Sunnytrail: This Web app helps you learn who your customers really are

Engaging with customers should be the top priority for anyone running a business. However, if you run an online business (like an online shop or SaaS application) you will probably have realised how difficult it is to keep track of who your customers are and how you can engage with them.

With that in mind, Sunnytrail has launched its new version today, aiming to help businesses reach out to the people that matter.

I’m completely biased as I’ve been using Sunnytrail for the past few months – my online shop depends on it. Although running a shop sounds like an easy job, you quickly realise that you need to streamline and optimise your processes. Every minute you spend doing any type of admin work, means less time coming up with new products, talking to customers and building relationships. This is why Sunnytrail is so important. It automates the process of finding out who your customers are and what they care about.

The Sunnytrail team is part of GrowLab‘s first cohort and it’s backed by Boris Wertz’s new fund Version One Ventures, Mike Edwards of Initio Group and BDC Venture Capital.

Its underpinning purpose? Customers that are well cared for. And the team has the right perspective about what needs to be done in order to make the life of the entrepreneur easier.

Setting up Sunnytrail is easy and supports different methods of collecting customer data. You can link up your e-commerce platform (currently Shopify and Goodsie are supported), add a bit of Javascript that collects the email when a user submits a form, use their API or just upload your customer data in a CSV file. Once the data is passed through, you link up your twitter and LinkedIn accounts and Sunnytrail goes to work finding out who your customers are.

A customer’s profile with all the data

The fun doesn’t stop there. After a few minutes Sunnytrail has collected the information, and gives you some quick stats about your customers. Things like where they work, what they do, their interests and which networks they are active in are now accessible instantly.

With this information at hand, you can now start thinking about how you approach them and engage with them. If someone very influential signs up then you instantly have all the information you need to contact them and start building a relationship.

The dashboard gives you a quick look at all your customers

What’s new?

The new version features a lot of improvements like filtering and the quick stats panel that you can see in the picture above. The filter allows you to filter by company (where the customer works), company size and social networks.

As for the stats, not only do they give you information about how to engage your customers, they also verify your assumptions about who your customers are. My game, for example, is designed by geeks for geeks and our assumption is that people that buy it must be interested in tech, games and work as programmers, engineers or other related fields. With a quick look at the dashboard, I can verify my assumptions and know that I’m doing a good job.

Having used Sunnytrail for some time now, it has saved me more than once. There have been times that I have been able to engage with influential customers for feedback and promotion that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

With hundreds of streams seeking our attention, having a tool that does the searching and consolidation for you is essential. All in all I think that Sunnytrail is building a great service and I’m looking forward to see how it will evolve.