Everyone in the marketing and customer engagement world knows this undeniable fact: The better you know your prospects/customers, the higher your chances of closing sales and retaining customers for longer.

You can get to know your customers by collecting data on their online and offline touchpoints and interests or patterns. But the process can be tricky because of privacy regulations. Also, consolidating the data from multiple sources can become hectic.

That's why you need top-notch tools that collect data from various platforms and give accurate analytics in an easy-to-understand format, such as evolving customer personas and user profiles. Such tools provide valuable insights that can help you significantly improve your sales and marketing campaigns and put your budget to good use.

But where can you find such customer data collection software? Keep reading as we discuss:

The importance of collecting customer data

7 top tools to collect customer data in 2023

How Layerise streamlines customer data collection

The importance of collecting customer data

Customer data is the foundation for most business decisions and marketing efforts. Knowing when your customers are most engaged with your brand, their average lifetime value, rate of repeat purchases, registration scores, email open rates, app downloads, etc., can help you decrease cost per acquisition, reactivate customers, and identify leaks in your sales funnel.

Domino's Mexico used multi-channel data collection to create personalized audiences, which decreased the cost per acquisition by 65%. Likewise, Venmo saw a 30% increase in customer engagement by adjusting its social media strategy after deep diving into customer journeys on different platforms.

There are countless examples of brands that have seen tremendous boosts in revenue and brand awareness by collecting data, merging data from different sources, and analyzing it to find areas of improvement. Here are some more benefits of collecting customer data and doing it through tools:

It allows you to personalize your customers' experiences with your brand and create targeted messages/ campaigns.

It improves your ROI on 1st party data collection because consolidating and analyzing data allows you to maximize its potential. Otherwise, you end up with data silos that are difficult to manage.

Data collection platforms save engineering time and resources. The right kind of software has easy-to-use integrations that you can install quickly. It also saves the time you need to ensure data security compliance, data storage, analysis, and maintenance.

7 top tools to collect customer data in 2023

Most customer data collection tools have similar basic features. Still, each has unique offerings that make it the perfect choice for your needs and business model. Here are our picks of the top 7 tools for collecting customer data in 2023:

1. Layerise

Layerise is a platform that helps businesses collect customer data in a comprehensive and cohesive way. From the moment a customer registers, Layerise begins to collect data that can be used throughout the entire product ownership cycle. This data can include basic customer information, such as name and contact details, as well as more detailed data on purchase history, behavior, and preferences.

What sets Layerise apart is its ability to track and measure customer purchase intent. By analyzing customer behavior and engagement, Layerise can help businesses identify which customers are most likely to make a purchase and target them with relevant marketing messages.

Layerise provides businesses with a centralized location for collecting and managing customer data, allowing them to better understand their customers and make more informed decisions. With this data at their fingertips, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies, optimize their products and services, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

Price

Layerise has three different plans:

The starter solution with all essential features costs 708€/month;

The professional solution with automation and custom domain;

The enterprise solution with advanced reports & integrations.

Top features

Collect 1st party customer data through the onboarding process.

Select and customize any data you want to capture from your customers during the registration event.

Use Forms data to segment and group your customers based on a multitude of factors like region, gender, income ranges, and much much more; only your creativity is the limit.

Measure purchase intent to increase the effectiveness of your sales effort after the first purchase.

Data activation with automated personalized marketing campaigns

Best use case

Chad-O-Chef has partnered with Layerise to enhance their customers' product experience. One of the key benefits of using Layerise is the ability to optimize the time spent on tracking end-users and collecting customer data. According to Chad-O-Chef, Layerise has been instrumental in efficiently connecting customer information and identifying end-users quickly, resulting in significant time savings.

As Chad-O-Chef states, "The biggest advantage of Layerise's products has been the efficient connection of customer information and quick identification of end-users, which saves us a lot of time." To learn more about this successful partnership and how Layerise has helped Chad-O-Chef, click here.

Pros

Here are some unique aspects of Layerise that make it stand out from other tools:

Layerise provides the easiest way to collect your customer data with conversation rates up to 80%.

Layerise gives you the most cohesive customer data set that is valid from the point of customer registration and throughout the product ownership-cycle.

Layerise helps companies collect comprehensive customer information and activate them during the customer journey to boost retention and sales.

Cons

While Layerise can provide comprehensive data collection and analysis capabilities, it may not be the most suitable option for small startups with limited resources. One of the factors that may make Layerise less suitable for such businesses is its pricing structure, which could be considered relatively high for companies with fewer than 10 products.

For small startups with limited budgets, there may be alternative data collection tools that are more affordable and better suited to their needs. These tools may offer more basic data collection features or have more limited analysis capabilities, but they could still provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.

Ideal for

You should use Layerise if:

You are a consumer goods company with more than 10 products.

You are a B2C company that markets and sells mostly through third-party channels.

Best data collection tool for companies selling transport vehicles, clothing, personal care products, household appliances, electronics, and many more product categories.

2. Segment by Twilio

Segment is a customer data collection software designed for digital properties/ products (websites, apps, software, etc.). You can use it to collect real-time marketing, product, or engineering data.

Price

Segment has three plans:

Free: up to 1,000 visitors/mo

Team: 120/ month - 10,000 visitors/mo

Business: Custom pricing - Custom Volume

Top features

Here are the features that make Segment an excellent tool for customer data collection:

Collects, transforms, sends, and archives first-party customer data.

Advanced segmentation abilities for web and in-app event tracking.

Complete data toolkit for every team in your company to provide a single, comprehensive view of the customer.

It offers excellent privacy features that you can automate to suit your needs. It is compliant with all the major regulatory bodies.

Best use case

You can use Segment by Twilio to enable your teams to make real-time decisions backed by data regarding customer support and engagement. Major brands such as FOX, IBM, and Sanofi use this tool to increase mobile app visitors, offer personalized customer experiences, increase omnichannel engagement, and accelerate business growth.

Pros

Here are some unique aspects of Segment that make it stand out from other tools:

Segment provides documentation on its website to help users implement its software effectively. Ease of use is always one of the top pros of any software.

It offers APIs and EDI support. Integrating with many web, backend, and app platforms/frameworks is easy.

It automates omnichannel customer engagement.

Cons

Its prices depend on the number of visitors it tracks across the different channels per month. If you don't make a significant return per customer, then the cost of your subscription with Segment might be too high to bear.

Ideal for

Keeping the pros and cons in mind, you should use Segment if:

You have a limited volume of events (perfect for startups with less than 1,000 users)

You have a large budget to afford the premium plans.

3. mParticle

This customer data collection software offers distinct features for various industries like finance, gaming, dining, retail, and media. Some industries have particular privacy and data collection regulations; mParticle is unique because it caters to all of them with built-in tools.

Price

mParticle's pricing is based on monthly tracked users and data storage. The software only offers customized subscriptions based on the specific features you choose.

Top features

The top features of mParticle software are:

AI-powered insights and predictions regarding every step of the customer journey.

Unifies the data into a single customer profile for your marketing and business strategy teams.

Offers specific data-related features for marketers and product managers.

Automatically respects user privacy preferences while collecting data due to built-in compliance capabilities.

Includes data management, storage, and analytics.

Best use case

With minimal integrations and engineering, you can use mParticle to collect customer data across multiple touchpoints. That's why top businesses, including Hardees, HBO Max, and JetBlue, use mParticle to update their customer engagement strategies, improve customer support, and create flexible digital campaigns for their products.

Pros

Here are some unique details that make mParticle an excellent choice for data collection:

It offers 250+ integrations to load your customers' historical data immediately on any device or channel.

Provides standardization, categorization, and tags for the data.

Collects data from POS systems, OTT platforms, and loyalty programs on top of websites and apps.

Cons

Some drawbacks of mParticle include:

There are no features to enable real-time user targeting for a better customer experience.

The procedure for setting up connections with various channels varies a lot, which can increase the time it takes to get the software up and running.

You cannot link your customer data with non-customer-related data that you already have.

Ideal for

You should use mParticle if:

You require AI-generated insights and strategy recommendations.

You need to collect data from many touchpoints because mParticle connects to over 300 tools.

Your business has seasonal fluctuations and needs a constantly updated 360º customer view.

4. Oracle CX

Oracle CX is a dynamic platform that collects advertising, sales, service (finance, supply chain, HR), marketing, and commerce data to give you insights to improve your customer experience.

Price

The pricing model is based on the number of services you use. You can click the "contact sales" button at the bottom of each feature's page to learn more about its cost.

Top features

Here are the top features of Oracle for customer data collection:

The Oracle Unity Customer Data Platform consolidates your data from various channels to create a single user profile. It uses AI and machine learning to create accurate and insightful customer profiles.

You have the freedom to set customer profile unification rules according to the goals of your campaign.

It has a data-driven approach to customer support which offers recommendations for resolving issues faster, upselling opportunities, and improving customer engagement.

Best use case

Oracle's various services are best for collecting commerce and service-related data and using its automated tools for managing your marketing campaigns. For example, multinational companies such as Mazda, Dow Jones, and Payoneer use Oracle's various tools to improve the ROI of marketing campaigns, offer personalized customer experiences across multiple channels, and streamline marketing campaign execution.

Pros

Some features that make Oracle CX a great platform are as follows:

It has over 50 built-in attributes you can choose from to unify your data. These attributes include customer lifetime value, email open rates, etc.

You can select your reasons for using Oracle to personalize the data collection and insight generation processes. Options include marketing-focused, IT and technical, or service-focused data collection.

As an admin, you can give role-based access to different departments. That way, you can share analytics and insights with your team using a single platform while protecting sensitive customer data.

Cons

The most significant drawbacks of Oracle CX software are the steep learning curve due to complexity and the absence of a free trial.

Ideal for

You should use Oracle CX customer data collection software if:

One of your main goals for collecting customer data is to use it for marketing. Oracle CX automates your marketing campaigns; hence it can lessen your workload.

You can use it to improve the ROI of your advertising campaigns. Oracle Advertising closely monitors your campaigns, collects data from them, and unifies them to give you a clear picture of what's working and what's not.

5. WebEngage

WebEngage has various products, one of which is the customer data platform. It offers specific solutions for multiple industries, including e-commerce, travel, hospitality, media, D2C, and edTech. You can link your customer data platform with the other WebEngage tools to enjoy product analytics and set up omnichannel customer engagement without exporting your data to new software.

Price

Pricing information is not available. However, you can contact the company for a quote.

Top features

The top features of WebEngage are:

Built-in web and app SDK and 3rd-party integrations to collect data from multiple sources and view it in a single dashboard that you can share across various departments.

Automatically unifies data to create user journeys. Each user is assigned a specific ID, and every time they interact with the brand on any channel, their activity gets recorded under their unique ID.

Creates targeted segments/highly-personalized profiles from the user data it collects.

Best use case

WebEngage is best for effortlessly collecting data from various channels, running analytics on it, and automating your marketing campaigns using that data. Popular brands like eXtra and headout use WebEngage to increase user retention, conversions, and customer engagement.

Pros

The most attractive feature of WebEngage is that the unified customer profiles are updated in real-time, and you can set up instant notifications for it as well. That is helpful for seasonal or fast-paced businesses.

Cons

There is a steep learning curve, and you will likely need an expert from WebEngage to walk you through the UI. Also, the analytics are mostly event-based rather than user-based.

Ideal for

WebEngage is the ideal software to perform various actions on a single platform, such as data collection, email automation, and campaign orchestration.

6. Listrak

Listrak offers multiple products for capturing customer data, creating a user profile, and running analytics on that data. Its primary tool for that is the unified customer data platform.

Price

You can contact the Listrak general inquiries team for a custom plan.

Top features

Here's what Listrak offers:

Build a 360° user profile by collecting online and offline data from various channels. It even includes anonymous user tracking (for those who don't provide an email or phone number).

It has probabilistic cross-device monitoring and user identification, including wearables, mobile loyalty apps, and IoT devices.

Intelligent translation of the data to provide you with actionable insights for better engagement and conversion.

Best use case

Companies such as Toad & Co. and Cookies use Listrak to collect zero-party and first-party data, consolidate their data in a single platform and receive personalized recommendations for improving the customer experience online and offline.

Pros

It offers extensive data visualization and exploration tools which help understand the data. An excellent feature is its ease of use, allowing even non-technical users to benefit.

Cons

The UI can crop out in different browsers. Moreover, conversion data tracking is lacking in some areas, such as SMS, which affects the complete customer view of the customer's engagement and journey.

Ideal for

Businesses that want cross-channel data capture, reporting, and automated campaign personalization recommendations should opt for Listrak as their customer data collection software. The platform is suitable for both big and small businesses.

7. Optimove

Optimove's customer data platform is a one-stop shop for collecting, consolidating, analyzing, and testing customer data from multiple channels. It offers insights for your marketing campaigns and is customizable depending on your requirements.

Price

Optimove's core product cost is based on your monthly active customers, and you can find the exact price by contacting their sales team. In addition, there is an option to add more services to your package and pay accordingly.

Top features

Optimove's best features include the following:

Optimove's AI tells you about potential engagement opportunities to increase customer retention.

It uses customer interaction data from multiple channels to measure your marketing campaign's ROI.

Offers detailed data segmentation (such as multiple channels, KPIs, and while also creating a unified customer view that is constantly updated.

Best use case

Optimove is best for discovering customer traits, gaining AI-backed insights from customer data, and unifying multi-channel data. Leading brands such as John Hardy and Sweaty Betty use Optimove's products to collect and consolidate data, create extensive segments, draft behavior-triggered multi-channel campaigns, and ultimately improve customer lifetime value and decrease customer churn.

Pros

Its AI bot crawls through all of your data segments to provide actionable recommendations that can improve your marketing campaigns' performances. In addition, Optimove tailors its products to your needs, which prevents unnecessary over-complication of data.

Cons

It does not offer industry-specific features for some niches.

Ideal for

You should use Optimove if your goal is to use the data to improve your marketing efforts since its tools are focused on providing valuable AI-backed insights on campaigns.

Comparison of the top 7 customer data collection software

How Layerise streamlines your customer data collection

Layerise is a dynamic tool that has a customer data collection feature. You can use it to track your customers' satisfaction with your product, understand their behavior patterns across devices and platforms, and receive personalized, actionable insights to improve your marketing and sales campaigns.

The best parts? We are compliant with GDPR and CCPA. Our software has APIs to integrate with popular PIM systems, CRM providers, and business intelligence tools. Layerise's insight reports offer valuable information, such as recommendations for strong upsell opportunities and introduction to new markets. It allows you to establish long-lasting customer relationships and lower your average customer support handle time.

Want to try it out? Book a demo to get a personalized tour of Layerise and see its features in action.