10 Best Customer Advocacy Software Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
There are seemingly countless customer advocacy software solutions available, so figuring out which is best for you is tough. You know you want to facilitate the creation and management of advocacy programs where loyal customers can share positive experiences and referrals, often in exchange for rewards—but now need to figure out which tool is the best fit. I've got you! In this post, I make things simple, leveraging my experience as a marketing expert, using dozens of different customer advocacy tools, to bring you this shortlist of the best customer advocacy software overall.
What is customer advocacy software?
Customer advocacy software is a tool used by businesses to foster and manage relationships with their most loyal and enthusiastic customers. It enables the creation of structured advocacy programs where these customers can actively promote the brand through various activities like referrals, testimonials, and social media sharing. The purpose is to track and reward these advocacy efforts, enhancing customer engagement and loyalty.
Overview Of The 10 Best Customer Advocacy Software
Use this list to help you research and compare price points, integration options, user experiences, analytics tools, and other features for different customer advocacy software.
impact.com is a partnership management platform aimed at businesses looking to improve their marketing and growth strategies through partnerships. It offers tools for discovering, recruiting, and managing various types of partnerships, such as affiliates, influencers, and strategic partners.
Why I picked impact.com: impact.com's Advocate solution offers customizable referral programs that align with your business goals. You can tailor rewards and incentives to match your brand's strategy, making it easier to engage customers and encourage them to refer others. This flexibility ensures that your referral program resonates with your target audience. Additionally, Advocate provides advanced tracking and analytics capabilities. You can monitor the performance of your referral programs, understand customer engagement, and identify areas for improvement.
Standout features and integrations:
Features include customizable program builders that let you create on-brand referral experiences and integrations for a variety of reward options, including gift cards and discounts to motivate your advocates. It also offers gamification elements like leaderboards to boost engagement.
Integrations include Shopify, Adobe Commerce (Magento), WooCommerce, Ecwid, BigCommerce, Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Adjust, Branch, AppsFlyer, and Google Tag Manager.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Good workflow automation
- Customizable referral programs
- Reliable tracking system
Cons:
- May take time to set up the platform
- Occasional delays in payment processing
Referral Factory is a customer advocacy software that helps businesses create and manage referral programs to increase customer referrals. It offers a no-code platform, enabling users to build personalized referral campaigns without technical expertise.
Why I picked Referral Factory: The platform provides over 1,000 pre-built templates, allowing you to quickly set up referral programs that resonate with your audience. Additionally, Referral Factory enables you to create branded capture pages, ensuring a consistent look and feel across your campaigns. It also has flexible reward structures, which let you offer various incentives to your customers for successful referrals. This flexibility allows you to tailor rewards to your audience's preferences, enhancing the appeal of your referral program.
Standout features and integrations:
Features include the ability to onboard referrers by uploading a database or promoting your program through direct marketing, access to a client dashboard that provides comprehensive data on your referral program's performance, and the option to sync data with Google Sheets for streamlined reporting.
Integrations include HubSpot, Salesforce, monday.com, Zoho, Pipedrive, Zapier, Stripe, Intercom, and ServiceTitan.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Flexible reward options
- Campaigns can run in multiple languages
- Offers a variety of customizable templates
Cons:
- Customization limits in basic plans
- Analytics could be more in-depth
ReviewFlowz is a comprehensive review and testimonial software designed specifically for SaaS companies, offering features such as review widgets, review API, and review monitoring.
Why I picked ReviewFlowz: I chose ReviewFlowz after determining its unique capabilities in managing and monitoring reviews. Its standout features include the ability to create review generation campaigns quickly and to integrate with various software through a magic link feature. This flexibility allows for the strategic placement of review requests, ensuring that each customer's feedback is directed to the platform where it will have the most significant impact.
Standout features and integrations:
Features include multi-channel integration, advanced sentiment analysis with customization, interactive data visualization, automated reporting, competitor benchmarking, and sentiment trend tracking. The tool's review generation campaigns facilitate the creation of targeted campaigns to gather customer feedback, while review widgets enable the display of aggregated reviews on a company's website, customizable and multilingual for relevance and engagement.
Integrations inclue Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zapier. It also offers API access for higher-tier plans.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Robust analytics and reporting
- Integration capabilities
- Streamlined workflow for software reviewing
Cons:
- Limited customization
- Moderate learning curve
InMoment is a customer experience (CX) intelligence platform that helps businesses gather, analyze, and act upon customer feedback to enhance overall satisfaction and loyalty. With a focus on capturing insights across various touchpoints, InMoment provides tools for surveying customers, evaluating their experiences, and deriving actionable data to drive improvements. The platform aims to empower organizations to create meaningful connections with their customers, optimize the customer journey, and make informed decisions to enhance the overall customer experience.
Why I picked InMoment: I chose InMoment because it is the best customer advocacy tool suited for enterprise-level businesses in various industries, including retail, healthcare, hospitality, and financial services. The platform is designed to handle large volumes of customer feedback and support complex reporting and analysis, making it ideal for businesses with a significant customer base and diverse feedback channels.
Standout features and integrations:
Features include InMoment’s Voice of the Customer (VoC) program, social media monitoring, advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, and customer journey mapping that allows you to capture and analyze customer feedback at every touchpoint. InMoment also offers custom branding features, survey templates helping you standardize your brand voice.
Integrations that are pre-built include Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Qualtrics, Tableau, Medallia, Oracle Cloud, Adobe Analytics, Clarabridge, Zendesk, and more. CustomerGuage also offers a REST API.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Real-time insights
- Mobile app
- Comprehensive feedback collection
- Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities
Cons:
- Reliance on external data sources
- Complexity of features may require additional training and support
Medallia is a customer experience management platform that enables businesses to capture and analyze customer feedback across various touchpoints. With a focus on enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty, Medallia provides tools for surveying customers, collecting feedback, and deriving actionable insights. The platform helps organizations understand the customer journey, identify areas for improvement, and implement strategies to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Why I picked Medallia: If you’re looking for customer advocacy software that has AI-powered analytics, look no further than Medallia. Medallia uses machine learning algorithms to analyze customer feedback and identify patterns and trends that can help businesses predict customer behavior and anticipate their needs.
Standout features and integrations:
Features include real-time feedback collection, text analytics, customer journey mapping, predictive analytics that are all enabled by AI and automatable. You can also create customizable surveys and feedback forms using data insights to better suit them to your customer-base.
Integrations both native and pre-built include Salesforce, Adobe Analytics, Power BI, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Oracle, Tableau, SAP, Twitter, Facebook, WeChat, LinkedIn, and more. Medallia also offers a REST API and SDKs.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Customizable dashboards and feedback forms
- Mobile app
- Continuous improvement and updates
- AI-driven actionable insights and predictive analytics
Cons:
- No free trial
- Limited pricing information
Yotpo is a customer content marketing platform that focuses on leveraging user-generated content to enhance e-commerce marketing efforts. The platform allows businesses to collect and showcase customer reviews, ratings, photos, and Q&A, providing social proof and building trust with potential buyers. Yotpo also offers tools for loyalty and referral programs, enabling businesses to engage with their customers and drive brand advocacy through authentic user experiences.
Why I picked Yotpo: I selected Yotpo because it is particularly well-suited for e-commerce businesses. You can collect product reviews and ratings from customers and display them on your product pages, which can help increase conversion rates and reduce shopping cart abandonment. Yotpo also offers a suite of marketing tools, including email campaigns, social media integrations, and referral programs, that can help e-commerce businesses reach new customers and grow their sales.
Standout Features and Integrations:
Features include tools for showcasing and managing SEO-optimized UGC from customers, customizable loyalty and rewards programs, and review and rating generation that help build social proof and credibility for your brand.
Yotpo is very useful for ecommerce businesses who want to use email campaigns, social media, and referral programs for marketing to their audience.
Integrations that are pre-built include Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Other third-party connectors are accessible with a paid Zapier account. Yotpo also offers a REST API.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Free trial with basic plan
- Mobile app
- User-friendly interface and easy to set up
- Customizable design
- Powerful analytics and reporting capabilities
Cons:
- Limited pre-built integrations
- Limited customer service options
Snöball is a word-of-mouth marketing platform designed specifically for B2B events, offering automated word-of-mouth marketing, personalized influencer campaigns, and year-round content distribution.
Why I picked Snoball: I selected Snoball after evaluating its unique approach to word-of-mouth marketing. The platform's integration with BestCompany.com reviews and its suite of tools for referrals, reputation marketing, and reviews distinguish it from other software in the market. I believe Snoball stands out as the best tool for automated word-of-mouth marketing because it replaces passive hope with proactive action, enabling businesses to drive growth through automated referrals and enhanced online reputation.
Standout features and integrations:
Features include automated referrals, reputation marketing, reviews, video testimonials, and SEO integrations. It also provides a content hub, success stories, and a help center for resources. The platform aims to help businesses generate referrals, create marketing assets, and collect reviews from happy customers, making it a valuable tool for improving sales and marketing performance.
Integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM, and Oracle CRM On Demand. They also offer an API.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Automate your referral program
- Detailed reporting
- Creates marketing assets automatically
Cons:
- May be expensive for small businesses
- Learning curve for businesses unfamiliar with automation
AdvocateHub is a customer advocacy platform designed to help businesses identify, nurture, and mobilize their loyal customers into advocates. Through AdvocateHub, companies can create personalized advocacy programs, incentivize customers to promote their brand, and track the impact of advocacy efforts. The platform provides tools for building relationships with advocates, measuring their contributions, and leveraging their support to drive referrals and positive word-of-mouth marketing.
Why I picked Influitive AdvocateHub: I picked Influitive because it makes customer advocacy software fun while also engaging and empowering customers to promote your business. Influitive's features and integrations can help you build strong relationships with your advocates and grow through word-of-mouth marketing.
Influitive AdvocateHub Standout Features and Integrations
Features include Influitive's flagship product, AdvocateHub, that offers an array of gamification tools. With AdvocateHub, you can set up a rewards system and create advocacy campaigns and challenges for your customers. The Influitive mobile app lets customers participate in challenges, access resources, and earn rewards on-the-go, ensuring they stay engaged and motivated.
Apart from gamification, AdvocateHub also lets you easily collect, manage, and showcase user-generated content (UGC) like reviews, testimonials, and social media posts. Once you have this information, you can analyze it to measure the success of your advocacy program, identify areas for improvement, and track ROI.
Integrations include Marketo, Salesforce, HubSpot, Eloqua, Pardot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Slack, Gainsight, Adobe Experience Manager, Zoom, accessible with a paid Zapier account. Influitive also offers a Representational State Transfer (REST) API.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Gamification and rewards features
- Mobile app
- Advanced analytics
- User-friendly interface
Cons:
- Limited customer service options
- Limited social media integration
RO Innovation is a customer reference management and sales enablement platform designed to help businesses leverage customer success stories and references in their sales and marketing efforts. With RO Innovation, companies can centralize and manage customer testimonials, case studies, and references, making it easier for sales teams to access and utilize this valuable content. The platform aims to enhance trust and credibility by enabling businesses to showcase real-world success stories, ultimately influencing potential customers in their purchasing decisions
Why I picked RO Innovation: RO Innovation caught my eye because it’s a great choice for organizations that need a way to quickly access and share customer references and case studies. This is mainly due to the wide range of automation, personalization, and reporting features that RO Innovation offers.
Standout features and integrations
Features include requesting, tracking, and reporting customer references and referrals, automated customer reference and referral requests, personalized content for sales representatives, ROI reporting for customer advocacy programs, and more. RO Innovation also has multi-language support, making it well-suited for multinational organizations.
Integrations both native and pre-built include Salesforce, Eloqua, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, SAP, ZoomInfo, and more. You can add more connectors to a paid Zapier account. RO innovation also offers a RESTful API.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Multi-language support
- Personalized content for sales representatives
- Mobile app
- High-quality reference management
- User-friendly interface and easy-to-use
Cons:
- No free trial of the software itself
- Pricing isn’t publicly available
- Compatibility issues with older browsers or OS
Kangaroo Rewards is a customer loyalty and engagement platform that helps businesses create and manage loyalty programs to enhance customer retention and drive repeat business. With Kangaroo Rewards, businesses can design personalized loyalty campaigns, reward customers for purchases, and encourage repeat visits.
Why I picked Kangaroo Rewards: I decided to include Kangaroo Rewards because it provides key customer advocacy features at an affordable price so that you can get more for your money. While some customers have called it cumbersome and containing a good amount of bugs, Kangaroo Rewards is known for its reliable customer support.
Standout Features and Integrations:
Features include customizable point-based, tier-based, or punch-card-based rewards programs, omnichannel engagement tools, automated and targeted marketing tools, real-time data analytics, referral tracking and a user-friendly mobile app.
Integrations that are pre-built include Square, Lightspeed, Clover, Vend, Stripe, and more. Native integrations include Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and other popular ecommerce platforms. You can always add more connectors with a paid Zapier account. GetAmbassador also offers a RESTful API.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Reliable customer support
- Flexible redemption options
- Mobile app
- Multi-channel engagement
- User-friendly interface
Cons:
- No UGC management
- Limited integrations
The Best Customer Advocacy Software Summary
Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Best for customizable referral programs | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
2 | Best for rewarding referrals | Free trial available | From $76/month (when billed annually) | Website | |
3 | Best for SaaS review management | 14-day free trial available | From $29/month | Website | |
4 | Best for large enterprises | Free demo available | From $1/company/year | Website | |
5 | Best for AI analytics | Free demo available. | Pricing upon request. | Website | |
6 | Best for e-commerce | Free trial available | From $9/month | Website | |
7 | Best for automated word-of-mouth marketing | Free plan available | From $499/month | Website | |
8 | Best for gamification | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
9 | Best for large, distributed teams | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Website | |
10 | Best cost-effective customer advocacy software | 30-day free trial | From $59/month | Website |
Other Options
Here are a few more worthwhile options that didn’t make the best customer advocacy software list:
- CustomerGauge
For B2B
- NICE Satmetrix
For VoC
- SproutSocial
For managing social media ambassadors
- GetAmbassador
For growing teams
- TechValidate
For data analytics
- Khoros
One-stop-shop digital customer advocacy software
- Annex Cloud
For loyalty solutions
- TapMango
For small to mid-sized businesses
- Bazaarvoice
For syndicating content
- Extole
For integrations
Selection Criteria for the Best Customer Advocacy Software
After analyzing dozens of customer advocacy software platforms, along with reading feedback from users and experts in the industry, I was able to put together this list of the top customer advocacy software solutions. I was really looking for customer advocacy software with the best data analytics/management, usability, and automation features, which I’ll go into more detail about below.
Core Functionality:
The core functionality of customer advocacy software is to identify, engage, and leverage satisfied customers who are willing to promote and recommend your brand, products or services to their network. This type of software typically includes features such as customer reference management, referral marketing, social media monitoring, customer feedback and review management, and loyalty program management.
Key Features:
The key features of a good customer advocacy software include:
- Customer Reference Management: This feature allows businesses to manage their customer reference program and track customer testimonials, case studies, and other marketing assets.
- Referral Marketing: This feature enables businesses to incentivize and reward customers for referring new business to the company.
- Voice of Customer (VoC) Programs: This feature enables businesses to collect and analyze customer feedback through surveys, reviews, and other feedback mechanisms, helping to identify areas for improvement and drive customer loyalty.
- Social Media Monitoring: This feature enables businesses to monitor and analyze social media channels to better understand customer sentiment and identify trends.
- Integration with CRM and Marketing Tools: Integration with popular CRM and marketing tools such as Salesforce, Marketo, and Hubspot enables businesses to streamline their advocacy programs and leverage existing customer data.
- Automated Content Creation: This feature enables businesses to quickly and easily create content based on customer data, such as case studies, white papers, and testimonials.
- Analytics and Reporting: This feature provides detailed analytics and reporting on customer data, including charts, graphs, and heat maps, helping businesses to track the success of their advocacy programs and make data-driven decisions.
Usability:
When selecting customer advocacy software, I prioritized tools that offer a user-friendly experience and are easy to implement and use.
Your team shouldn't have to spend significant time learning how to use complex features, especially when it might make interacting with customers cumbersome or difficult. Look for solutions that have clean and straightforward interfaces, organized menus, and easy-to-use functionalities. Your team should be able to navigate the software with ease and access analyses and data reports without any difficulty.
Value for Money:
I factored in the software's cost, its ROI, and its free trial options to ensure you're getting the most bang for your buck.
Lower-end customer advocacy software can cost around $50 per month, while more high-end software could run up to $2000 per month. I expected cheaper software to still have basic necessary features, and more expensive software to really have some extra bells and whistles to make the price tag worth it.
Integrations:
I considered the software's integration options with popular CRM, ecommerce, POS, analytics, social media, and marketing tools.
People Also Ask
Here are the answers to some commonly asked questions about what customer advocacy is, its benefits, and why it’s so important.
How can customer advocacy software benefit your business?
Why is customer advocacy important?
Other Marketing Relationship Management Software Reviews
Marketing software comes in all shapes and sizes, from social media platform management to website and product reporting. You'll probably need several tools to cover the whole gambit of needs. Here are some other software review lists that I recommend checking out:
- Affiliate Marketing Software
- Brand Management Software
- Marketing CRM Software
- Employee Advocacy Software
- Influencer Marketing Software
- Social Listening Tools
- Customer Advocacy Software
- Brand advocacy software
Summary
If you want to keep your customers coming back for more, finding the right customer advocacy tool for your organization is a great place to start.
Whether you need a platform for managing customer feedback, setting up an automated customer referral program, or creating some killer content, consider digging deeper into some of the tools on this list. By centering on the voice of the customer (VoC) in your organization, you can become an advocate for your customers in order to learn how to best support them.
If you're looking to stay up-to-date on the latest industry news, trends, and insights, consider signing up for the CMO newsletter. Packed with valuable content, it includes expert insights from top thinkers in the marketing world.