Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Privy

IBM analytics has continued to improve upon the days of being the original core metrics. After using the updated version for quite some time, it has been great at providing the needed analytics to measure ROI and goal performance for our quarterly KPI's. It has resulted in a great increase in web engagements although we are a midsize company, smaller outfits may not need such an expensive option.

Incentivized

Adding Privy to your ecommerce store is a no brainer. You can very quickly increase your on-site email acquisition conversion rate through the Spin To Win wheel and other templates that Privy offers. You can also use it for additional on-site messaging like announcement bars and landing pages

Incentivized

• IBM CXA comprises an acquisition called Tealeaf. This tool has deep heritage and this is evident in its present-day capabilities.
• The Universal Behaviour Exchange or UBX puts the concept of personalisation at the forefront. The ability to combine physical (analog) and digital transactions to create the complete picture of a customer journey, is a stand out benefit.
• The solution does not have to involve the purchase of software. IBM CXA can be sold as a service bundled with analytics as a service. This not only lowers the cost of ownership, it gets around one of the principal issues. Strong staff with design and analytical capability to drive the solution and deliver tangible benefits.
• The seamless integration of Watson AI services to help with the heavy lifiting. Watson reinforces the analytical focus this solution has and can learn to recognise situations specific to a company.

Incentivized

• Segments website visitors to your site: It can recognize who has been to your website once or many times. It allows you to present an offer to different user groups, present an offer, and then capture their email address.
• Provides flexible opt-in form options: Embedded opt-in forms, pop-ups. bars at the top of your site. You can redirect to a landing page or a thank you window, create a form that takes up the entire screen, provide an offer at the end, or simply thank users for their information.
• Easy user experience: Different options for designs, easy drag + drop builder. Easy installation, trackable results.
• Support their users: Holy cricket. Their support is so helpful. Privy was one of the first software companies that I've encountered that has really gone above and beyond for my team.
• Measurability: Privy understands that digital marketers want to track - They want to be able to split-test their options, track their results - not only views but conversions and $ conversions. Privy gives its users this ability.

Incentivized

• The user interface is in Flash, which can be very frustrating and slow at times. Apparently, this is to be transitioned in a future release.
• Can only segment the last 93 days of data. Any historical segmentation beyond the 93 days must be run in Explore (which is credit based, and has its own limitations with the number of credits per month, based on the initial contract with IBM).
• Reports can only display 93 days of data at a given time for custom date ranges. There are pre-programmed date ranges setup with IBM during implementation (last week, last month, last quarter etc.), but are not flexible enough to answer more specific questions.
• Certain reports cannot have segments applied, making answering some simple questions a bit more tricky. For example, I can create a segment around mobile devices and apply it to the marketing channels report, but I can't create a marketing channel segment and apply it to the mobile reports.
• Built in API calls allows for nice report design and automation.

• It gets some getting used to setting up emails with pictures.
• Service isn't cheap but you get what you pay for.

Incentivized

IBM Digital Analytics is a great solution for our clients and I believe they offer the best solution for the retail space. We have access to IBM support via email or live chat and they can answer many of the reporting questions that come up. IBM is receptive to our feedback of the product so I am confident they will continue making improvements

• Flexible options: The software allows so many different kinds of opt-in form solutions: Full-page, pop-up, bar at the top of the page, embedded, etc.
• Easy UX: This software is easy to use for just about anyone on my team. It's easy to implement and work with. Design, form field determination, and integration is all relatively very easy to perform.
• Great support: We've had in-person calls with their support team, and they've been answer specific questions and offer relevant strategies. They've been willing to get on the phone with me and my clients to help us solve problems.
• Multiple integrations - No matter what CRM you're using, there's likely a way to integrate Privy forms into it.
• Easy installation on sites: Just a strip of code.
• Visible, measurable results: Tracking and data with visits, conversion events, and conversion $ tracked to the forms.

Incentivized

Very easy to implement and use.

Privy is very easy to use and is intuitive to new users. The templates they provide give you a head start on campaign builds and their customer success team is approachable and knowledgable about the product. You do not have to be a tech wizard to get rolling with Privy, but the results will make you feel that way.

Incentivized

Never had any issues

As reports are templated, the system is pretty quick. Sometimes you have to wait a bit for a report to render. Or you might have to re-load the page. But there is no real issue here and the system is on par with other similar systems.

Overall, the level of support is very good and I would say it is a strong asset of the solution. However, you can sometimes feel that there is a difference of level among the support team.

The customer support team from Privy is incredible (shout out to Simone). Every person I have worked with has been knowledgable, helpful, polite, and responsive. They have a live chat feature and all CSRs do a great job.

Incentivized

Online training is really great. One of the best assets that they have. Lots of great videos, pop quizzes at the end of each module. Fantastic. Other tools have similar features, but not as good.

See previous comment: reading and understanding the encyclopedic implementation guide is a must.

Much of the work we did in IBM Digital Analytics could have been answered through Google Analytics, a much simpler, agile and FREE solution set. Not mention, given the vast number of Google Analytics USERS, free and actionable support is simply a click away ... this compared to IBM Digital Analytics fractured and often absent support service.

After having used quite a few email marketing platforms, I can say out of all of them we like Privy the best. Privy's integration with the BigCommerce platform makes it much easier to use than the others we tried in the past and we are happy with the results we have gotten and their excellent customer support which is superior especially to Mailchimp which can only be reached by email.

Incentivized

This solution can support large amount of data and transaction. The way that user management features are built, it shows it is meant for large organizations.

• We spend too much time trying to work around bugs on the new UI.
• We spend too much time trying to figure out how to make certain segments work because support and the knowledge center are lackluster.
• Our sales rep is very unresponsive and leaves us searching for a lot of answers on our own, including what other products we may benefit from that IBM offers.

Incentivized

• Positive impact for our clients - Our clients can see exactly how many views each opt-in has seen, how it has converted, and how much revenue has been generated from that opt-in and email sequence that it is linked to. (We have used this tool + paid traffic + email to generate more than $15k for some of our clients. And that's just one part of their marketing systems...That's about 150x ROI).
• Positive impact for us - We only want to recommend and use tools that have proven use cases and conversions. This is true here - and it means that we can reliably recommend and use it as a tool to grow revenue for our clients in combination with paid traffic and email marketing. They also support their partners - that means we're more efficient. Time is money - so that's a win here, too.

Incentivized