Kissmetrics describes itself as “The Customer Engagement Automation Platform” and that may be true but, in my opinion, it does little to explain what their product is really all about.

So, it would be reasonable to ask, what is Kissmetrics all about?

Well, there are three main element to the Kissmetrics product offering: Analyse, Populations & Campaigns
“Kissmetrics combines behavioural analytics, segmentation and email campaign automation to deeply understand and engage your customers every step of the way.”

My initial conclusion is that the foundation for everything that Kissmetrics does, however, is their extensive and in-depth Analytics capability. The particular focus here is with “behavioural analytics” – in other words, in-depth scrutiny of what it is people do when they visit your website. Every stage of your marketing funnel can be examined and reported upon.

Of course, the inevitable question would be “what does Kissmetrics do that Google Analytics doesn’t?”

That’s a reasonable question, especially bearing in mind that Google Analytics is a totally free of charge solution and, for many organisations the answer would probably be “not much.” The system really seems to come into its own when used as a holistic approach to marketing. You run a campaign, monitor the results with Kissmetrics and then analyse and report on the campaign as it progresses.

One of the concepts you will quickly become familiar with should you choose to use Kissmetrics, is their “populations” functionality. A population is very similar to a cohort in Google Analytics – a group of people who share a common factor. I haven’t yet done the full in-depth Kissmetrics review but I suspect that when I do I will find the Population function performs in greater depth than the Google Cohorts alternative, but let’s wait and see.

Then there is the Campaigns module. Here we see a range of functions that, ostensibly, are similar to those offered by even the most basic email autoresponders. Those requiring more sophisticated email marketing and automation facilities will have already taken up with a product such as Infusionsoft, Hubspot, Clickfunnels or Marketo so I’m not quite sure where Kissmetrics fits into all of that.

None of that is intended to water down what Kissmetrics offers, however. It is clearly a well thought out and proficient product that has been widely adopted by some sizable organisations. As I haven’t reviewed it fully yet my advice is to give it a trial – there’s a free 14 day trial to help facilitate that.

The costs are fairly substantial here so you’d have to be very sure that Kissmetrics will deliver everything you need and the free trial will clearly be useful in establishing that. There’s also the option of discussing your requirements with their consultants and having a guided demo. In terms of pricing, the entry level plan is $500/month, less 20% if you pay annually in advance.