marketing leads to higher conversions. Combining your efforts with a cross-channel marketing approach can:

• Break down silos that decontextualize metrics.
• Clarify the touch points to see how a viewer became a lead and customer.
• Help you refine your marketing approach.

For example, if you consider your marketing efforts from a single-channel or multi-channel approach, your email marketing team may be focused on getting opens or CTA impressions. Meanwhile, your social media team may be focused on getting impressions or likes. Finally, your content team may be looking at blog views.

To me, separating these channels to an individual level is somewhat chaotic and can lead to false numbers. So, not only does cross-channel marketing create a clearer roadmap for refining your marketing efforts, but it also helps to avoid falling into the traps of vanity metrics.

3. Greater Brand Presence

Creating a marketing campaign across your available channels will increase your brand presence. By doing this, your leads will be saying, “I’ve seen that brand everywhere!”

The more you promote your brand, the more potential leads will see it. It reminds me of the saying, “Curiosity killed the cat.” With appropriate and consistent messaging across all platforms, your leads will be curious enough to check out your brand, especially if you promise to solve their problems.

4. Greater Customer Loyalty

Solving your customers’ problems leads to an improved brand experience for consumers, which increases a buyer’s sense of delight.

I’m pretty sure this is Marketing 101, but, a delighted customer is a loyal customer, and combining loyalty with delight is the recipe for creating your most powerful marketing tool: a brand ambassador.

Consumers generally want a reason to keep coming back. It’s easier to know that you have a go-to resource for a given issue or need than to go back to the drawing board and research, compare, and test solutions.

For many buyers, it‘s simply more convenient to upgrade or purchase additional services from a provider they already know and trust — even if it’s slightly more costly — than to find someone brand new who can do the same thing. When a customer trusts you and genuinely wants to help them succeed and your unified marketing and customer service efforts demonstrate that, you remain front of mind as an authority.

Why Cross-Channel Marketing Can Be Challenging

Although Halilov mentioned that cross-channel marketing is slightly easier to implement than omnichannel marketing, it’s still not without its challenges. I asked both him and Miller to guide me through some of its pitfalls so I could learn (and share!) how to avoid them.

Here’s what they told me.

1. Staying consistent is challenging.

Halilov mentioned to me that the biggest challenge he finds with cross-channel communication is staying consistent. He said, “In my opinion, the key challenge here is to keep your messaging consistent on every platform while also balancing that with customizing your campaign for every platform.”

Think about it: You need to align multiple channels and ensure each content on your various platforms is relevant. As I’ve learned, the more cohesive your strategy is, the better it will be.

Is this impossible? No. But is it challenging? It can be.

2. Messaging can become repetitive.

Consistency is key to cross-channel campaigns. However, sometimes, remaining consistent can become boring. Miller warned me about this. He said, “One of the biggest challenges is keeping your messaging unified without being boring or repetitive.”

This means you’ll need to work with a copywriter and your marketing team to create relevant but different copy for your marketing campaigns. So, while it can be challenging, there’s also a viable solution.

3. Tracking metrics can be difficult.

After learning about the various channels that must be combined for cross-channel marketing to work, I wasn’t surprised to learn that both Nathanial and Ruslan thought tracking metrics could be a bit of a challenge. Ruslan told me, “Another challenge is tracking the performance of your campaigns. It’s simple: the more channels you use, the more data you get, and the more effort it takes to analyze it.”

However, Ruslan did mention several analytical tools you can use. With the right tools, tracking your metrics is less of a problem.

Cross-Channel Marketing Examples

Let’s take a look at a couple of cross-channel marketing examples to get a better idea of how they work. It’s important to understand that cross-channel marketing isn’t just about sales. Instead, it’s about creating a more unified customer experience.

The first example of a cross-channel campaign comes straight from my Facebook notifications.

1. VistaPrint

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about printing new marketing materials for my business recently. With Facebook’s recent addition of ads in users’ notifications, I saw an ad that said, “Get seen with bold signs.” This ad caught my eye because VistaPrint is a company I have used to print mailers and other marketing materials.

VistaPrint doesn’t just use Facebook to target their customers, though. If I had just seen their ad in my notifications, I likely would have skipped right over it. Instead, they also run YouTube ads and television commercials. Check out this commercial, for example:

Notice that the intent of the commercial is similar to the Facebook notification. The commercial’s intent is to prove that you can get seen by your customers when you use VistaPrint for your printing. The Facebook notification says the same thing, just with less copy.

Instead of focusing on making a sale, the ad and the YouTube commercial speak directly to my pain points and provide a solution: get more business with marketing materials that stand out. The more I see VistaPrint in my notifications, newsfeeds, and television, the more I’m reminded that I need to order new business cards and signs.

2. Shopify

Shopify cross-channel communications is another great example of this marketing strategy at work. They are pros at using various marketing channels — channels I wouldn’t think of right off the bat. Here’s an example of a Shopify Facebook ad that is straight from their ad library.

Looking at the details of this ad, I can see they’re running it across the Meta platform, both on Facebook and Instagram. So, based on their target audience, they might see the Shopify ad in their Facebook feeds and then again on Instagram as they scroll through the app. Choosing to run this ad on both platforms ensures Shopify catches all of its audience members multiple times.

Shopify doesn’t stop there with its marketing. Instead, they’ve found a creative place to put their ads. Nearly all of the podcasts I listen to feature a Shopify ad. Typically, the Shopify ad is in the middle of the show, meaning that users will hear it because they’re invested in the content. Shopify also partners with content creators and gets them to read their ads. This helps create trust with the listeners.

If I sold physical products on my website or in a storefront, I would consider using Shopify — just because I hear about it so much.

3. Canva

Canva also uses cross-channel marketing to bring in new leads. As a former teacher, I used Canva quite often to create presentations. However, when I left the classroom, the way I used Canva changed.

Here’s how they draw me as a customer with their emails now:

Instead of using teacher language, they use business lingo (strategy sessions, anyone?). Using the right wording in your ads and emails can capture the right audience that you want to focus on. For example, if this email mentioned something like, “Use this whiteboard to teach a virtual lesson,” I would have ignored it. I’m no longer in the classroom so that no longer appeals to me.

Imagine seeing this email in your inbox, and then you see this YouTube ad before a video:

Chances are you’ll remember Canva’s functionality and be interested enough to check it out the next time you need to create something for your job.

How to Get Started with Cross-Channel Marketing

When starting with cross-channel marketing, it‘s important to remember that you’ll likely need to tweak your approach and make ongoing optimizations as you get better at it. The more data you collect, the better you‘ll understand your customers’ cross-channel buying experience, giving you insights into improvements you can make across each channel.

Here’s how to launch a cross-channel marketing campaign of your own:

1. Create your customer persona.

If you haven’t clearly defined your customer persona, do so before diving into cross-channel marketing. Defining your customer persona is the first step and the backbone of any successful cross-channel strategy. This helps you have unified data within a customer data platform (CDP).

Your business’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform will often be able to manage this data, so you can likely get started by building on your existing tools. For example, if you use HubSpot’s customer platform, you can create customer persona markers, which will help you organize your data better.

2. Set up your analytical tools across your CDP.

Speaking of CRMs and CDPs, Miller made a point about how important it is to integrate your tech. He suggested, “Use tools like HubSpot to manage campaigns across channels and connect your CRM for better tracking so nothing falls through the cracks.”

Regardless of the specific CDP you choose, you‘ll want to ensure you have the analytics data available to capture each of your leads’ touchpoints. Remember, Halilov told me that tracking data can be a challenge, but there are analytics tools to help.

Typically, this will involve tracking URLs or browser cookies to associate online actions with an individual lead‘s contact profile. You’ll want to be able to see which emails they‘ve been sent and have interacted with, which social media campaigns have made an impression on them, the blog posts that they’ve read, PPC campaigns they’ve clicked on, and conversations that your sales or service team have had with that customer. Whatever channels you have used for marketing — or will use — need to be reflected within your CDP.

3. Clarify your customer segments.

What I find neat about leads and customers is that while they’re similar, they’re not all the same. You can segment customers together based on their interactions with your brand. Based on the collected data, you can determine which customer belongs to which segment.

Ideally, your CDP will be able to create meaningful reports across customers that help you visualize and understand this data. But, even if you have to do some number-crunching by hand, your third step to getting started with cross-channel marketing is to understand the varying segments within your customer persona.

It’s easy to think your customer persona encompasses a single customer profile. However, the longer I’ve been in marketing, the more I realize that customers’ interactions with your brand can vary from one lead to the next. These interactions can distinguish between a successful cross-channel campaign and a failure.

4. Analyze your customer data to uncover trends.

Once you’ve collected enough data, you’ll need to analyze it to identify trends and patterns. Miller told me this can “help you understand different paths your customers take and make sure each touchpoint feels seamless.”

For example, you’ll likely notice that most of your leads who have already converted into customers have something in common. Those commonalities could be the minimum number of interactions before converting, the average time spent interacting with your marketing efforts before converting, or even specific campaigns with high conversion rates.

By analyzing your customer data and creating a clear mental picture of the segments within your contact database, you can determine which channels to prioritize and the type of content that performs best for your business across each channel.

Pro tip: I find it important to document and contextualize each interaction so that you can successfully cater your content to your customers.

5. Use smart content to unify your interactions.

If your CDP is integrated with your content management system (CMS), I have good news! This step will likely be easier than if they‘re operating independently of each other. Even if they aren’t integrated, you can still be successful with cross-channel marketing; it may just require more hands-on work to personalize your content.

With your customers analyzed and segmented based on their interactions, your next step is to begin the process of customizing your content so that it matches each viewer’s needs.

The most direct way of accomplishing this is to utilize smart content. Smart content is dynamic content determined by a certain set of criteria. To put it simply, smart content says, “If a viewer has done this, show them that.” This is why it‘s necessary to have all of your customer interaction data unified within your CDP. You’ll be able to identify who has done what clearly, so your subsequent interactions will be built upon established touchpoints.

If your CMS is able to utilize smart content, create content — or at least sections of content — based upon the segmented lists you’ve broken your contacts into.

I find giving an example helpful to explain how smart content works. Let‘s say you’re publishing a blog post about one of your core services. You can customize this blog post for various segments. It might look like this:

• Based on past interactions, the warmest leads will see a CTA to contact sales to get started.
• If another customer has already viewed your pricing page, this CTA may show an offer for them to claim 10% off.
• For contacts who haven’t had many interactions or for whom this is their first interaction, this section may be replaced with recommended content about the same topic.

Regardless of where these readers are in the buyer‘s journey, you’re showing them the most relevant content to their situation. If your CMS isn‘t integrated with your CDP or CRM, you’ll want to leverage other means of communication to tailor your content to your viewers’ individual needs manually.

For example, if you’ve identified three distinct variations of one of your personas, put that information to good use. I suggest creating three variations of your next newsletter so that each segment gets the most relevant content. Additionally, you can use this knowledge to create custom audiences for targeted advertising on social media.

6. Optimize and repeat.

In my opinion, one of the biggest advantages of cross-channel marketing is that you can report on and analyze the ways in which your marketing strategies in one channel affect another. Simply having this data gives you valuable insights into your ROI.

However, if you want your cross-channel marketing to be even more productive, you can also analyze this information to find ways to optimize your approach continuously.

Use this data to your advantage and run experiments like:

• A/B testing in your emails.
• Adjusting the traits of your target audience for Facebook ads.
• Tweaking placement of your calls-to-action to continue unearthing new and valuable insights into your customers.

As you prepare to implement additional cross-channel marketing campaigns, you can enrich each step with the data you’ve already gathered.

7. Maintain consistency.

Halilov advised me that a cross-channel marketing strategy only works if you maintain consistency across your platforms. This doesn’t mean creating one post and blasting it across your channels. Instead, I find cross-channel marketing works better when you tailor your content to each channel.

Nathaniel agreed that this is the way to go, too. He told me, “Your brand voice should be recognizable everywhere, but don’t forget to adjust the content to match the vibe of each platform.”

It’s also important to tap into the type and format your customers consume most. For the fourth year in a row, our Marketing Trends Report found that videos, especially short-form videos, are the most popular with marketers and audiences — 30% of marketers who do not currently use video in their strategy plan to start in 2025.

But keep in mind that creating videos for TikTok and cross-posting doesn’t always work. An example of this is the emergence of Threads. According to a Buffer experiment, cross-posting on Threads doesn’t work as well as on other platforms. This is because Threads is very niche-specific and has its vibe, which brings me to another nugget of advice from Halilov. He told me, “Research all the platforms you use to understand what works best for them.”

It may take some trial and error to nail down the copy for each of your channels, but trust me, it’s worth it. You can maintain consistency across your channels by creating cohesive content focused on each channel’s vibe.

How Will You Grow with Cross-Channel Marketing?

By leveraging cross-channel marketing, your team will be able to execute powerful marketing strategies, and by unifying your data within a customer data platform, you‘ll also have more meaningful insights into your customer’s behavior. That knowledge means that you‘ll have greater opportunities to cater your sales, marketing, and customer service interactions to each and every one of your contacts. When you can access that information, you’re on track to delight your customers at every turn. From there, you can grow wherever you want to.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in December 2018 and has since been updated for comprehensiveness.

Customer data: can’t understand it, can’t afford NOT to understand it. That’s how I used to feel about data, and I thought throwing AI into the mix would make the confusion even worse. I’m happy to report just how wrong I was.

Artificial intelligence (AI) makes collecting, interpreting, and acting on customer data far easier than traditional data tools. There are also countless products on the market to help make this process as effective and fast as possible.

Customer data platforms have been a resource for companies of all sizes for a long time, and AI has added a level of operational ease that will assist even the most numbers-adverse individual (raises hand) in confidently making data-backed decisions. Let’s look at what unique opportunities AI brings to the customer data conversation, and which platforms are the most popular (and why).

Table of Contents

• What Is an AI Customer Data Platform?
• How Does an AI Customer Data Platform Work?
• Benefits of an AI Customer Data Platform
• Pitfalls to Avoid
• Examples of Some AI CDPs I Recommend
• Detangling Your Data

What Is an AI Customer Data Platform?

An AI customer data platform (CDP) is software that gathers, organizes, unifies, and interprets customer data using artificial intelligence. It offers an unparalleled understanding of your customers’ first-party data, aiding in decision-making in every department.

Data collection must be done ethically to remain lawful and have adequate privacy compliance, and the data infrastructure must be secure to avoid breaches and outages.

How Does an AI Customer Data Platform Work?

The first step in using an AI CDP is setting it up to collect data. Your chosen platform will automatically sync with your website, email, CRM, etc., to unify diverse data sources into a single source of truth.

Then, a variety of AI functions, such as natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and predictive analytics, will process your data.

Once your data is processed, you’re provided with actionable recommendations that advance your sales, marketing, and advertising efforts.

Benefits of an AI Customer Data Platform

While you can choose a CDP that doesn’t have an AI focus, I think there are endless applications of artificial intelligence worth considering. Here are the specific benefits you can expect when using an AI CDP.

Future-Facing Data Process

The data landscape is changing — rapidly. Cookies are dead. Regulations are changing. AI is being thrown around like confetti (and not always responsibly).

Many data platforms are working AI into their infrastructure, but not every platform is monitoring the changes on a larger scale. This can lead to important details being missed, for example not adhering to new regulations like the EU Artificial Intelligence Act.

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What if you’re not keeping up with the times? Your platform could still be relying on cookies, which have gone stale.

Statistic: When Google announced its phase-out of website cookies, 41% of marketers said their biggest challenge would be their inability to track the right data.

Data platforms that aren’t aggressively surveying and responding to changing regulations won’t be keeping up with the times for long. Small business owners aren’t data scientists; they can’t be expected to run their businesses, monitor the data landscape, and react accordingly.

This is why I think it’s beneficial to use CDPs that are leaders in the AI space, who will monitor AI’s evolution and adapt.

Get predictive insights.

AI can provide deeper predictive analytics than traditional data software. This predictive modeling turns a pile of numbers into actionable insights that can offer more personalized customer experiences.

Example: AI CDP platform Blueshift generates a rating for each customer based on their likelihood of converting, which updates automatically as more data is collected. This creates predictive segments, making highly targeted campaigns easy to develop and employ.

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Improve customer experience.

Data isn’t only used by sales and marketing to help woo new customers — existing customers benefit greatly from it as well.

Customers’ information being gathered and processed by AI helps your customer service team deliver faster, more relevant support. Customer profiles contain more information than just purchase history and first-party data. AI platforms gather communication across channels and provide unique and actionable insights for service reps.

I know this can make some users nervous, but I welcome this because I’ve seen firsthand how AI is improving customer service for platforms that I use. And I’m not the only one.

AI in the wild: The next time you’re engaging with customer services, look critically at the conversation and see if you can notice past communications being accounted for.

Leverage machine learning.

Machine learning is a very powerful function of AI that enables software to read your data, learn from it, and make predictive insights. While similar results can come from data analysis tools, machine learning does this automatically without needing to be programmed. In marketing and sales, it enables data-driven decision making.

Pro tip: I suggest you start using machine learning with a focused scope to improve accuracy. The vast amounts of data will naturally lead to a lot of unnecessary data, and starting with a wide focus won’t get the same results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBqFqcWVjCo&list=PLlw9qxNtFom2JqbUWKTALkvQ8TYl2Z5F0

Personalize customer experiences.

Recommender system algorithms changed the online experience radically — these algorithms took millions of social media posts and identified which ones you would like most. It offered a tailored experience to each user, which can now be taken to even further heights with AI-powered insights into customer interests. This can advance your sales, customer service, and marketing efforts.

Statistic: A study by Accenture discovered that 91% of consumers reported being more likely to shop with brands that remember, recognize, and provide relevant recommendations and offers.

For example, your data platform can leverage behavioral data to identify customers at a specific stage of the customer journey. Then, run targeted ads to that unique group. You can further the financial impact of personalization by only targeting high-value customers with a high customer lifetime value.

Pitfalls to Avoid

We don’t need to dwell too long on the downsides of using an AI CDP, but I think it’s worth touching on briefly. You’re not ready for an AI CDP if the following statements describe you:

• Lack of a plan. Gathering data without knowing how to use it is like setting sail without a destination.
• No team training. It’s a miscalculation to assume that your team understands AI and how it’s working to help them (not replace them).
• Lackadaisical approach to AI ethics. Ignoring AI ethics puts you on the fast track to losing customer trust and sinking below industry standards.

Pro tip: Understanding your KPIs is essential for leveraging customer data efficiently. Use our free customer service metrics calculator to help.

With the benefits and pitfalls understood, let’s get up close and personal with some of the most-recommended platforms on the market.

Examples of Some AI CDPs I Recommend

I’ve reviewed five of the most popular AI CDPs out there. Here’s a summary of their key features, stand-out qualities, and a summary of what online reviewers have to say.

1. Twilio Segment

Twilio Segment (previously just Segment) has a heavy emphasis on using data and improving customer satisfaction and experience. I like the focus on activating customer data using pre-built tools in your dashboard. Key features include a unified view of customer data, predictive insights, and 400+ advanced integrations.

A powerful element is the Protocols feature, which tackles data cleansing. You can also explore features that are specific to individual departments, like data, marketing, and products. When you set up your account, you can select which department you work in. Then, you get a specific guided onboarding process. I thought this was a great touch that helped reduce overwhelm.

Price: Free trial followed by company-specific pricing.

Reviews: Online reviewers like the robust integration library and real-time data processing but complain about the price.

What I like: Twilio Segment has some catchy copywriting on its homepage: “Know each individual like they are your only customer.” This is an easy thing to say, but they followed through. I saw firsthand the personalized customer experience. On my first visit, the AI chatbot provided this message:

Then, on my second visit, it customized the chatbot based on my time already spent on their website:

This type of data usage felt natural and personal; more than anything, it got my attention.

2. Adobe Experience Platform

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The Adobe Experience Platform is a powerful AI-fueled CDP that funnels many data points into one unified profile that updates in real time, without relying on third-party cookies. It integrates seamlessly with other Adobe products as well as major platforms you may use, like Salesforce, Paypal, Amazon, etc.

Data is pulled from both internal and external data sources, creating a holistic view of your customers at a glance. Not only is your customer data gathered for your review, but you can also have a conversation about it with Adobe’s AI system, called Adobe Sensei. For example, you can ask, “What’s my top audience this quarter?” and get immediate answers pulled from your sea of company data. I think this feature is amazing!

Price: Tailored pricing for each client.

Reviews: Online reviewers like the platform for both data activation and governance but cite steep learning curves as a drawback.

What I like: The ease of creating a customer or audience segment. Customer segmentation allows you to speak directly to specific groups within your customer base. Sometimes, these groups are easy to identify, such as customers who purchased a certain product within a set timeframe. Other times, AI can help you find much more nuanced groups, such as customers who are disengaged with your content and most likely not renew their subscription.

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3. Salesforce Customer 360

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Salesforce Customer 360 is technically a customer relationship manager (CRM), but it’s a large, umbrella software that also fulfills the role of an AI CDP. Salesforce summarizes their platform capabilities this way: AI + Data + CRM + Trust. The Salesforce name is synonymous with trust. The company is a longtime pillar of the data world, and they’re now leading the way with how AI and data are integrated.

Price: Free trial followed by company-specific pricing.

Reviews: Online reviewers like the flexibility and scalability of the product, but the learning curve is cited as a common complaint.

What I like: I used Salesforce at my first salaried job out of college, and I remember how overwhelming I found it. In hindsight, I think that there’s no way for a software this enormous to feel approachable at first use. Salesforce invites you to set up a free one-on-one call with their team so they can discuss their software’s application in your business, which will help offer you a map through this massive platform.

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4. ActionIQ

ActionIQ is a more contemporary AI-fueled data platform with advanced data architecture options. It’s a much younger platform than Adobe and Salesforce — Adobe is old enough to be ActionIQ’s parent. The advantage is that it feels more modern. As a user, I also feel like there’s a focus on adoption. Instead of reading endless info on product features, you can look at specifics for your different departments: marketing, information technology teams, data teams, and advertising.

Price: Tailored pricing for each client.

Reviews: ActionIQ has fewer reviews than other platforms, but customers shared that they liked the customer support and expertise of the team. Some reviewers also mention that there are kinks still being worked out.

What I like: Combine the comfortable user experience with its customer support, and this platform is very approachable for small businesses. I felt seen (and slightly called out) when they described their platform as having a “marketer-friendly interface.” This wasn’t just a line of sales copy — looking at the user interface, I feel like it rings true.

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5. Blueshift

Blueshift describes itself as a three-piece combo: a CDP, an AI-based decision aid, and a cross-channel marketing platform. It focuses on data unification across channels, then leveraging AI decision-making to save time and improve efficiency. Customer reviews cite the ease of use and customer support as the biggest pros. Blueshift gets credit for being the only AI CDP on this list with a free plan.

Price: Free and $750+ per month.

Reviews: Online reviewers cited the automation and onboarding process as pros, while others mentioned some complexity when implementing.

What I like: The volume of data available is incomprehensible to me, so I like Blueshift’s emphasis on data activation. It feels to me like this platform was designed with the entire team in mind, which helps with software adoption and avoiding data silos. The focus on the customer journey, paired with the built-in generative AI features, paints a really exciting picture of what data can mean for your marketing efforts.

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Detangling Your Data

It shouldn’t take a data science team to use an AI CDP. Thankfully, there are enough products on the market for each business to find what suits them best. I hope these statistics, tips, and product recommendations helped demystify the process of inviting AI into your data management process.

The presence of AI everywhere makes it feel like you’re living in the future, doesn’t it? To quote Spock, “Data is the key to everything.” Boldly take your customer data where no one has gone before.

You did it — you created the perfect survey! But what’s the point if no one takes it??

I’ve found a good survey email subject line is the key to getting customers to open your survey and share their feedback.

And since customer feedback is invaluable, I’ll review the best survey titles and survey email subject lines to help guarantee that first click.

Continue reading or jump ahead:

• Survey Title Examples
• Survey Email Subject Line Best Practices
• Survey Subject Line vs Survey Title
• What Makes a Great Survey Title?
• What Makes a Great Subject Line for a Survey?
• Best Subject Lines for Surveys

Survey Subject Line vs Survey Title

A survey title is written directly on the survey landing page. Its function is both internal and external: Each survey title will be used by companies to track survey results, and it will also compel readers to begin taking the survey.

A survey subject line is displayed in customers’ email inboxes. Subject lines have one core purpose: to compel readers to open the email. There’s an enormous amount of psychology and research that goes into crafting the most successful email subject lines possible.

Get our free guide: 100+ email subject lines that work.

What Makes a Great Survey Title?

Did you know that survey pages can have very high bounce rates? You may have gotten a reader to click on the survey link, but that doesn’t mean that they’re compelled to complete it just yet.

Here are some survey title characteristics I’ve discovered that successful campaigns embody:

• Unique title every time. Your company may run the same survey every quarter or year, but it needs to be given a unique name so that you can track each campaign accurately.
• Personality. You’re asking customers to put time into your survey, so start off on the right foot by putting in some effort yourself. Avoid generic titles like “Customer Satisfaction Survey.” When I see a survey with these blank generic titles, I assume the company put very little thought into it.
• Include the customer. One of the most powerful words in copywriting is “you.” Tell us your opinion, we want your thoughts, how did you find us? Break the fourth wall and look the customer directly in the eyes.

I’m going to share a lot of examples of these principles in action as you read on.

In most cases, your survey title and your survey email subject line may go hand in hand. Let’s review some examples of survey titles based on the type of survey you’re running.

Customer Feedback Survey Titles

Here are a few customer feedback survey title ideas:

• How did you find us?
• Tell us about your last customer service experience.
• What can we do better?

Use our free customer satisfaction survey templates to gather this information quickly!

Net Promoter Score® Survey Titles

Here are a few NPS survey title ideas:

• How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?
• Rate us on a scale of 1-10.
• How do you feel about our product?

Market Research Survey Titles

Here are a few market research survey title ideas:

• What motivates you to do business with us?
• Share how you would rate our pricing for this product.
• Why did you choose our services?

What Makes a Great Subject Line for a Survey?

Your subject lines make or break your survey campaigns, in my opinion.

Statistic: 35% of customers report opening emails based on the subject line alone.

Here are some characteristics that successful email subject lines are made of:

• Clear intent. While survey emails with curious subject lines may get high open rates, they won’t necessarily yield more responses. I hate feeling tricked into opening an email with a misleading subject line — no one likes feeling like this. Clear subject lines build trust.
• Personalization. Email personalization is easy to achieve, and it helps subject lines stand out. I personally find that seeing my name at the end of the email subject line gets my attention more than any other type of personalization.
• Familiar tone. When I regularly open emails from a business, I know their tone, and it rings alarm bells when the tone suddenly changes. Ultimately, I recommend letting your normal email marketing team have the final say on the subject line copy to keep your company on brand.

Pro tip: A/B test your email subject lines to help you gain insight into how your audience reacts to your content.

To build on these principles, let’s look at the best survey email subject lines.

Best Subject Lines for Surveys

Below, I’ve compiled 21 captivating survey email subject lines to help you grab your audience’s attention and increase survey participation.

1. [Name], we want to hear from you.

Why this works: The name personalization in the subject line makes the outreach more human, and you’re letting the customer know that you’re listening.

2. How can we do better?

Why this works: You’re recognizing that your products and services aren’t perfect, but you’re also willing to take the necessary steps to improve. I think this show of humility gives customers more confidence in your brand.

3. Give us your feedback, get 30% off.

Why this works: This shows the customer that you want to create a mutually beneficial relationship, and it incentivizes them to take your survey.

4. Help us help you.

Why this works: This is another relationship-building tactic because it tells the customer that you want to work together to meet their needs.

5. Be honest — how are we doing?

Why this works: By encouraging honesty, you’re creating an environment where customers are empowered to speak freely and more likely to contribute their thoughts and ideas. In my experience, honest feedback is the most valuable feedback.

6. Your opinion matters. Let’s chat.

Why this works: You’re letting the recipient know that you care about how they feel, and you’re giving them a forum to make their thoughts heard.

Here’s an example of this subject line copy in the wild, sent by Ring.

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7. How was [product]? Tell us all about it.

Why this works: I like how the product personalization allows you to specify the type of feedback you’re requesting, and it makes the customer feel like you appreciate them as an individual.

8. More than a penny ($25) for your thoughts?

Why this works: This recognizable play on words is eye-catching, and the incentive gives customers a reason to participate in your survey.

I found an example of this subject line in the wild, sent by Tailor Brands:

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9. How do you really feel about [service]?

Why this works: This encourages customers to air out their true feelings, and the service personalization adds that human touch that customers are looking for.

10. Share your feedback. We’re all ears.

Why this works: I think the “we’re all ears” phrasing emphasizes that your company is willing to accept feedback with open arms and ready to act on it.

11. Thoughts on our customer service? 👂

Why this works: When you make customers feel valued, you win. Plus, existing customers can point out holes and shortcomings with your customer service better than your internal team can.

Statistic: 64% of customers say they’ll choose a new company to purchase from if the original company doesn’t have good customer service — no matter how enjoyable they find the product.

Need help managing your customer feedback? Use the HubSpot customer feedback tool.

12. It’s been 14 days. How’s it going?

Why it works: Automating this customer success email survey to send within a close time frame after purchase can help turn a one-time purchase into a long-term relationship. You also get incredibly powerful data from customers by asking if they’ve quickly achieved their goals with your product.

The subject line was inspired by the company Bellroy, which sent me the below email using the subject line “Day 30. What’s happened so far?”

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13. What’s NOT working with [product], [name]?

Why it works: Negative customer feedback, while unpleasant, is an enormous opportunity for companies. To quote Bill Gates, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” I find it feels honest and authentic to see a company asking to hear your complaints.

Statistic: 62% of customers have reported that they share a bad experience with others. I think it’s better to hear that bad experience directly so you can address it head-on.

14. Survey closing 🚨 last day to share your thoughts

Why it works: Putting a time limit on your survey creates a sense of urgency for readers and inspires action, getting attention and improving response rates.

15. Name, how did you like [purchase]?

Why it works: While getting big-picture feedback from customers can feel like pulling teeth, it’s much easier to engage customers in specific satisfaction surveys. This is another type of customer success email survey that can help you get very specific insights into how customers are finding your product or service.

Inspired by this automated email sent by Amazon:

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16. Not your average satisfaction survey 👀 (takes 60 secs)

Why it works: Customer surveys are a dime a dozen, and customers are constantly asked to participate. Give viewers a reason to feel that yours is worth completing. Just make sure that you deliver something “un-average” in your email body!

17. Our survey is literal trash without you, [first name]

Why it works: This funny, candid subject line is less corporate-speak and more friendly text. Old, large companies rarely have the flexibility to take risks with humor (who wants to upset board members by being “unprofessional?”), so a casual tone is a superpower only wielded by the little guys.

18. Tell us what you think of [company name] in 30 seconds

Why it works: The 30-second time clock is the secret ingredient of this email’s subject line. Who doesn’t have 30 seconds to spare? Customers will appreciate the ease and give quick, candid feedback.

Here’s an example of this email survey subject line I found in the wild, sent by Thumbtack:

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19. Yes, a company survey (but NOT a waste of time) 🦄

Why it works: Pulling the viewer’s attention to the word “NOT” is eye-catching and creates intrigue. It’s slightly clickbait-y, but just make sure you follow through on your promise in the email body. The unicorn emoji is a nod to the slang definition of “unicorn,” meaning that this is rare.

20. Want your ideas reviewed by the team?

Why it works: Everyone likes to feel listened to, and this subject line plays right into that customer psychology. It also implies that readers have valuable insights that the team can benefit from, building a positive connection.

21. We’d looooooove your feedback, [name]!

Why this works: The exaggeration and candid nature of this subject line make it feel less like corporate marketing and more like a text from a friend.

This subject line was inspired by the below example from Flywheel. I love that they followed this subject lineup with a line of party emojis inside the email body copy.

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Now that we’ve reviewed some survey email subject line examples, let’s discuss best practices for writing your own.

These are my best practices I hope you consider when writing your next survey email subject line.

Align with your goal.

Your survey email subject line should support your overarching survey goal. Since there are many different types of surveys to choose from, think about the following:

• Why did you choose that particular survey method?
• What are you hoping to get out of the survey?
• How do you plan to leverage the feedback you receive?

I recommend you make it clear to customers why you’re running the survey so they understand how they can contribute. Here’s a great example from South Dakota tourism that aims to re-engage cold email subscribers by asking them to click on the tourism experience that the recipient would enjoy most.

The subject line “Let’s Reconnect ❤️” is short and sweet, which makes it no surprise that it leads to a very short survey. The results of this survey may feed the brand’s content creation plan or feed future tailored email campaigns.

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Keep it concise.

The best survey email subject lines are brief and to the point. You have the body of the email to capture the nitty-gritty details, so only include the most compelling information in the subject.

I think a good rule of thumb to follow is to keep your subject line under 10 words and to use no more than 40-50 characters.

Brevity gets the recipient’s attention and respects their time — it’s a copywriting superpower. Here’s a great example from Virgin Airlines — the subject line “Tell us all about it” says everything it needs to say in 20 brief characters.

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Make it personal.

Customers want to feel like you value them personally, so it’s important to craft a subject line that humanizes the interaction and adds a personal touch. I suggest using their name or specific details about their purchase history as part of your survey communications to show them you acknowledge them as an individual.

Warning: Using someone’s name alone isn’t effective enough to get a positive response rate. I saw an email from one company that simply used the subject line “👋 Hey [First Name]!” I imagine this got pretty good open rates… and a fair share of unsubscribes. This is a flop in my book.

It feels sneaky to use someone’s name as clickbait to trigger their curiosity. Instead, try thoughtful, personalized subject lines. Here’s an email example of a more effective personalized subject line from Golden State Warriors that used the subject line “[First Name], We Want to Hear Your Thoughts!”

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Highlight incentives.

In a crowded inbox, a gift stands out (let’s be honest, where DOESN’T a gift stand out?). If you’re giving out a reward for survey participation, let your customers know that upfront.

You can (and should) highlight discounts, freebies, and other offers directly in the subject line. In other words, tell customers what they’ll get in return for their participation. Quid pro quo. A good subject line highlights this right away to hook the reader.

Here’s an example from coffee company Grind: “Answer a five-minute survey, win a Coffee Machine.” As you’re writing these incentivized headlines, be sure not to step into the spam territory (next time).

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Avoid inbox spam filters.

Did you know that certain email subject lines can send your emails straight to the inbox graveyard — the spam folder? Large numbers, like saying “$1 million,” can get your email marked as spam. You may be surprised to hear that the word “free” is also on that list, though using one trigger word isn’t an automatic sentencing.

I should also mention you’re not just trying to avoid inbox spam detectors here; you also don’t want the recipient assuming the email is spam.

Statistic: 69% of customers report marking an email as spam based on the subject line alone.

Here’s a great subject line example from Lonely Planet: “Help Lonely Planet map our next chapter 🗺️.” There’s no exaggerated language that raises concerns with viewers — just a simple invitation.

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Center the customer.

I currently have a survey email in my inbox with the subject line “[Company] Needs Your Feedback!” and… it misses the mark. Why? Because it centers the company instead of the customer.

The best email surveys make viewers feel like the CENTER of the company’s universe. Beyond offering an incentive, email survey subject lines can also communicate to viewers that the survey is meant to improve their experience.

The below answer is from The Browser Company, and it’s not a typical survey email. The bulk of this email campaign is spent letting viewers know how customer feedback has improved the platform. I think the subject line “Arc Update | Your feedback = our new features” hooks readers, then at the bottom, with just a single paragraph, it invites more user feedback.

Most companies tell customers that their feedback matters; this email shows customers.

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Consider an ethical angle.

As helpful as a customer satisfaction survey is, customers know that this feedback helps the company ultimately improve its sales. But I think you have an opportunity here to shine a light on the mission-based part of your company’s work with your surveys and subject lines. This is powerful because users care about the values of the companies they support.

Statistic: 82% of shoppers report preferring to support a company with values that align with theirs.

Here’s an example I found from the clothing brand Eton that asks users to weigh in on their sustainability agenda. The subject line “Take part in our sustainability survey” immediately helps readers identify this as a mission-based email survey and makes them feel included in a positive initiative.

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Use emojis 🕺

Emojis — whether you think they’re fun or unprofessional, you can’t deny that they draw your eye (especially in a crowded inbox). I find emojis are a 🚀 powerful tool for improving survey response rates.

Statistic: 60% of email subject lines containing emojis perform better than those without emojis 😳

The below survey email from Best Day Brewing has the subject line “Can We Ask You One Question? 🙏,” which sticks out thanks to the candid tone and personal feel of the emoji. I also like how the company followed through on its promise of a quick survey. They caught viewers’ attention and made it easy to engage, which is a recipe for a good email survey.

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Final Thoughts

The world (okay, my inbox) would be a better place with more intentional use of email marketing. Let’s all do the secret marketer’s handshake 🤝 and agree to be brief and intentional with people’s inboxes.

It’ll save us ALL some time. And increase the likelihood of people responding to your surveys.

Even the best surveys can go unnoticed if they don’t have the support of a strong survey email subject line. Use the tips and examples in this article to get the most out of your next survey.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Businesses live and die on their customer relationships, but engaging customers effectively is a heavy lift. Customers expect personalized help, immediate responses, and an all-knowing understanding of past conversations. If you’re asking yourself, “How do companies do it?!” I have a simple answer for you.

They use a customer engagement platform — it changes everything about the customer (and internal team) experience. But before you can engage customers better, you have to sort through dozens of platforms and choose one for your business.

Table of Contents

• What Is a Customer Engagement Platform?
• How I Tested the Best Customer Engagement Platforms
• 10 Best Customer Engagement Platforms

What Is a Customer Engagement Platform?

A customer engagement platform is software that helps businesses manage customer interactions successfully. Basic features include messaging channels and help ticket resolution. Advanced platforms combine customer service tools with artificial intelligence (AI) and customer data analysis to improve customer engagement. With a customer engagement platform, it’s possible to manage complex customer relationships en masse.

How I Tested the Best Customer Engagement Platforms

Like all SaaS tools, customer engagement platforms come in different shapes and sizes. After hours of research, review, and testing, here are the criteria that I used to evaluate the most popular customer engagement platforms:

• Price. It’s not just a number. Access to customer engagement tools is determined by the price. Scalable pricing catering to both small businesses and enterprise companies is a plus.
• Features. Each platform has dozens or hundreds of features; I looked for the basic boxes to be checked, then examined the features that are unique and noteworthy.
• AI Integration. AI has become synonymous with customer engagement. I evaluated how AI is integrated to help save time and improve customer satisfaction and user experience.
• Reviews. How satisfied are current customers? It’s the elephant in the room when you’re making a software purchase. I’ve read reviews for all these customer engagement platforms and will give you the gist.

10 Best Customer Engagement Platforms

The number of platforms on the market is overwhelming. You don’t have to drown in the endless lists of features, customer reviews, and statistics — board my life raft, and I’ll give you the overview you need to see where each platform shines.

1. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub is a platform that handles everything from basic customer support requests to complex customer interactions. You can easily switch between messaging channels, like email and live chat, in the simple in-app messaging platform. Your resource center, meetings, and other customer support resources are all integrated, and you prioritize enhancing customer satisfaction with built-in service level agreements.

Price: Free plan, then $20 per month.

Key Features

• Advanced customer help desk support.
• Customer calling.
• Knowledge base.
• Messaging capabilities.
• Built-in AI.
• Integration with HubSpot CRM (our beloved customer relationship management tool).

AI Integration: Built-in AI automatically tracks and updates customer ticket status based on your interactions. You can leverage AI in other helpful ways, like writing a message to a customer and then asking AI to change the tone (for example, making your message more professional).

Reviews: Customers love the engaged support that they receive from the HubSpot support team when they call or have a support ticket. This has been my experience as a HubSpot customer as well — even when using free products, you get an immediate response from a human. Customers also love the ease of use, while some wish it had more features.

What I like: I test a lot (a LOT) of SaaS tools and the ease of the HubSpot Service Hub is above and beyond. The focus on rapid onboarding makes it the most user-friendly customer engagement software.

2. Salesforce Service Cloud

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While this platform is technically a CRM, Salesforce itself says that a CRM can serve as a customer engagement platform when it integrates customer engagement tools. The integration between email, social media messaging, WhatsApp, chatbots, and more provides a really complete picture of customer communication touchpoints. All of these engagements are funneled into the Service Cloud, where you can quickly manage customer interactions.

Price: Try it for free, then pay $25 per user/month.

Key Features

• Mobile app for field service reps.
• Omnichannel messaging.
• Customer service routing automation.

AI Integration: Salesforce’s generative AI bot, called Einstein, has a wide range of functions, including text messaging response. AI is also used to help customer service reps navigate internal knowledge bases faster, shortening response times.

Reviews: Customers rave about the diverse applications but some say it’s easy to get lost in the endless features and settings of the platform. That’s been my experience as well.

What I like: The platform is undoubtedly powerful, but I echo some of the customer reviews that the interface feels clunky.

3. Zendesk Support Suite

Zendesk Support Suite is an AI-driven customer engagement platform that integrates diverse communication channels into one dashboard. While all customer engagement platforms manage help tickets and calls, Zendesk Support Suite also manages comments on community forums. When customers reach out on multiple channels, all communication is condensed into one help ticket to save your customer service team’s time.

Something I like is the onboarding process. New customers answer a few questions about their company and then are onboarded based on their needs. Then, you’re given an account setup checklist and a guided walk-through.

Price: Free trial, then $19 per month when billed annually.

Key Features

• Thorough communication channels like messaging, live chat, and voice.
• AI-integrated agent workspace and help center.

AI Integration: AI is deeply embedded in the Zendesk Support Suite, both on the front-facing customer side and the internal agent side. Customers’ tickets are resolved more quickly with AI support that takes previous interactions into account while processing queries. The copilot AI feature proactively gathers customer information to brief agents before they even begin their customer interaction.

Reviews: Users love how customizable this platform is but wish that it had more features.

What I like: I like how customizable and modern the platform is. Zendesk really prioritizes the user experience and that speeds up onboarding and personalizing the platform to your business.

4. Freshdesk

Freshdesk by Freshworks is a customer engagement platform that boasts fast onboarding and minimal training required to help your team hit the ground running. This intention comes through right away when you sign up — you start with a guided setup, and then you’re invited to a live hands-on training with staff that helps new users set up their accounts.

I think Freshdesk is great because it integrates with more than 1,000 other tools, scales as your business grows, and has a detailed ticketing system.

Price: Free plan, then $15 per month billed annually.

Key Features

• Advanced support ticket management.
• Streamlined agent space.
• Real-time analytics to provide immediate data insights.

AI Integration: Freshdesk AI aims to reduce agents’ time spent on email, using generative AI to help respond to tickets, assess tone, and edit. Emails can be generated with just a few keywords. Customers also benefit from AI via chatbots and automated routing to get assigned to an agent more quickly.

Reviews: Customers enjoy that Freshdesk is simple and easy to use, with many features available, with some complaints of the platform being slower than others and having less control over platform customization.

What I like: Freshdesk checks the technical boxes like similar tools, but I really like the addition of Freshdesk Arcade. This is a gamification system that awards points to agents as a way to encourage and energize repetitive tasks. I think it’s a brilliant approach to making a customer engagement platform enjoyable for the internal team.

5. Tidio

Tidio is a user-friendly customer engagement platform that was designed for ease of use; they even say that you can get it up and running within five minutes! I think they follow through on that promise — the interface is intuitive and guides you through creating your first chatbot.

The more advanced features naturally take longer to implement. The customer tracking feature generates insights into where each customer is at in the customer journey and what they need to engage and convert. Tidio integrates with 125+ tools, which is more restrictive than competitors (for comparison, Freshdesk integrates with 1,000+).

Price: Custom pricing for each company.

Key Features

• Advanced custom bots that are sales-oriented, such as an abandoned cart bot, first-time customer bot, and product recommendation bot.

AI Integration: Standard AI features are included, like AI chatbot and sentiment analysis. The chatbot feature is more robust and ecommerce-oriented than many other tools.

Reviews: Online reviewers love the onboarding ease but some say the platform is on the slower side, with some saying it slowed down their entire website.

What I like: I really like the “flows” feature. Flows are organized in your dashboard according to goals (upsell, re-engage, etc.), and you can see how many times certain flows have been used by other Tidio customers.

This makes me feel like I can easily follow in the footsteps of other big brands while I’m getting oriented, which is a really cool feature for small business owners who are wearing a lot of different hats and trying to make quick decisions.

6. Kustomer

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Kustomer is a customer engagement platform acquired by Meta in 2023, which should make it no surprise that it has a heavy data focus. The data and functionality of the platform dive deep into the customer experience. I think it’s interesting that they actually built their platform around customer profiles instead of open tickets.

Price: Prices are customized to each company.

Key Features

• AI agents for customers.
• AI assistants for reps.
• CRM.
• Cross-channel communication consolidation.

AI Integration: Kustomer uses AI to enable fast, personalized interactions. Some customer support issues are handled completely by AI, such as simple inquiries, while customer service reps also get AI agents to assist them.

Reviews: Kustomer has fewer online reviews than other platforms, but the reviews are glowing. Reviewers love how easy it is to use and frequently say that they have no product complaints.

What I like: Customer data can be overwhelming, and I like that Kustomer focuses on making the data actionable. The interface is also simpler and more intuitive than some of the more expansive platforms.

7. Khoros

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Khoros is a customer engagement platform that also serves as a social media management software that brings social listening into your reach. I like how this platform uses task prioritization, tagging, and routing to improve efficiency for communication across all digital channels and voice calls.

Based on the lack of free trial and a very underwhelming product tour, I was not sold on the value of Khoros until I saw the impressive roster of tech companies that use it, including Microsoft, Airbnb, and Zoom. These tech giants made me do a double take and look at what makes Khoros special.

Price: Pricing is customized to each company, but online reviewers mention that it’s pricey.

Key Features

• All standard features, such as self-service and agent assist, are covered by Khoros.
• A unique feature is Khoros Communities, which creates forums and rewards peer-to-peer interactions.

AI Integration: Chatbots, internal AI assistants, and all standard features are present in Khoros. This platform also offers AI to moderate your community forums, which is a unique feature (and very timely).

Reviews: Online reviewers like the powerful features of Khoros, but comment on the steep learning curve and the price. Likewise, I didn’t get the sense that this was a tool you jump into quickly without a time-heavy setup.

What I like: Community forums have had a resurgence in popularity (have you noticed all of the Reddit and Quora results on Google?), so I really like the advanced communities feature; it feels very forward-thinking. I think the gamification aspect for members, where they earn points for being active, is brilliant and has huge returns for companies that have chatty online communities.

8. Zoho

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Zoho has dozens of applications, two of which merge to create a powerful customer engagement system: Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk. Zoho CRM focuses on attracting, tracking, and closing leads, and it integrates with Zoho Desk to fulfill customer support needs.

You can get both of these (and much more) with Zoho One, an umbrella subscription that encompasses all of Zoho’s applications in one massive customer engagement tool. Zoho’s logo includes building blocks, which I find is very representative of how the platform works.

Price: Zoho One pricing starts at $37 per month and scales with the number of employees.

Key Features

• Customer support ticketing.
• Privacy and compliance.
• Sales and marketing automation.
• Omnichannel communication.

AI Integration: AI is integrated throughout the entire customer journey and user experience — generative AI, chatbots, anomaly detection in data, and more.

Reviews: Reviewers are happy with the advanced functionality and tool integration, while complaints include the learning curve and customer support.

What I like: The onboarding process is undoubtedly intimidating, thanks to all of the applications and options, but those with the patience to set it up are rewarded with advanced functionality. My experience has taught me that more isn’t always better with software, so I don’t think this is the right fit for simple needs.

9. Intercom

Intercom is a customer engagement platform with a focus on ease of use and robust communication. Users can easily switch between communication channels, going from chatting to voice calls to video calls to customer screen-sharing within the application. This is a unique feature that’s ideal for SaaS companies.

Price: Free trial, then $29 per month.

Key Features

• Inbox management.
• Help desk customization.
• Workflow design.
• Fluency in 25+ languages.

AI Integration: Intercom describes itself as an “AI-first” customer service platform, and has an AI agent for customers, an AI copilot for customer reps, plus an AI analyst generating recommendations for leaders.

Reviews: Intercom gets raving reviews. In G2’s 2024 customer satisfaction survey, Intercom had the highest scores in the help desk category.

What I like: Most tools focus on two user groups: customers and representatives. I like that Intercom also brings leaders into the conversation and makes it easy for them to understand the data and take action. They don’t assume you have an entire data department briefing you, which I appreciate as a small business owner.

10. Sprinklr Service

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Sprinklr Service is an engagement platform that works to reduce customer support resolution times and costs. I like the focus on improving the internal team experience by creating a collaborative view, consolidating all customer contact points into one area so new agents can be briefed on complex customer relationships immediately. This also improves customer service, working hard so that customers never need to repeat themselves.

Price: Free trial, and then $199 per month when billed annually.

Key Features

• Multilingual support.
• Monitoring for irregularities and trends.
• Chatbots.
• Agent assistance.
• Advanced reporting.

AI Integration: AI is used for all standard features (automation, sentiment analysis, etc.), as well as quality monitoring. This is a unique feature that I think adds a lot of value to companies that are trying to recover from poor customer satisfaction ratings.

Reviews: Existing customers like the robust features and the ease of use, but slow load times and software bugs were top complaints. I second this, because I experienced bugs while testing — I followed their steps to sign up for a trial and was immediately hit with an access denied page and this message: “Welcome to Sprinklr! Looks like the app for which you have permission is disabled by the admin.”

What I like: All platforms provide reporting, analytics, and AI, but I really like the specific application of combining these into the quality monitoring feature.

Making Moves for Your Customers

There’s a lot of money on the table when it comes to engaging customers, and customers keep expecting more and more. Thankfully, with the tools on the market and their rapidly evolving capabilities, companies are able to meet those high expectations at scale.

I hope that my walk-through of the most popular platforms makes their similarities and differences easier to understand — and easier for you to choose the right platform for your team.

You probably know your best friends well — their likes, dislikes, where they shop, why they prefer certain brands, and even what they’d buy before walking into a store.

Wouldn’t it be great to know your customers this well, too? What are their shopping preferences? How often do they shop? How do they prefer to contact you? And the list of questions goes on …

Enter customer behavior analysis. The science of understanding what goes through your customers’ minds, how they engage with your product, and how they respond to a social media advertisement.

In this article, I’ll take you through how to perform a customer behaviour analysis, its importance, and how using the right data can improve revenue and customer lifetime value.

In this piece, we’ll cover:

• What Is Consumer Behavior?
• Consumer Behaviors That Impact Sales [New Data]
• What Is a Customer Behavior Analysis?
• How to Conduct a Customer Behavior Analysis
• 3 Customer Behavior Analytics Platforms

Customer behavior doesn’t describe who shops in your stores but how they shop there. It reviews factors like shopping frequency, product preferences, and how your marketing, sales, and service offers are perceived.

Consumer behavior doesn’t merely rely on one aspect. Instead, it is derived from various factors, including psychology, biology, and economics.

For instance, economic factors such as their allocated budget and how they want to leverage the resources within this budget.

Based on my experience in data analysis, here are the factors that most businesses consider.

Factors That Affect Customer Behavior

Personality Traits

A customer’s behavior in your store is heavily influenced by their personality, background, and upbringing. Some will be jovial and outgoing, others quiet and collected, and some will fall in between.

Similarly, a customer may like a long product walkthrough and specialized onboarding, whereas other customers may get frustrated with the long product demos.

I’ve found that understanding where your target audience lies in this category is vital to understanding customer behavior.

Psychological Responses

Psychological responses can be challenging to predict, but they play a significant role in customer behavior because someone’s response to a situation is based on perception and attitude, which can change daily.

For example, say I got a promotion, I’m having a celebratory dinner, and my server accidentally spills a glass of water on my shirt. I might be more forgiving in this instance because I’m in a great mood and having a good day. However, if I was just fired from my job, I might be more frustrated with the situation.

Customers can be patient and satisfied one day, but the next, they’re pressing your rep on an urgent issue. Understanding that a customer’s psychological response doesn’t represent who they are as a person can help your team defuse stressful situations and prevent potential churn.

Social Trends

Social trends are external influences that customers listen to, like peer recommendations, societal norms, or fads. Some of these influences can be temporary, but others can affect customers permanently.

I’ve just gone over some examples of factors influencing customer behavior; now, let’s discuss some data-backed examples of consumer behaviors that directly impact customer service.

Consumer Behaviors That Impact Sales [New Data]

I think a great, real-life example of how consumer behaviors impact sales is the ways that different audience segments prefer to discover new products from the businesses they purchase from. The HubSpot Blog’s 2024 Consumer Trends Report asked 700 U.S. consumers about their preferences and the actions they take because of them.

It revealed that social media is the future of commerce. In 2024, Gen Z and Gen X have discovered more products on social media than any other channel.

The following image gives generation-wise data on product discovery on social media:

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Moreover, 25% of social media users prefer buying on social media this year, with Gen Z and millennials being the most active ones.

Also, 21% of the 700 respondents believe that influencer recommendations have impacted their buying decisions. Despite the number of social media channels, Facebook still remains the most trusted social media platform for the shoppers.

Now that I‘ve outlined customer behavior and how it impacts customer buying habits, let’s learn how to analyze it in the section below.

What Is a Customer Behavior Analysis?

A customer behavior analysis is a qualitative and quantitative observation of how customers interact with your company. You begin by segmenting customers into buyer personas based on their shared interests. Then, observe each group at their respective stage in the customer journey to see how the different personas interact with your company.

I think this analysis is valuable because it gives insight into the variables that influence your audiences and the motives, priorities, and decision-making methods customers consider during their journey. It also helps you understand how customers feel about your company and if that perception aligns with their core values.

Consumer behavior analysis is based on certain frameworks or, say, consumer behavior models, that help create the shopping patterns and how consumers make purchase decisions.

Why is customer behavior analysis important?

I think customer behavior analysis provides an edge to businesses over their competitors since they have granular details about their customers and their buying patterns.

Here are more reasons why I think customer behavior analysis is important for businesses:

Identify Behavioral Patterns

It’s likely that your customers have something in common with one another (which is why they are your customers). By identifying their patterns of behavior, businesses can tap into a large segment of customers with a common trait.

In fact, a Salesforce survey of over 6,000 consumers found that 66% of them expected companies to understand their needs and expectations, and a Redpoint Global survey found that 82% of respondents expect businesses to accommodate their preferences and meet their expectations.

For example, Starbucks’s consumer behavior strategy is rooted in understanding its customers’ personal, cultural, and social backgrounds. This way, Starbucks caters to its customers’ needs, such as understanding their local tastes and modifying its offerings accordingly.

Content Personalization

Research by Nojitter suggests that 56% of consumers will become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience. Understanding customer behavior helps you create targeted content and craft your product or service better than your competitors.

Again, I find you can use the patterns to segment your customers and create a unique personalized experience for each segment. Collecting customer feedback is yet another successful strategy that most businesses adopt for content personalization.

You might’ve even seen the survey from YouTube at the start of a video. YouTube uses this data to improve its search engine and suggest more personalized content.

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Customer Retention

What keeps your customers coming back? What do they like, and what do they want to improve in your product? Are there any missing features that your existing customers want? Customer behavior analysis gives answers to these questions all at once.

It provides deeper insights into what your customers like and what they don’t. A behavior analysis can help your team reduce this customer churn by identifying good and bad customer traits.

Improve the Buyer’s Journey

The results you obtain from customer behavior analysis can be phenomenal in shaping your customer journey. It helps you identify the optimized experience for customers and how to deliver it.

Optimizing the customer journey means reducing the roadblocks, improving areas of confusion, and enhancing the aspects you already do well. For example, if most of my customers pay using credit cards, I can use this insight and suggest credit cards as the preferred payment method every time customers check out.

Or, say, my customers often buy two products together; bundling them together can reduce their efforts to perform searches and drive more sales.

How to Conduct a Customer Behavior Analysis

1. Segment your audience.

The first step to a customer behavior analysis is segmenting your audience.

Key segmentation models are demographic segmentation (age, gender, etc.), psychographic segmentation (personality, values, etc.), geographic segmentation (country, town, etc.), and other behaviors like frequent actions and product use, preferred media channels, and online shopping habits.

You’ll also want to identify the characteristics of customers that are the most valuable to your business. One way to do this is through an RFM analysis, which outlines how recently a customer has purchased from you and how frequently they purchase from you.

2. Identify the key benefit for each group.

Each customer persona will have a unique reason for choosing your business, and it’s imperative to identify it. I suggest you look beyond the product or service and consider the external factors influencing the customer’s buying decision.

For example, was it a purchase of convenience? Or did they make a conscious decision to seek out your brand? How urgent was the purchase, and how much do they want to spend? I’ve found thinking about the context of customers’ needs is a great way to determine areas to improve the customer experience.

Since qualitative data is crucial to your customer behavior analysis, read about how you can better segment your customer base using customer profiling.

3. Allocate quantitative data.

Some resources may be more accessible than others, and I believe it’s important to derive information from both internal and external sources to ensure you get a complete picture of both micro and macro consumer trends.

From within, your company can pull stats such as blog subscription data, social media insights, and product usage reports. Secondary outlets can offer assets like consumer reviews and competitor analytics. Third-party data isn‘t specific to one company but provides general statistics across an entire industry. Through the combination of the three, you’ll have a broad scope of information to work with when analyzing customer behaviors.

4. Compare your quantitative and qualitative data.

After you’ve collected your data, the next step is to compare the qualitative data against the quantitative.

To do this, go through your customer journey map using the data sets as a reference. Look at which persona bought what product, when they bought it, and where. Did they return for another visit? By comparing the two sets of data against the customer experience, you can develop a detailed understanding of your customer’s journey.

Comparing data should help you identify recurring trends. I encourage you to look for common roadblocks that seem to pop up at different lifecycle stages and note any unique behaviors specific to a customer type. Circle back to your high-value customers and flag anything that stands out with their buying behaviors.

5. Apply your analysis to a campaign.

As I discussed earlier, you can use your findings to optimize your content delivery. Pick the best delivery channel for each persona and take advantage of opportunities to personalize the customer experience.

Nurture customers throughout the entire customer journey by responding to roadblocks on time. The insights you’ve gained from conducting your customer behavior analysis should give you a good idea of where to make updates to your marketing campaigns.

Before rolling out your new initiatives, I suggest you use your analysis to determine what your customers will think about these changes.

Customers are habitual creatures, and some will push back on change, even if it’s for the better. These customers tend to be more loyal to your brand, so you must do your best to keep them. Consider different ways to introduce change to these customers, and remember to be receptive to their feedback.

6. Analyze the results.

Once you‘ve given ample time for testing, you’ll probably want to know if your changes worked. Use metrics like conversion rate, acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value to determine the effect of your updated campaigns.

It‘s important to continuously analyze your results as new tech, politics, and events constantly influence customer needs. I find revisiting your analysis frequently ensures you capture new trends in the customer’s journey.

Looking for some help with conducting your analysis? Check out these platforms, which I think are great for analyzing customer behavior.

3 Customer Behavior Analytics Platforms

1. HubSpot

As a former HubSpot support rep, I spent the last year working closely with HubSpot‘s analytics platform. HubSpot’s reports and CRM features provide unique insight on both customer characteristics and engagement activity.

You can use its reporting tools to view web traffic for contacts and build lists based on their engagement history. HubSpot even offers an automatic attribution function that applies characteristics or scoring attributes once a contact completes an action.

Price: Starts free; up to $3,200/month.

2. Alteryx

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Alteryx’s analytics platform features an in-depth analysis of your customer data powered by insights from AI. The tool creates an automated visual representation to make it easy to identify trends and outliers. It then evaluates the data, and makes predictions and suggestions for where you can improve your customer experience.

Price: Starts free; variable for premium tiers.

3. Opentext Vertica

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Opentext Vertica is ideal for processing high-volume data requests coming from a range of resources. The tool takes advantage of underused servers in your data center to create a speedy and cost-effective organization of your data. This lets you upload more data on your customers without sacrificing any time. Opentext can also sync to Google and Microsoft cloud servers to ensure all data is stored in one location.

Price: Starts free; variable for premium tiers as reported by G2 Crowd.

Getting Started

With a customer behavior analysis, your business strategy no longer has to be a guessing game. By surveying your customers and analyzing the quantitative and qualitative data you collect, you can be sure to better reach each segment of your audience, meeting their needs in marketing, sales, and service.

My takeaway is that by analyzing customer behaviors you can both better serve your clients and increase the success of your business.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in December 2018 and has since been updated for comprehensiveness.

One of the biggest challenges brands face when implementing a referral program is grabbing their audience’s attention. Using a catchy referral slogan is a great way to capture interest and get people curious about your referral program.

But crafting a truly effective slogan is more than just stringing a few words together. It requires understanding your audience, highlighting the value proposition, and creating a sense of excitement.

I realized this early on in my career while working on various projects for a small events startup based in San Francisco. We initially launched our referral program with a rather bland slogan. It didn’t resonate with our target audience, and the results were underwhelming.

That’s when I realized the value of well-crafted referral slogans. We went back to the drawing board, brainstormed new ideas, and finally landed on some catchy ‘join us’ phrases. The impact was immediate — high-quality referrals increased, attendance and engagement soared, and the program became a key driver of growth.

In this article, I’ll share my insights and guide you through the process of creating referral slogans that truly resonate with your audience and encourage them to take action.

In this article:

• What Are Referral Slogans?
• 75 Catchy “Join Us” Referral Slogans
• How to Write a Catchy Referral Slogan
• Key Takeaways for Crafting Referral Slogans That Convert

75 Catchy “Join Us” Referral Slogans

Referral slogans can be the deciding factor in whether or not your customer decides to share your product or service with their friends and family. A strong referral slogan is short, memorable, and conveys a clear message.

I’ve compiled 75 catchy referral slogans, breaking down what I like about each of them.

Incentive-Driven Slogans

1. “Earn [Benefit] For Every New [Customer] You Refer”

What I like: This slogan directly communicates the reward, encouraging users to bring in more customers.

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2. “Treat Yourself With Rewards”

What I like: I like that this slogan is short and easy to understand. It encourages customers to reward themselves using the referral process, which can be highly motivating and memorable.

3. “Earn Up To [Benefit] For Every Successful Referral”

What I like: The phrase “Earn up to” generates excitement by suggesting a high potential for a reward for the customer.

4. “Pass It On: Rewards Await”

What I like: This slogan is direct and encourages sharing with the promise of enticing rewards.

5. “Together Is Better: Refer And You Both Earn”

What I like: This slogan promotes community and provides mutual earning opportunities.

6. “Earn [$$] With Each Referral”

What I like: The direct mention of a financial incentive is likely to capture attention and motivate referrals.​

7. “Refer & Win X”

What I like: This slogan is short, to the point, and clearly communicates the benefit of making referrals.

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8. “Talk It Up – Refer One, Earn One.”

What I like: The rhythm and rhyme make this slogan catchy. It connects referring and earning, making the process sound simple and attractive.

9. “Pass It On, Cash It In”

What I like: This catchy phrase creatively conveys the referral program’s financial incentive.

10. “Refer A Friend And Earn Up to [$$]”

What I like: This directly communicates the benefits of referring friends for a financial reward.

11. “Share the Love, Reap the Rewards!”

What I like: This slogan effectively conveys the reciprocal nature of a referral program while maintaining a concise and memorable structure.

12. “Become a [Brand Name] VIP! Refer Friends and Unlock [Exclusive Reward]”

What I like: This leverages the concept of exclusivity and high social status to incentivize referrals. By positioning referrers as VIPs, it taps into a desire for recognition and special treatment, effectively motivating participation in the program.

13. “Refer, Earn, Repeat!”

What I like: Simple and action-oriented. It clearly outlines the cyclical process of the referral program, encouraging continuous participation and highlighting the recurring nature of rewards.

14. “Referrals = Rewards!”

What I like: This one employs a straightforward equation to communicate the direct correlation between referrals and rewards. It emphasizes the value proposition of the referral program.

Slogans That Spotlight Free Gifts

15. “Giving Away [Gift] For Every Referral”

What I like: The phrase “Giving Away” immediately captures attention. The promise of a gift or a kickback makes the offer more appealing.

16. “Spread the Word and Unlock Exclusive [Benefits]”

What I like: This slogan combines sharing with the enticement of exclusivity, inspiring users to participate.

17. “Friends Tell Friends – Free Gifts Await!”

What I like: The repetition and rhythm create a compelling call to action, emphasizing the bond of friendship.

18. “Share Now & Get a Free Month On Your Subscription”

What I like: This offers a valuable incentive of extended “Subscription” while creating urgency with the phrase “Share Now.” It also can help generate social proof as new users are provided with a success story accompanied by a call to action to try out your product.

19. “Share X, Score [Perks]”

What I like: This slogan uses playful wording to connect sharing with receiving free perks.

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20. “Refer and Receive [Free Gifts]”

What I like: This slogan is straightforward, enticing users to refer other customers so they can receive “free gifts.”

21. “Share the Secret, Score Free [Goodies]!”

What I like: The word “secret” adds a touch of exclusivity to the brand, making users want to share it.

22. “Friends Never Let Friends Miss Out on Freebies!”

What I like: This slogan cleverly plays on the bond between friends and pushes people to share the “freebies” with others. It’s almost like a guilt trip to talk about your business with close friends and family.

23. “Connect & Collect – Free Surprises for Both!”

What I like: The rhyming words “connect & collect” make the slogan catchy and appealing to the user.

24. “Share and Shine With Free [Bonuses]!”

What I like: This slogan encourages sharing to receive free bonuses, making it more enticing for the user.

25. “Sharing is Caring, and It Comes with Freebies!”

What I like: The adaptation of the common phrase “sharing is caring” adds a relatable and positive connotation to the referral program. By connecting sharing with tangible rewards, this slogan incentivizes participation and emphasizes the benefits of spreading the word.

26. “Want Free Swag? Refer a Friend to [Brand Name]!”

What I like: The slogan’s direct and informal approach creates a sense of familiarity and excitement. Its concise structure ensures it’s easily digestible and memorable for potential referrers.

27. “Step into the [Brand Name] spotlight and shine with exclusive perks!”

What I like: It positions referrers as individuals who deserve recognition and “exclusive perks,” tapping into a desire for status and rewards. This approach motivates participation by associating referrals with positive outcomes and a sense of belonging within a select group.

Friend-Centric Slogans

28. “Sharing is winning. Bring a friend and win [$$].”

What I like: This slogan cleverly talks about how the user and their friends have the opportunity to win [$$].

29. “Get [$$] for Every Friend You Refer”

What I like: This slogan is direct and to the point, offering immediate clarity on the incentive.

30. “Give Your Friends X% Off”

What I like: This slogan is short and direct. It highlights the immediate value proposition, making it more compelling.

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31. “Sharing with friends is always a great idea.”

What I like: This slogan appeals to the universal sentiment of friendship, promoting the idea that sharing is both fun and profitable.

32. “Refer Your Friends and Start Earning”

What I like: This slogan is straightforward and highlights the mutual benefit for both the referrer and the referred.

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33. “One More Perk of Friendship”

What I like: This slogan adds a personal touch, highlighting there can be more perks of friendship when they participate in the referral program.

34. “Refer Your Friends: They Get [Benefit], You Get [Benefit]!”

What I like: This slogan is engaging and clearly explains the rewards for both parties.

35. “Because Friends Don’t Let Friends Miss Out”

What I like: This slogan evokes emotion and plays on the familiar saying about friendship, making it relatable.

36. “Bring a Friend, Both of You Win!”

What I like: This slogan’s straightforward promise of a mutual benefit is clear and enticing.

37. “Tell a Pal, Get a Deal!”

What I like: The rhyme and brevity of this slogan make it memorable and effective.

38. “It Pays To Have Friends”

What I like: This slogan is clever and highlights the financial benefit of having friends.

39. “Invite Your Friends & You Both Get $$ Off”

What I like: This slogan creates a win-win scenario, emphasizing mutual benefits for both parties.

40. “Share the Love, Share the Earnings”

What I like: By referring to the “love” that users have towards the brand, this slogan combines a sense of community with a financial incentive, creating a warm, inviting message.

41. “Got Friends? Get Rewards!”

What I like: It’s a playful and direct way to communicate the benefits of the referral program.

42. “Get [Benefit] By Inviting Your Friends To [Brand]!”

What I like: The direct call to action of inviting friends and a promise of a benefit make this slogan effective.​

43. “Friendship is Rewarding! Refer a Friend and Earn Together.”

What I like: It emphasizes the benefits for both the referrer and the referred person, fostering a sense of shared reward and encouraging participation.

44. “Good Friends, Great Deals! Refer a Friend and You Both Save.”

What I like: By highlighting the potential for mutual gain, it incentivizes referrals and positions the program as a win-win for all parties involved.

45. “Friends Who Share, Care! Refer a Friend and You Both Win.”

What I like: It effectively leverages the power of social proof by implying that caring individuals participate in the referral program. It also creates a sense of shared benefit and encourages participation.

Creative Referral Slogans

46. “It pays to join [Brand]’s referral program.”

What I like: This slogan implies a financial gain for the user simply by joining this program, making participation seem straightforward.

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47. “Here’s an Easy Way To Show You Care”

What I like: This slogan taps into emotions and makes the referral process feel meaningful beyond mere financial incentives.

48. “This is Just Our Way of Saying Thanks”

What I like: Framing the referral program as a token of gratitude humanizes the brand and enhances trustworthiness.

49. “Spread The Love”

What I like: By tapping into values like love, this resonates widely and encourages sharing in a heartfelt manner.

50. “They Win, You Win, We Win. It’s a Win-Win-Win.”

What I like: The repetitive use of “win” makes the slogan catchy and emphasizes the shared success.

51. “Cash in on Connections”

What I like: This slogan cleverly plays on the dual meaning of “cash in,” suggesting both a financial gain and leveraging one’s network.

52. “The best compliment you can give us is a referral.”

What I like: This slogan highlights the value of appreciation and urges users to spread the word if they like the brand​.

53. “Together We Thrive – Refer and Grow”

What I like: This slogan emphasizes collective growth that could foster a stronger brand and customer bond.

54. “Rewarding customers for their referrals is our love language.”

What I like: This take on meme-esque language brings a self-aware approach that’s purposefully wordy and witty — but also makes the customer benefit quite clear.

55. “You Share, We Care. Gift for Both!”

What I like: This slogan highlights mutual appreciation. Users share recommendations, while the brand reciprocates with gifts, fostering a sense of partnership and reward.

56. “Give [X], Get [Y]”

What I like: This is simple, catchy, and directly communicates the give-and-earn nature of the referral program.

57. “Because Sharing is Rewarding”

What I like: This ties into the age-old saying that “sharing is caring,” giving it a modern twist.

58. “A Treat for You, A Treat for Them”

What I like: The repeated structure and the promise of a win-win make this slogan appealing.

59. “Give Some, Get Some”

What I like: This slogan has a rhyming tone and clearly conveys the reciprocal reward system of the program.

60. “Friendship is a Key, Referrals Unlock the Glee!”

What I like: The playful rhyme and alliteration in this slogan make it memorable. By associating referrals with positive emotions, this slogan encourages participants to share the “glee” with their friends.

61. “Spread the Good Vibes! Refer a Friend and Ride the Reward Tides!”

What I like: Uses positive language and imagery to associate referrals with good fortune and exciting rewards. It’s engaging and encourages participation.

62. “Be a Referral Champion! Refer a Friend and Claim Your Victory!”

What I like: It effectively positions referrers as winners and motivates participation by associating referrals with a sense of accomplishment.

63. “Hop on the Referral Train, Rewards to Gain!”

What I like: This one employs a simple and memorable analogy to convey the concept of joining the referral program. The imagery of the “referral train” suggests a journey towards rewards.

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Holiday-Inspired Referral Slogans

64. “Unwrap a Reward This Holiday Season! Refer a Friend and Treat Yourself.”

What I like: This slogan connects the act of referring a friend with the excitement of unwrapping a present during the holidays. It also emphasizes the element of treating oneself, which can be a strong motivator.

65. “Make their holidays merry and bright! Refer a friend to [Brand Name] tonight.”

What I like: This one uses a classic holiday phrase and adds a call to action with a sense of urgency, “tonight.” It also connects the referral with bringing joy to others during the holiday season.

66. “Let it snow, let it snow, let the referrals flow! Share the joy this holiday season.”

What I like: This cleverly adapts a well-known holiday song, “Let it Snow,” to create a catchy join us phrase. It connects referrals with the joyful spirit of the holiday season.

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67. “Jingle all the way to rewards! Refer a friend and make their holiday.”

What I like: Another classic holiday phrase that connects with the reward of referring a friend. It also emphasizes the positive impact of the referral on the friend’s holiday experience.

68. “‘Tis the Season for Sharing! Refer a Friend and Unlock Holiday Rewards.”

What I like: It uses a memorable holiday phrase and connects the act of sharing with the reward of referring a friend.

69. “Holiday wishes do come true! Refer a friend and get rewards for you.”

What I like: This slogan connects the magical element of holiday wishes with the tangible reward of referring a friend. It creates a sense of possibility and excitement.

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70. “New Year, New Rewards! Refer a Friend and Start the Year Right.”

What I like: This slogan connects the fresh start of a new year with the opportunity to earn rewards through referrals. It emphasizes a positive beginning and sets a goal-oriented tone.

71. “New Year’s Resolution: Refer More Friends!”

What I like: Cleverly frames referring friends as a New Year’s resolution, tapping into the common desire for self-improvement and goal setting.

72. “New Year, New You, New Referrals!”

What I like: The idea of personal transformation in the New Year with the act of referring friends. It suggests that referrals are part of a positive change.

73. “Ring in the New Year with Rewards! Refer a Friend and Share the Cheer.”

What I like: This one connects the celebratory act of ringing in the new year with the reward of referring a friend. It emphasizes sharing joy and spreading positivity.

74. “Cheers to the New Year, Cheers to Rewards! Refer a Friend and Save.”

What I like: Uses a celebratory toast to connect the new year with the reward of referring a friend. It also highlights the potential for saving money or accessing deals.

75. “Countdown to rewards! Refer a friend before the New Year.”

What I like: Creates a sense of urgency and excitement by framing referrals as a countdown to the new year activity. It encourages immediate action to secure rewards.

How to Write a Catchy Referral Slogan

Now that you have read through some catchy ‘join us’ phrases, let’s break down how to create your own referral slogan magic. Trust me, it’s easier than you think!

Here’s a step-by-step guide to crafting a referral slogan that will grab attention and inspire action.

1. Understand your audience.

Before crafting any referral slogan, you must understand who you’re speaking to. Are they young professionals, parents, teenagers, or retirees? Tailor your message to resonate with them.

Pro tip: I recommend asking questions like what are their likes, dislikes, challenges, or aspirations? This will help you understand your audience better and set the foundation to craft an effective slogan.

2. Highlight the program’s benefits.

People need a compelling reason to act. Therefore, your referral slogan must highlight the advantages of referring your brand to someone. Clearly state the benefit, whether it’s a discount, a freebie, or monetary incentives.

Pro tip: Based on the questions asked, I’d try to provide a benefit your audience will likely act upon.

3. Keep it short and memorable.

I think the best referral slogans are concise. Even a little bit witty. The shorter it is, the easier it will be for people to remember and share.

Pro tip: Play around with rhymes, puns, or catchy jingles. They can help your slogan stick in your audience’s minds.

4. Use action words.

A compelling referral slogan should motivate action. You can inspire immediate steps by integrating powerful verbs such as “Share,” “Tell,” “Invite,” or “Join.”

Pro tip: Think of this word as a call-to-action button. Use the word that your audience will most likely click.

5. Add a touch of emotion.

People connect with emotions, be it joy, excitement, nostalgia, or gratitude. Weave a touch of emotion into your referral slogan to create a deeper connection. Whether it’s the thrill of discovery, the warmth of sharing, or the joy of benefiting together, emotions can be a driving force to action.

Pro tip: Consider the emotion your product or service evokes in your customers and incorporate that feeling into your slogan.

6. Test and refine your slogan.

Before finalizing your referral slogan, test it out. Gather feedback and see how people react to it. Based on the feedback, refine it until it’s just right.

Pro tip: Consider using social media polls or focus group discussions. These platforms provide real-time feedback and can help you tweak your slogan for maximum impact.

Key Takeaways for Crafting Referral Slogans That Convert

Wow, we’ve covered a lot of ground! As I was compiling this collection of referral slogans and reflecting on my own experiences, I was struck by a few key things.

First, I was reminded of just how powerful a simple phrase can be. Truly catchy “join us” phrases can be the spark that ignites a wave of new customers and brand advocates. It’s a small investment with the potential of huge returns.

Second, I realized that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The most effective referral slogans are those that resonate with your specific audience and reflect your brand’s unique personality. Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment until you find what works best for you.

Finally, I was reminded of the importance of keeping things concise and memorable. People are bombarded with information these days. Referral slogans need to be catchy and easy to remember if you want it to stick.

I encourage you to take inspiration from the examples I’ve shared and craft referral slogans that capture the essence of your brand and the excitement of your referral program. With a little creativity and effort, you can create catchy “join us” phrases that drive results and help your business thrive.

Need a little more help with customer referrals? Don’t forget to download our 45 free referral templates for a great headstart resource.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.