Growing a brand presence requires understanding the customer and putting their needs first. Customer advocacy transforms customers into brand advocates willing to vouch for and promote products and services. With their active involvement, businesses can drive customer retention, expand their market, and elevate their brand's credibility to gain a loyal customer base.
There are many new strategies businesses can use to amplify the voice and experience of customers, from reviews and testimonials to referrals and social sharing. Customer advocacy software can help them engage their customers, retain them, and turn them into loyal advocates.
Customer advocacy platforms (also known as advocacy marketing or referral marketing software) provide companies with tools to manage customer feedback, monitor campaigns and their results, track customer engagement and satisfaction, and recognize and reward advocates for their efforts. Companies that invest in building stronger relationships with their customers create a community of loyal supporters who can give them a competitive edge. Their genuine endorsement can elevate the brand's credibility and attract more leads.
This article lists five of the best customer advocacy software in 2024. Read further to learn about their features, unique selling points, and limitations.
#1 Birdeye
Overview
Birdeye provides an intuitive, innovative, and integrated solution with embedded AI and automation to improve reputation, customer engagement, and customer experience. Its platform contains the tools businesses need to consolidate the entire customer journey from search to sold. It also boasts robust data protection measures to keep data safe and secure.
By leveraging advanced AI technology, Birdeye elevates referral marketing strategies. The customer advocacy software empowers businesses to get more leads with automated referral campaigns. It can identify referral opportunities by analyzing feedback and interactions from the customer, and even personalize interactions.
Birdeye can also work across multiple message channels. It can reach customers across text, social, web chat, and email and businesses can have all conversations in one place to get a full picture of interactions.
Moreover, with listings, Birdeye can help businesses rank higher in SERPs, increase traffic to their websites, and attract more customers. This approach boosts SEO, reputation, and conversion. Businesses can take charge of how they are perceived by the public, from their brand, services, location, reviews, etc., and, as a result, establish credibility in their respective target markets.
The reputation management platform can also turn customer feedback into actionable insights. Managing customer experience can drive growth at scale, especially when businesses can maintain a high standard across the locations they serve.
Features
Local Business Listing Management
Birdeye can help businesses build and maintain accurate and appealing business listings on top listing sites from a centralized dashboard. Listings can highlight their business information and showcase their reviews, and then, convert leads into customers.
Birdeye can also provide proactive error reports that inform users about listing errors across sites. The reputation management software can also scan business listings across the web and measure them against industry benchmarks and the competition. Based on the metrics, businesses can identify the gaps and fix them to improve their online presence.
AI-powered Customer Messaging
Businesses can oversee and manage all conversations in a unified inbox. Birdeye organizes messages by customer channel. Maintaining consistent communication with customers can lead to positive feedback and more conversions, especially with an AI-powered chatbot that replies on behalf during and off business hours.
Automated Campaigns
Businesses can automate their referral campaigns through Birdeye by creating rules to trigger referral requests after payments or positive online reviews. The customer advocacy software can send a 1:1 request directly through the customer's inbox. Moreover, it provides referral templates that businesses can easily customize, from messaging and design to forms and rewards to attract more prospects and drive brand recognition.
Referral Rewards
Businesses can also add referral incentives for higher response rates, making the customer advocacy campaign a success. Birdeye can help them maximize referral conversion through rewards strategies like cash discounts, gifts, and coupons that can lead to immediate purchases.
Reasons to consider:
Unified inbox
Intuitive design
Automated review response
Reasons to avoid:
Reporting could be improved.
Technical support can be slow.
Set up takes time for businesses with multiple locations
#2 Influitive
Overview
Influtive can help businesses generate high-quality referral leads that result in higher conversions. The platform can deliver a personalized brand experience through a customizable and trackable referral landing page. It can also generate personalized links, which loyal supporters can share with new customers.
The customer advocacy software can seamlessly integrate with popular CRM platforms and multichannel marketing hubs, which businesses can leverage to gain more leads. Influitive can tailor referral campaigns to different audiences, which users can track through its built-in referral dashboards.
Influitive provides a clean and modern user interface across browsers and devices, ensuring seamless navigation. The platform ensures a consistent and intuitive experience to create, manage, and track customer advocacy efforts and build a stronger relationship with customers.
Features
Modernized Rewards Catalog
Businesses can provide customers with a new rewards experience through the modernized rewards catalog of Influitive. A reward system can help retain more customers and improve customer satisfaction. Customers can effortlessly add rewards to their wishlist and find exclusive items they can redeem once they earn enough points.
Fully Immersive Activities
Influitive leverages gamification to give users a more immersive and engaging experience. It can guide customers on their journey to boost engagement on high-priority call-to-actions.
Gamification increases and maintains advocate engagement. The customer advocacy software features badges, levels, and milestones, which give users access to exclusive rewards. These elements encourage continuous participation and progress, ensuring the customers follow through when advocating for the brand.
Social Media Promotions
Influitive can increase brand awareness through social media promotions. The customer advocacy software can reward customers with points when they support the brand on their social media accounts. These social proofs can lessen customer acquisition costs for businesses and reach audiences branded accounts can't access.
Data-rich Profiles
Businesses can gather zero-party data from customers through data-rich profiles and learn when and how to engage with them. These profiles can help them make products that resonate with their target market, optimize their campaigns, and improve the overall customer experience.
Reasons to consider:
Customer support teams are quick to respond.
Easy to set up and navigate
Best for incentivized marketing
Reasons to avoid:
Limited integration with other marketing tools
#3 NiceJob
Overview
NiceJob helps businesses earn more reviews, referrals, and revenue through customer advocacy. The platform automates the process of collecting reviews and referrals and leverages them across all marketing channels. It also automates social media marketing by using great customer reviews and photos, driving brand awareness to attract more customers.
NiceJob can also help improve SEO by publishing customer reviews as social proof to the website. It promotes a positive reputation to website visitors, which can boost the conversion rate, resulting in better sales.
The reputation marketing software can also reward customers for their loyalty through a gifting program, with a personalized message acknowledging their efforts for their continuous support for the brand. NiceJob focuses on maintaining a positive public perception to help businesses retain customers and gain their loyalty.
Features
Automated Review Generation
NiceJob can automatically publish customer stories and reviews onto a website to increase traffic and sales. The reputation marketing software can collect and store reviews from Google, Facebook, G2, and other review sites.
Automated Referral Campaign
NiceJob can send automated, personalized, and customizable referral invites to customers via email or SMS. Businesses can customize the campaign rules to maximize the opportunity for conversion and sales. The customer advocacy software displays all referrals in one place where users can manage and track them to learn about trends and customer behavior and derive insights to improve the campaign.
Actionable Insights
NiceJob also provides actionable insights through its team leaderboard and topics. The reputation marketing software displays the topics frequently mentioned in the reviews which businesses can use to identify any areas of improvement and grow the strengths of their services. It can also show which team members are creating positive experiences for customers based on their average rating.
Reasons to consider:
Time-saving automation
Straightforward functionality
Reasons to avoid:
A bit pricey for small businesses
Lack of advanced features compared to more established platforms
#4 Referral Factory
Overview
Referral Factory helps businesses build and manage a referral program. It can track referrals and reward customers for referring friends. This referral marketing solution also offers detailed analytics for reviewing campaign performance and coupon codes to reward customer advocates. It integrates with other platforms like Hubspot, Salesforce, and Zapier, which makes it easier for users to generate referral links for customers.
Features
Drag and Drop Builder
Building a referral program on Referral Factory takes minimal effort thanks to its drag-and-drop builder. From media attachments to custom fiends, it provides the elements businesses need to incorporate to make a campaign aligned with the brand.
Promotional Tools
The referral marketing software also offers promotional tools like pop-ups, widgets, and join links, which businesses can use to promote the referral program to users and track referrals. Referral Factory makes it easy to know which customer deserves a reward.
Automated Referral Programs
Referral Factory can connect to CRMs, eCommerce stores, or Stripe to automate customer advocacy. It can also integrate through Zapier, Webhooks, and its API. This approach lessens customer acquisition costs and helps improve customer retention rates.
Customizable Tracking Pages
Customers can track their progress through customizable tracking pages. Businesses can send them a tracking link that directs them to a link where they can see all their referral stats, rewards due and issued, and conversion rates. These pages function like an affiliate dashboard to keep referral tracking transparent for loyal supporters.
Reasons to consider:
Free tools for referral marketing
Access to 100+ referral program templates
Multilanguage support
Reasons to avoid:
Lacks multi-channel support
No dedicated support for the Starter plan
White Label feature exclusive to Pro and Custom plans.
#5 Dealsby
Overview
Dealsby is unique in the referral marketing landscape because of its community-centered approach. It helps businesses implement effective referral marketing strategies and utilize personal recommendations. This customer advocacy software focuses on creating a sense of belonging among customers, turning them into loyal advocates for the brand.
Dealsby uses geolocation technology, referral code sharing technology, SMS, email, and popular social media platforms to generate viral brand awareness and new customer acquisition opportunities. This approach can help small businesses, such as restaurants, retail establishments, and professional services providers, to better connect with their community while reaching new audiences and improving customer retention.
For an additional monthly subscription fee, Dealsby can further enhance the visibility of small businesses through its featured small business program. The customer advocacy software automatically showcases the featured members of the program to consumers based on their location whenever they open its website or mobile app. Furthermore, these businesses are also displayed on Google or Apple Maps on their mobile devices as part of the Dealsby network.
Features
Marketing Automation
Dealsby sends automated email and In-App alerts to both Dealsby consumer and business subscribers the moment new customer referrals have been received. Dealsby also offers a free in-store table tent program for small business owners to promote their participation on the Dealsby platform. There is also a Dealsby Points Program for consumer subscribers that allows them to earn Dealsby branded merchandise for regularly participating on the platform.
Algorithm-Based and Geolocation-driven Referral Marketing Technology
Dealsby utilizes a sophisticated system to assist customers in finding and referring others to businesses. It uses customer preferences and their physical location to identify the best and most relevant businesses nearby that they can endorse.
The referral marketing tool personalizes referral messages for each customer and provides engagement opportunities to advocate for the business. It also educates the business owner about customer referral promotion preferences so they can identify potential advocates and optimize their advertising campaigns, thereby reducing costs while driving revenue growth.
Customer Tracking
Dealsby can track the source of referrals, helping businesses understand the most responsive marketing areas. Brands can utilize this data to optimize future campaigns and attract more customers. Consumer subscribers can also track and share their referral rewards offers with their family and friends on their customized consumer website and mobile app dashboard.
Real-time Offers
The customer engagement tool can send real-time offers to customers who are currently in or near the store. Dealsby's algorithms take into account user preferences, past interactions, and location to personalize these offers. This personalization encourages immediate visits and purchases from the customer.
Event-based Promotions
For special events or sales, Dealsby can help businesses promote events to nearby customers, increasing foot traffic and sales during these periods. The customer advocacy software leverages referral campaigns, hyperlinks, QR codes, SMS, email, and social media to expand customer reach and improve brand visibility.
Reasons to consider:
Best for brick-and-mortar stores
Multi-channel referral sharing
Personalized recommendations for customers
Targeted campaigns
Reasons to avoid:
Additional charges for business program
Conclusion
Customer advocacy can propel a business ahead of its competition by amplifying positive reviews, implementing incentives, and promoting the customers' interests. It can drive sales and build long-term relations, resulting in less churn and high retention rates.
Create an engaged and loyal customer base by using the best customer advocacy software. Choose from Birdeye, Influitie, NiceJob, Referral Factory, and Dealsby to manage referral to grow the brand presence, reach new prospects, and improve the overall customer experience.
