More than just a live chat solution and chabots, Drift is a powerful conversational marketing platform, allowing you to collect qualified leads, engage those leads in a personalised way and therefore close more sales.
Powerful and very rich, the software also proves complex to use, making the learning curve, steep. A complete tool, which we present to you in more detail, in the continuation of this article 🙂
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Our review of Drift : Summary table
Functional scope of Drift
Drift offers a complete livechat solution to facilitate the work of your support team, but also chabots, more conversion-oriented. These are the features, close to marketing automation, that we will detail here.
Chatbots
The chatbot creation tool
To create its chatbots, Drift suggests using a visual flow generator. This is a table from which it is possible to design, test and optimise its interface. The elements created are simply added to the flow and can be modified in a few clicks.
The user creates the questions and determines the possible choice of answers for the users, before creating a logical sequence and conclusion to this path. The bot, once completed, can be tested before being implemented.
The elements available on the chatbot creation interface make it possible to send and receive messages, to ask specific questions but also to capture email addresses, telephone numbers or to create customer support tickets directly. Other features allow you to transfer a conversation from a bot to a direct conversation or to schedule meetings.
Contact management
From the Drift back office, the user has access to a list of all the Internet users and customers who have exchanged with the bot. The list can be filtered using customised criteria, allowing the user to create his or her own segment.
Each user can then be asked a question and the answer recorded in a custom field (called Attributes). Based on the answers, tags can be created.
Sending personalised messages
It is impossible to send sequences of messages. However, this is not surprising. Via Drift, you can only create a chatbot for your website, although it is possible to add conditions to make the experience a bit more personalised.
Drift allows the creation of a multilingual chatbot. An interesting feature, although difficult to deploy. You have to copy and paste your entire chatbot flow before translating it, and then code the medium yourself before putting it on your web page.
Opinions Salesdorado
Unfortunately, Drift lacks some key features such as audio, video and galleries to enrich the conversation.
Commitment
The data collected in Drift can be used to improve engagement through ‘playbooks’. These playbooks are multi-channel sequences of targeted emails and chat messages designed to engage and retrieve information about your prospects before redirecting them to the desired service.
It is up to the user to write the contents of the mail or messages but also to define the target and the display rules.
A section that makes it easy to create different types of targeted messages from one place. When creating their Playbook, users can choose between a Chatbot and Live Chat Playbook or a Landing Page Playbook. After selection, it is only necessary to define the page on which this engagement tool is put into action.
The bot can be placed on the homepage or on the price page and can be used to retarget prospects who have already visited your site, to start a discussion on the homepage or price page to improve conversions, etc.
Drift provides detailed measurements of the Playbook’s chat and email performance. A well thought out and intuitive section, which provides data on :
- Impressions: how many times was the Playbook shown to visitors?
- Number of mailings: how many times has the Playbook been sent to visitors?
- The number of conversations started from the Playbook
- The amount of email captured from conversations
- The number of meetings booked from the conversations
These metrics are regularly updated and easily exported. Finally, the user can choose to browse through dates and data over a wider time period to study the effectiveness of their strategy.
Notice Salesdorado
It is impossible to create a chatbot on your website and automatically send emails (once you have captured the user’s email). This is a drawback, as it doesn’t allow you to develop an omnichannel chat experience with Drift.
Customer knowledge
Drift makes it easy to extract customer data from other data systems. This information can then be reused to segment your prospect list, personalise content and create rich reports.
Drift Intel, a feature of the Premium plan, collects data from Crunchbase, SixSense and ZoomInfo. The information verified includes the person’s contact details, company name and industry.
The Drift Audiences tool, available in the Enterprise plan, allows information and data to be extracted from other systems thanks to integrations deployed with Marketo or Salesforce.
Opinion Salesdorado
We particularly appreciate the fact that drift supports the extraction and registration of customer information from third-party CRMs, thus enriching its database. A feature that allows you to strengthen your strategy.
Other features
On Drift, you can talk to your customers in two ways:
- Landing pages: Drift offers standard landing pages, displaying a discussion widget. You can optimise this to improve the user experience, for example by displaying a PDF in addition to the chat widget. This makes it easier to generate leads and obtain contact information.
- Website widgets: with Drift, it is possible to create a website widget corresponding to the brand image of its platform. The widgets can be displayed in a specific way, depending on the characteristics of the user, such as their geographical location, whether they are new or not, the number of pages they have visited, etc. These widgets can be activated from a simple button on your site, which makes them a good alternative to the contact form.
Another interesting feature is Drift Intel, which allows anonymous prospects to be transformed into companies. The user’s IP address is tracked and the identity of the company you are talking to is detected almost immediately. It is then easy to direct the discussion. Beware, some people use a VPN, changing their IP address.
Salesdorado’s opinion
The functional scope of Drift is quite large and requires some patience and effort to master it perfectly. The tool is really complete and allows you to deploy a robust strategy.
Reporting on Drift
Drift offers a comprehensive reporting tool. You have quick access to reports on your playbooks, chatbot performance, meeting reports, team performance and more. It’s a somewhat complex section as it’s extremely detailed but extremely comprehensive to the point of making it one of the most relevant on the market. Here are some examples of what you can access:
- Team Performance: In “Team Performance”, the data on how the teams deal with the customer and how efficiently they can do so is analysed. How long does it take staff to respond? What is the median response time? Which team performs best? These questions and answers are designed to improve the customer experience.
- Chats: In the “Chats” section, the figures concerning the chats themselves are analysed. Where do they start from (from which URL does the user click on the chatbot) and how long do they last? What are the most prolific times of day? This allows us to better understand the customer journey and to define the questions and needs that come up most often.
- Routing: Finally, in “Routing”, we analyse the details of conversations and exchanges. Where does the discussion end, where are the customers referred to? How many conversations per category? It is in fact a question of studying the conclusion to the discussion.
Opinion Salesdorado
Drift’s reporting functionality is one of the most advanced in the chatbot software market. Comprehensive, accurate, detailed and customisable, the reports are one of Drift’s strengths.
Integrations
Drift offers fewer native integrations, notably Intercom. However, the ones that do exist are interesting, particularly with Zapier, which allows you to create integrations with over 3,000 other applications independently.
Other software available for integration include Salesforce, Marketo, Slack, Google Calendar, Facebook Pixel Tracking, Google Analytics and Google Sheets. Finally, Drift offers its own API for creating its own webhooks.
Salesdorado Opinion
The Zapier integration allows you to independently create your own integrations with nearly 3,000 tools, which makes up for the lack of native integrations.
Drift customer support
In case of problems, contact customer support via live chat. The conversations are then routed to the teams concerned by your problem. For other more specific requests, email addresses are available on the official website.
For those with Drift Insider, the support is better developed. Supported by an active community of 35,000 members, there are more than 400 courses, 1,000 video tutorials as well as podcasts and a very well-structured and free support forum.
Opinions Salesdorado
Customer support is one of the big advantages of Drift. Its community is large and active, and it shares a lot of content, allowing you to be accompanied and to take a step forward in the use of its chatbots.
Customer reviews of Drift
Drift has a very good perception. The tool is rated 4.5 / 5 on Capterra, after 155 votes and 4.4 / 5 on G2, after 522 reviews!
Customer reviews of Drift
- Ideal for simple bots: Building the chat streams (Drift calls them “Playbooks”) is usually quite easy, allowing you to create new bots quickly.
- Customer support: Having a drift problem? Don’t worry. Customer service is just a chat away. They are always listening and proactively helping you.
- Complexity of use: If you plan to set up a fairly robust and sophisticated chatbot, you will need to take time.
- Price: Drift is quite expensive for what they offer. I am one of the satisfied customers, who got a starter license of the pro plan for a fraction of the normal price.
Drift prices
We regret Drift’s lack of transparency on the question of prices, which are only available on request. There is also no free test version. However, in the past, the Premium plan cost almost $600 per month for 10 accounts. An additional $80 was then charged for each new user.
You can choose between the following plans:
- Premium Plan: This is the ideal solution for small businesses wishing to implement a conversational outreach strategy. Access to Drift Intel is guaranteed!
- Advanced Plan: this is a solution designed for SMEs wishing to engage their audience with more specific and sophisticated messages. Additional features are offered, such as A/B testing and better segmentation.
- Enterprise Plan: This is the perfect solution for larger companies that want to continuously engage with their audience and generate qualified leads. Multilingual or virtual sales support features are available!
Opinion Salesdorado
Drift’s lack of transparency on the subject of pricing is regrettable. However, it seems clear that the software is quite expensive, especially in view of its many features and benefits.
