Customer.io Releases Actions for Personalized Multichannel Communications

Customer.io, provider of a behavior-based messaging platform, today released Customer.io Actions, a tool that extends the vendor’s audience segmentation and customer outreach capabilities to many of the tools within an organization’s technology stack, to further tailor communication efforts across multiple channels.

"Our customers have done an amazing job using Customer.io's powerful segmentation capabilities to understand customer behavior, trigger highly relevant messages and send only the most tailored email newsletters at the right time,"  Colin Nederkoorn, CEO of Customer.io, wrote in an email to CRM magazine. "Now, with the addition of Actions, our customers can use that same segmentation power to send messages and develop customer-centric experience from any channel, from push to direct mail."

Drawing from real-time behavior cues, Customer.io's platform divides a company's clientele according to segments, with the goal of enabling marketers to engage each of them automatically with contextually relevant messages. Unlike a traditional marketing automation tool, Customer.io focuses on everything after a person signs up or otherwise identifies themselves to a website or app, Nederkoorn explains. "With that rich behavior data collected across all user touch points—product, website, [and] third-party systems—customers can set up powerful segmentation and automation to generate hyper-personalized communication," he says. Users can measure the success of their communications with a view into open rates, and access user profiles to see their responses to the content they've received. The goal is to meet the individual needs of each customer to increase conversion rates and, ultimately, drive retention.

Prior to the release, end users could leverage Customer.io's capabilities to automate targeted email messages; the addition of Actions allows companies to extend the system's insights to any tool with a public API, including CRM systems, mobile applications, team chat environments, data automation tools, bug tracking, and various other business extensions.

For instance, Twilio users within customer service departments can follow up to send customers appointment reminders through SMS. Those who leverage Urban Airship's tools can link with Customer.io to trigger tailored push notifications reminding customers about any items they may have left in their carts and inviting them to take action. An integration with Slack’s team chat program enables managers to configure automated messages regarding any indicators that a customer might churn, so that team members may initiate a campaign to recover his business. Sales and marketing professionals can leverage cues regarding app signup to create new lead listings within Close.io's CRM platform.  

Users can also import data from Customer.io to the more than 500 applications available through Zapier webhooks, to populate spreadsheets, post to social media sites such as Facebook, add attendees to webinar services, and update their Hubspot forms, for instance.

Customer.io has also made updates to its campaign automation tool, to allow marketers to launch spontaneous campaigns without having to configure additional technologies.

"We want our clients to spend more time creating lasting relationships with their customers and growing their business—and less time setting up and managing their messaging infrastructure," Nederkoorn said in a statement. "Actions furthers our long-term vision of making it easy for growth marketers to use behavioral data to create rich experiences for their audiences, something that until now has been difficult for marketers to do.”

Founded in 2012, Customer.io serves more than 900 "high-growth internet businesses", including Shutterstock, Angie's List, and The Knot, according to the company's website.

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