How should a DAP fit into a product or data stack?

We often see these categories of tools integrated with a DAP to drive the best outcomes. 

Data layers and CDPs (Engineering tooling)

It’s common and important to centrally store user behavioral data, possibly alongside other data, such as financial, marketing, etc., within a data warehouse or lake (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks). 

You may use a single tool to instrument all your product usage data (e.g., Segment, Rudderstack), which you can then feed to your data storage or other data consumer solutions (e.g., analytics or other marketing automation tools). 

You may also use data piping to send natively collected data to your storage (an ETL solution, e.g., Fivetran) or send data back to your marketing and other applications using a Reverse ETL solution (e.g., Hightouch or Census). 

Regardless of your data stack, you should ensure that the data collected by your DAP is fed into your main data storage and, ideally, that the user data you collect from your product is available within your DAP to effectively target users. 

Event analytics and BI solutions (Product tooling)

To analyze your product’s user engagement, you will likely use an event analytics platform (e.g., Amplitude or Mixpanel) to review user behavior and activity. 

These platforms (including FullStory, Heap by ContentSquare, etc.) typically ingest data from DAPs (via integrations) and allow you to analyze it alongside all other product usage data. 

In some cases, DAPs (such as Pendo and Gainsight PX) also offer user behavior instrumentation and analysis, but not at the depth and sophistication of native event tracking solutions. 

Suppose you are not using an event analytics solution. In that case, you may instead be simply querying your database/data storage using a BI solution (such as Tableau, Mode, Looker, Power BI, Domo, etc.), in which case you’ll be able to query your DAP data as long as you’re sending to your data storage. 

Feedback collection software (UX tooling)

If you’re using your DAP for Microsurveys and collecting user responses, you will likely want to bring that content into your existing store for feedback. This might be your warehouse or another feedback management tool (such as Productboard or Dovetail). 

In these cases, you could use your existing piping tools (e.g., Fivetran or Zapier) or APIs (offered by the DAP) to send responses from your DAP to your warehouse or these other tools.  

You may also want to export responses to solutions like Slack/Teams to provide more visibility and real-time notifications of user responses, and you can do that via integrations or webhooks. 

Help desk and ticketing software (Support tooling)

DAPs exist to help guide and nudge users to use your product more successfully, and a lot of this knowledge may already reside in your existing help documentation/knowledge base. 

If you’re using a full-fledged customer service/support/ticketing solution (like Zendesk, Intercom, or Help Scout), it will likely also serve as the repository of your help content. These solutions will likely also offer in-app chat or the ability to submit a ticket via a widget. 

However, you may have a separate knowledge base (e.g., built with Gitbook, Document 360, or a developer-centric solution like ReadMe). 

Most DAPs will offer some integration with these solutions, allowing you to use content in your knowledge base or launch product walkthroughs from chat (including via link). 

DAPs typically offer an in-app widget as a “Resource Center” or hub for links to other help sources. Within this, you may be able to load your existing help content, offer users the chance to launch a support chat conversation, submit a support ticket, etc. 

Beyond this, DAPs (such as Chameleon) can summarize help articles via AI to use as content for tooltips or other in-app experiences or offer a CMD+K interface to search your docs and offer AI-based answers.

Scheduling software (Sales tooling)

For use cases, including trial conversion and upsell, you may want to adopt a “Product-led Sales” motion, which combines a self-serve user experience with the ability to engage with humans. This typically means trying to book meetings with “product-qualified leads” (PQLs) based on user activity. 

This can happen effectively if you prompt users to book calls in-app at the right time and place. A DAP can help do this via integrations with scheduling tools (such as Chili Piper, Calendly, and Hubspot). You can prompt users to book a call to learn more, unlock a feature, or get a live demo with an in-app experience that leads to an in-app scheduling modal. 

CRMs (Sales tooling)

By integrating your CRM (e.g., Salesforce or HubSpot) with your DAP, you'll get an "under-the-hood" view of how customers and prospects are using your app. Most DAPs on the market offer a two-way integration with CRM tools, usually on higher-tier plans.

A DAP can assist your sales team in identifying users who have or have not been engaging with specific messages and features. Your SDRs and AEs can utilize this information to personalize their outreach, concentrating on launches or use cases that are most relevant to each user.

Combining CRM insights with in-app behavior tracked by DAPs is particularly powerful for converting trial users into paying customers and identifying opportunities for upselling. By understanding the 'when' and the 'what' of user engagement, sales teams can strike while the iron is hot, leading to more timely and impactful conversations 🔥

Email automation (Marketing tooling)

The best place to engage active users is in-app—but that doesn't mean it's the only way to communicate. Using a marketing automation tool like customer.io or HubSpot you can coordinate your messaging in an omnichannel manner.

Most DAPs will offer some way to get your in-app data into your marketing tooling, and vice versa. Say, for example, you are launching a new feature. You can tell users about what's new in your product and nudge them towards activation with tooltips and tours, but then you can also bump those who haven't engaged with your new release through email—highlighting different value props or tips to try and get folks back into your app to see the exciting updates.

This email and in-app combo works exceptionally well for user onboarding and upselling users.