Many top brands rely on brand ambassador programs to add new life to their marketing campaigns. But partnering with the right brand ambassadors and managing the relationship requires dedication.
Thankfully, brand ambassador software can make the process much easier for marketers, helping you plan, manage, and track your ambassador marketing partnerships. This list of 10 brand ambassador software options will help you choose the right fit for your business.
Marketing Expert Review Of Ambassador Software: I’m Jeremy, a 15 year expert in SEO, brands and marketing. I’ve consulted with brands and freelancers alike who are looking to expand their digital marketing reach and have advised them on software choices. I’ve been hired to be an independent editor on this list of software choices for brand ambassador platforms. I’ll cover the basics for each piece of software, and showcase any interesting use cases, comments I’ve found from other professionals using the tool already and deficiencies to consider before you buy.
What is brand ambassador software?
Brand ambassador software helps in communication, resources management, planning, and tracking the outcome of your marketing campaigns you’ve chosen to support with a brand ambassador.
(A brand ambassador is a person paid to hire and promote a specific business, SaaS or product as an authentic and credible advocate.)
The right platform makes it easy to communicate with your brand ambassadors, automate time-consuming tasks like reward fulfillment, and focus on scaling your marketing efforts through email and other channels. Once ambassadors are on board, brand ambassador software will track referral activities, reward ambassadors, and provide thorough campaign performance analytics.
Some software can also help you find brand ambassadors (e.g. social listening tools), but these tools typically don’t have the management or rewards functionality.
You can start out managing your brand ambassador program manually if you only have a very small number of ambassadors. But if you want your program to scale efficiently, brand ambassador software is a good idea!
Affiliates vs. ambassadors
There’s a subtle but important difference between a brand ambassador and an affiliate. While sometimes affiliates can directly promote and do advertising for a product or site, they also often attempt the balancing act of giving a referral but trying to look impartial. But ambassadors are public, outspoken direct advocates.
For example, most articles online talking about multiple pieces of software are actually affiliates for several or all of them. On the other side, brand ambassadors are meant to be loud, outspoken advocates, sometimes even directly hired by the company to attend events, record webinars, and engage in marketing efforts.
Looking to manage affiliates instead of ambassadors? Check out our list of the top affiliate marketing software options and the ultimate guide to running effective affiliate programs.
Pricing overview for ambassador tools
Software | Pricing | Free Trial | Trial Requires Credit Card |
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Referral Rock | Starts at $175+/month | 30 days | No |
BrandChamp | $249-$1,530/month | No | N/A |
SocialToaster | $350-$1,300/month | No | N/A |
Brand24 | $69-$399/month | Yes | No |
Zuberance | Not listed | N/A | N/A |
Influitive Elevate | Not listed | N/A | N/A |
Awario | $24-$399/month | Yes | No |
BrandBassador | Not listed | N/A | N/A |
Social Seeder | Not listed | N/A | N/A |
Ambassify | $800-$1,200/month | No | N/A |
What are the best brand ambassador platforms?
1. Referral Rock
Best for: Businesses of all sizes, in all industries; especially great for businesses with multi-step sales processes
Referral Rock started as a referral program software to help any business get more loyal customers using the power of their own network. Since then, the platform has grown and now offers the flexibility to run brand ambassador programs, channel partner programs, affiliate programs, and more.
The easy program builder lets you build a best-in-class experience for your brand ambassadors, from a dedicated member portal (where they can track the status of their referrals) to ready-to-go sharing messages.
This customizable feature gives you a public facing interface, as well as controls on the internal pages shown to your ambassadors that can be deeply customized, but is ready “out of the box.”
Once you’re ready to launch, Referral Rock makes it easy to invite brand ambassadors and advocates to participate in a program, track the new leads and customers they bring in, and instantly issue rewards for every referral sale.
Expert Editor Note: There’s a lot of already templated emails setup and ready for your referral/ambassador upon signup. You can modify or add additional emails in your setup process but the basics are ready, this is a big time saver.
In short, Referral Rock lets you automate time-consuming processes, so you can focus on building brand ambassador relationships with your biggest fans.
Top features:
- Identify and enroll individual brand ambassadors: Once you determine the ambassadors that fit your program, you can easily invite them to your program with a One Click Access link and personalize their campaigns.
- Segment ambassador types: The software allows for siloing your ambassadors based on whether they’re customers, affiliates, employees, partners, or other advocates. Since the software was built originally on the concept of referral, you can manage influencer campaigns as well as ambassadors who are clients or employees.
- Easily track referral links and manage your program: Manage individual campaigns and monitor key performance indicators on the platform’s admin dashboard.
- Flexible reward system: Incentivize your brand ambassadors by offering rewards they actually want, including cash (PayPal, Wise), credits, gift cards, and more. The reward process can be automated and adjusted as needed, and can handle tiered incentives, commission payouts, and recurring rewards.
- Mobile app and API integration: Referral Rock offers a convenient mobile app and API integration, allowing you to customize the solution to fit your business workflow.
Referral Rock pricing
- Professional: $175+/month (for businesses with sales reps and servicepeople)
- Engage: $200+/month (for businesses with self-checkouts)
- Enterprise plan also available
Does Referral Rock have a free trial? Yes.
They do require a “business email” to sign up, most likely to filter out spam or identify users who actually have the budget. They also require a phone number.
They have a 30-day free trial that does NOT require a credit card.
Integrations
An important part of any SaaS tool is knowing how it fits into your pre-existing constellation of software and tools. Here’s a link to the full list of the 50+ integrations available in Referral Rock, and a list of top integrations.
- Full integration directory
- Hubspot
- Salesforce
- Zapier
- ActiveCampaign
- Mailchimp
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- Typeform
- PayPal
- Wise
- Tango
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
Any SaaS is only as good as it’s support and onboarding. Here’s the resources they provide to help users succeed and resolve problems:
Referral Rock ratings and case studies
As a long term player in the brand ambassador space, Referral Rock has solid ratings on Capterra, Software Advice and has created some dedicated case studies to consider.
Capterra rating: 4.6 stars (82 reviews)
“Referral Rock has made our referral process a breeze. With its easy-to-use dashboard, we can now track the status of each referral in real-time, keeping everyone in the loop. The user-friendly interface is a plus, making it simple for our team to navigate. The platform’s organization and automation features have saved us time, streamlining tasks and communication.” – Savannah, via Capterra
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
Referral Rock is a robust platform that can run any type of incentive-based program. It works for both online and offline businesses, and can be customized to your unique business needs. With 50+ integrations and automated reward payouts, you can get a brand ambassador program up and running in just a few steps.
2. BrandChamp
Best for: Ecommerce brands that want to track ambassadors’ performance
BrandChamp offers comprehensive tools for growing, managing, and tracking your ambassador program. It gives brand ambassadors the creative freedom they need, while making it easy for you to monitor and approve their posts, and automatically reward them for their efforts.
BrandChamp integrates with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, and is mainly geared towards online-only businesses.
Top features:
- Easily monitor diverse activities: Approve brand ambassador activities across multiple social media platforms from your dashboard in one click. You can also set rules, assign specific activities, and agree on tasks with individual ambassadors.
- Automated, custom rewards: Automatically distribute custom rewards whenever a brand ambassador meets the agreed requirements. Ambassadors can also track the status of each of their activities and see how far they have to go before earning the next reward. **Expert Editor Note: There’s an internal transaction fee for these rewards, see the pricing section below for details.
- Detailed tracking: Track the performance of each brand ambassador, post, and campaign, including social shares, sales generated, conversion rates, clicks, and engagement.
- Ecommerce integration: BrandChamp integrates with Google Analytics, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Amazon, allowing you to track sales through ambassador discounts, links, and cookies.
BrandChamp pricing
BrandChamp has increased their pricing since my last update.
Their lowest tier costs $520 a month, but also has a 4.75% transaction fee for purchases/rewards within their system.
This pricing scales up 4 levels to $2,750 a month, which does lower the transaction fee to 1.50%. There is also a custom enterprise-level plan.
Does BrandChamp have a free trial? No. Unfortunately, there’s no trial for their software; you will need to schedule a demo.
Integrations
BrandChamp offers a handful of integrations with popular tools: Shopify, WooCommerce, Google Analytics, and Zapier. There aren’t any CRM integrations, so it’s more suited for an ecommerce stack.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
Support and onboarding are key to any SaaS tool. Here’s the resources BrandChamp provides to help users succeed and resolve problems:
BrandChamp ratings and reviews
Capterra rating: 5 stars (3 reviews)
“In general we find the platform to be very intuitive, with a straightforward functionality and ease of use. Rather than focusing on recruiting, BrandChamp helps manage the recruits once they have decided to commit.” – Shannon, via Capterra
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
BrandChamp is a full-suite ambassador program software that gives you and your brand ambassadors a great deal of creative freedom. But brands outside of the ecommerce space may find that this software won’t be the best fit because it doesn’t accommodate multi-step sales processes or CRM integration.
BrandChamp handles nearly everything, except finding ambassadors. You’ll need to find brand ambassadors yourself or use another software to handle your search process.
3. SocialToaster
Best for: Businesses that want a way to turn employees and stakeholders into advocates.
With SocialToaster, employees and other potential brand advocates can sign up for a virtual “fan club” centered around your brand by completing a simple form and connecting their social media accounts.
These superfans can then share specific pieces of branded content on social media in exchange for accumulated points. Plus, they also get points each time their friends reshare or click on their content.
Top features:
- Engaging gamification: Fans accumulate points when they share content, their content is reshared by others, or their friends end up joining the “fan club.” There are also giveaways and contests where fans compete to win prizes on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
- Individual share tracking: Tracking the shares of individual fans allows you to identify your brand’s most engaged superfans, and double down on the most successful areas of your program.
- User-generated content (UGC) contests: Higher-level plans let you run contests to drive UGC, which is an authentic way for advocates to share their own unique perspectives about your brand.
SocialToaster pricing
Pricing ranges from $350-$1,300/month (with an enterprise plan available).
Does SocialToaster have a free trial? No. They schedule a demo of their program for you with a salesperson.
Integrations
Social Toaster has a set of social media integrations like Slack, Teams and other communication apps, and some additional ecommerce and CRM integrations for Magento, WooCommerce and Salesforce.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
While their marketing site doesn’t connect to it, there is a “help desk” that also has some documentation.
SocialToaster ratings and reviews
Capterra rating: 5 stars (3 reviews)
“I like the simplicity of the program. It’s easy to use and has a good model for an effective, low-maintenance program.” – Mary, via Capterra
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
Although the gamification features and the ability to identify top advocates is great, it would be nice if SocialToaster would let all fans customize the messages they post on social media platforms. SocialToaster requires fans to share exact messages from your brand in order to earn points, with no opportunity to personalize the text for their situation and audience.
It also only targets employees and internal stakeholders as ambassadors, instead of a wider pool of sources (e.g. customers, influencers).
4. Brand24
Best for: Businesses that want to quickly identify authentic fans on social media to recruit as ambassadors
Brand24 is more of a social monitoring software versus a brand ambassador management tool. It’s all about keeping a close eye on what people are saying about you online in real-time.
From a brand ambassador program perspective, this helps streamline your search for enthusiastic, authentic ambassadors via social media, and then lets you keep tabs on what each ambassador posts on their channels.
Top features:
- Real-time social media monitoring: Brand24 alerts you to social media and other online mentions of your brand name, relevant keywords, and hashtags as they happen.
- Discussion volume chart: Identify any sudden changes in the discussion about your brand. This allows you to spot any problematic issues and protects your online reputation before anything escalates.
- Influence score: Each mention found by Brand24 comes with an influence score, or index of the person’s authority. This is a great factor in choosing a brand ambassador with strong influence over their audience. You can even view detailed data about the impact of each individual’s post.
Brand24 pricing
Brand24 plans range from $69-$399/month
Does Brand24 have a free trial? Yes.
They do require a “business email”, to signup, most likely to filter out spam or identify users who actually have the budget.
They have a 14-day free trial that does NOT require a credit card.
Integrations
Because of the nature of the tool, the integrations are geared a little differently, connecting just to Slack, Linkedin and Facebook/Instagram. The objective is to integrate to provide data, and is less about interaction with brand ambassadors.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
Here’s the resources Brand24 provides to help users succeed and resolve problems:
Brand24 ratings and reviews
Capterra rating: 4.7 stars (157 reviews)
“With Brand24 it’s easy-peasy to pop onto the laptop and peruse through the social media activity for our company, and as well as for peeking in on our competitors.” – Michael, via Capterra
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
Brand24 is a great choice for finding passionate potential ambassadors, without having to do any manual social media searches. And thanks to Brand24’s influence score, you can simultaneously evaluate the brand ambassador’s authority in their niche.
Although it analyzes the reach of each ambassador’s posts, you’ll need other tools to track key metrics (click-through rates, sales, and conversions) and issue rewards.
5. Zuberance
Best for: Enterprise B2B and B2C businesses
A full-service brand ambassador platform used by larger B2B and B2C companies, Zuberance is committed to building an “advocate army” for your brand. The customizable platform identifies potential brand ambassadors for you through surveys, social media, and brand ambassador reviews, and then gives these advocates the tools to create and share branded content from their own authentic perspectives.
Zuberance reports to have run “over 1,000 advocate marketing programs and campaigns for more than 100 consumer and business brands.”
Top features:
- Brand ambassador identification: Identify the best brand ambassadors using NPS surveys and other customer satisfaction surveys. The platform also identifies glowing social media comments and positive reviews to find customers who would make authentic brand ambassadors.
- All-in-one communication suite: A customized platform is tailored to your brand, allowing you to mobilize brand fans through email, SMS, and social media. Invite ambassadors directly to your customized portal, where they can publish reviews, photos, videos, testimonials, and more, using the social channels and third-party platforms of their choice.
- Extensive tracking: Track an extensive list of brand ambassador metrics, including the percentages of ambassadors sharing each type of content, estimated reach and impressions per ambassador, and the conversions each ambassador generates.
- Issue rewards for challenges: Reward advocates with points when they complete certain challenges or milestones — points can then be redeemed for gift cards or credits.
Zuberance pricing
Zuberance’s pricing is not listed. After a consultation, Zuberance will customize pricing based on feature choice and use.
Does Zuberance have a free trial? No.
They do require a “business email” to sign up, most likely to filter out spam or identify users who actually have the budget. They also require a phone number.
Integrations
An important part of any SaaS tool is knowing how it fits into your pre-existing constellation of software and tools. Unfortunately, there’s no publicly available help center or resource available for integrations reference on the Zuberance marketing pages.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
Zuberance as a product gets customer support from its parent company IZEA.
Zuberance ratings and reviews
Capterra rating: N/A
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
If you’re looking for a full-service brand ambassador management software that finds reliable ambassadors and organizes everything in one place, Zuberance may be the platform for you. However, the lack of transparent pricing, plan information, and free trial shows that Zuberance is targeted at larger businesses. I would carefully check out their new parent company Izea, as it’s not totally clear how independent Zuberance will remain, or if it will get continued development and new features.
6. Influitive Elevate
Best for: Enterprise businesses looking to gather feedback and testimonials.
Influitive’s Elevate platform (formerly AdvocateHub) helps you discover new advocates and build data-rich profiles on each. It also helps you collect user-generated content and build a “reference pool” of customers who can speak to your product.
The platform’s integrations makes it easy to push referrals into your CRM and track them along the customer journey.
Top features:
- Discover new advocates: Collect zero-party data on potential advocates and build data-rich profiles for each individual.
- Gather feedback and testimonials Elevate lets you grant brand ambassadors access to exclusive content (e.g., insider info, sneak peeks at new products, company seminars). This is the perfect way to build lasting relationships with your brand ambassadors.
- Push leads to nurture campaigns: Brand ambassadors can interact with fellow ambassadors, answer questions, and give each other support. They can also communicate with company representatives, so they’re always in the loop.
Elevate pricing
Elevate’s pricing is not listed (formerly listed at $1199/month). Ironically, upon my review, even the pricing page for the entire site was not even loading properly.
Does Elevate by Influitive have a free trial? No, only a Demo is available.
Integrations
Because this tool is just part of a suite, it’s not detailed exactly what integrations, outside of Salesforce, are available on any “basic package”. Their main value offering is having their own integration of their data for you to connect into your CRM system.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
There isn’t a separate support system for the Elevate software, just the general support interface for Influitive.
Elevate ratings and reviews
There’s no independent reviews of the Elevate tool, just general reviews for its parent platform Influitive.
Capterra rating: 4.7 stars (250 reviews)
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
Influitive Elevate places heavy emphasis on community and gives ambassadors all the info they need within an exclusive portal. However, the high pricing that isn’t fully transparent indicates that Elevate is likely too expensive for most smaller businesses.
7. Awario
Best for: Businesses that want to quickly identify authentic fans to recruit as ambassadors
Awario is a social listening software (similar to Brand24), which means it tracks all real-time mentions by people already talking about your brand. This feature allows you to find potential ambassadors who are currently sharing their love for your brand in an enthusiastic, authentic way.
However, it’s not a platform that can help you manage brand ambassadors or issue rewards to them (so think of it as a complement to a brand ambassador management tool).
Top features:
- Real-time mention monitoring: After you input your brand name and other relevant keywords into Awario, the platform alerts you any time your brand is mentioned. You can tag these mentions as positive or negative and score them based on the user’s reach, helping you find the best ambassadors who genuinely love your brand.
- Streamline searches: Use Boolean logic to track very specific mentions of your brand or other keyword, and use negative keywords to exclude irrelevant mentions.
- Instant engagement: Reply to and reshare mentions right from the Awario platform. This is great for potential brand ambassador outreach or to repost content straight from your brand’s own account.
Awario pricing
Awario plans range from $24-$399/month.
Does Awario have a free trial? Yes, there’s no credit card required for their free trial.
Integrations
Through Zapier, there’s thousands of potential integrations available.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
While their marketing site doesn’t connect to it, there is a “help desk” that also has some documentation.
Awario ratings and reviews
Capterra rating: 4.3 stars (47 reviews)
“Unlike other monitoring tools out there, Awario really works. These type of tools are not that easy to implement. But Awario has a well-designed interface and a well-designed monitoring engine.” – Alberto, via Capterra
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
Like Brand24, Awario is a great choice to help you find and screen brand ambassadors based on real-time mentions. I love that Awario lets you see the number of times a prospective ambassador has mentioned you, and that you can reply to the ambassador directly from Awario.
However, it can take some time to learn the Boolean logic and get the searches you’re looking for. You will also need another tool if you’re hoping to automate any management and tracking tasks for your brand ambassador program.
8. BrandBassador
Best for: Ecommerce brands that want to track ambassadors’ performance
BrandBassador is an app-based ambassador management and influencer marketing platform focused on gamifying ambassador tasks. Prospective brand ambassadors can apply to your program through the app and, if they’re accepted, are immediately given all the information they need to represent your brand.
Meanwhile, program management and tracking is also easy using the platform’s admin dashboard.
Top features:
- Convenient automation: BrandBassador automates the process of assigning missions to brand ambassadors, tracking earned points, and rewarding ambassadors based on their value to your brand. They also have a mobile app.
- Tracks what matters: Track sales through links and brand ambassador discount codes, and view your program’s sales stats on your dashboard (which can be organized by preferred time period).
- Plug-and-play integrations: Easily integrates with major ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.
- Focus on user generated content (UGC): Helps you assign “tasks” to ambassadors, track their performance, and give rewards.
BrandBassador pricing
BrandBassador’s pricing is not listed.
Does BrandBassador have a free trial? No, you must schedule a demo to get pricing and see the platform.
Integrations
BrandBassador has integrations with a large number of ecommerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Wix, BigCommerce), plus Salesforce on the ecommerce side, and several social media integrations.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
There’s no publicly available support hub or documentation. They do have a brand community, white papers and other resources.
BrandBassador ratings and reviews
Capterra rating: 4.0 stars (2 reviews)
“The customer support is a great, I got a response very fast and it helped, the campaigns are real and the brands reply very fast.” – Oana, via Capterra
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
BrandBassador brings a wealth of experience in running brand ambassador programs and gamifies the experience for ambassadors. Plus, the tracking dashboard makes it easy to check the ROI of your ambassador program.
But, as is the case with some other programs on this list, you have to get a demo to see BrandBassador pricing, which makes it difficult to fully compare the software to other options.
9. Social Seeder
Best for: Brands that only want to mobilize employees as ambassadors, and that are okay with forgoing traditional rewards
Social Seeder’s ambassador program software is aimed at driving advocacy from employee-ambassadors. Its all-in-one solution makes it easy for employee-ambassadors to spread the word across their social networks.
Brands recruit, activate, and engage ambassadors through the platform, and are then able to harvest the fruits of their labor. In a strong departure from many of the other software programs on this list, SocialSeeder fully rejects gamification in favor of more intrinsic motivators.
Top features:
- Employee engagement: Easily ask employees and other fans to become your brand ambassadors, update them on news and stories via app or email, and encourage them to share the stories that resonate on social media.
- Engagement tracking: Monitor the numbers and rates of brand ambassadors viewing and sharing the content you recommend. Find out which campaigns drive qualified leads to check out their content and get recommended engagement benchmarks to continuously improve your program.
Social Seeder pricing
Pricing is not listed; you have to request a quote.
Does Social Seeder have a free trial? No, you must schedule a demo to get pricing and see the platform. You can catch a few glimpses of the platform in this 42 second teaser for their recent “V3” announcement.
Integrations
Social Seeded has some technical support resources to connect to your marketing platforms via API. There aren’t many details about which platforms or integrations are supported.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
While you may have to Google their help center because it’s not linked from their marketing site, it may be easier to access once you sign up.
Social Seeder ratings and reviews
Capterra rating: 4.8 stars (4 reviews)
“We use Social Seeder for employer branding on social media, and it gets an A++ in my book.” – Katie, via Capterra
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
Social Seeder seems like an easy-to-use tool for driving engagement. It promotes authenticity because extrinsic rewards aren’t the main focus of the brand ambassador program. Instead, it focuses on relationship-building, which is essential to a successful ambassador program (and beneficial when your ambassadors are also your employees).
However, there’s not much information available about their plans. I couldn’t discern how much room Social Seeder gives for brand ambassadors to directly share their own authentic stories (although we imagine the community structure would promote this). In addition, it doesn’t seem like the right solution for mobilizing customer-ambassadors, given its clear focus on employees.
10. Ambassify
Best for: Enterprise brands that only want to mobilize employees as ambassadors, and that want a gamified reward feature
Ambassify is another platform aimed at activating employee-ambassadors – it turns employees into a valuable force of brand advocacy. The platform covers all aspects of starting and managing a brand ambassador program, from recruitment to management to tracking.
Top features:
- Promote employee-brand relationships: Communicate insider info to your employees, gather feedback and insights, and build community so they feel valued and become engaged advocates. Flexible tasks and structures let you choose your community structure based on what will best keep your employees most engaged.
- Program gamification: Reward employees for social sharing, commenting, reviewing, internal feedback, and community-building actions with points that can be redeemed for prizes. A leaderboard feature is also available.
- Advocate- and campaign-level tracking: Monitor reach, engagement, NPS, and ROI of your campaign. You can also examine each brand ambassador’s demographics and sharing history, and divide them into relevant groups to better reach segments of your audience.
- Multiple integrations: Ambassify integrates with Zapier, HubSpot, Salesforce, PayPal, MailChimp, and more.
Ambassify pricing
Since my last update, Ambassify has changed pricing. They’ve defined that $10,000 annually is their “Essential” program. For Premium and Enterprise pricing, you have to book a 1-on-1 demo and sales pitch.
Does Ambassify offer a free trial? No, but you can trade your email for a 12 minute demo video, join a weekly demo, or request a 1-on-1 demo.
Integrations
Ambassaify supports integrations with Salesforce, Paypal, Zapier, Hubspot and more.
Customer support, onboarding & walk-thrus
These resorces help Ambassify customers get up and running:
Ambassify ratings and reviews
Capterra rating: 4.6 stars (24 reviews)
“With Ambassify, we can quickly and efficiently reach out to our employees to interact with our branded content. A few more functionalities to incentivize engagement among the employees would be nice to see, and it might help a lot in generating and stimulating engagement.” – Judith, via Capterra
Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Bottom line:
Ambassify is a great option for harnessing the power of your employee voices. Pick Ambassify over Social Seeder if you want to gamify your employee engagement or allow more freedom to share their authentic thoughts – it seems to be stronger in those areas.
The higher price points position Ambassify as an enterprise solution. It also doesn’t offer a self-service option, and you will need to spend time with their reps for your initial set up.
Recap: Advantages and disadvantages by brand
Software | Advantages | Disadvantages |
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Referral Rock | Easy setup, CRM integrations, Automated payouts | Doesn't find ambassadors for you |
BrandChamp | Comprehensive tools, Ecommerce integrations | No trial available |
SocialToaster | Gamification, Individual share tracking | Mostly pre-written messages, Limited to employees |
Brand24 | Real-time monitoring, Influence score | Requires another tool for management and rewards |
Zuberance | Brand ambassador identification, All-in-one suite | Lack of pricing transparency, Likely expensive |
Influitive Elevate | Advocate discovery, Feedback collection | Expensive, Meant for enterprises only |
Awario | Real-time mention monitoring, Detailed features | Requires another tool for management and rewards |
BrandBassador | Gamified experience, Ecommerce integrations | Pricing not transparent, No way to find new ambassadors |
Social Seeder | Employee engagement, Intrinsic motivation | Not suitable for customer-ambassadors, Lack of details |
Ambassify | Employee-brand relationships, Program gamification | Expensive, Meant for enterprises only |
Recap: Target audiences by platform
Software | Target Audience |
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Referral Rock | Businesses of all sizes |
BrandChamp | Ecommerce brands |
SocialToaster | Businesses focusing on employees |
Brand24 | Businesses of all sizes |
Zuberance | Enterprise B2B and B2C businesses |
Influitive Elevate | Enterprise businesses |
Awario | Businesses of all sizes |
BrandBassador | Ecommerce brands |
Social Seeder | Brands focusing on employees |
Ambassify | Enterprise brands |
Brand ambassador software FAQ
Will brand ambassador software work for my business?
Brand ambassador programs – and therefore, brand ambassador management platforms – only work if your brand identity and brand story are well established.
A brand ambassador program works especially well for businesses that:
- Are in highly competitive or commoditized industries
- Sell more expensive items
- Target a specific niche (i.e., sportswear, organic food, gamers)
- Have lots of amazing product reviews
It also helps if your brand already has a social media presence. Once these elements are in place, the right brand ambassador software can ensure a smooth integration with your existing marketing strategy.
What should I look for in brand ambassador software?
In addition to helping you enroll, manage, and communicate with ambassadors, and analyze track your ambassadors’ activities, the best brand ambassador software will also:
- Be flexible enough to work with any reward system you desire
- Let you personalize each of your ambassadors’ campaigns
- Automate several aspects of ambassador management, including tracking, rewards, and ambassador engagement
- Offer detailed options to track and analyze your ambassadors’ efforts, with all the data you need to refine your program
- Integrate with your existing marketing stack of third-party software platforms, including your CRM
What are the benefits of using software for brand ambassador management?
A brand ambassador platform automates ambassador management, tracking, and rewards, and streamlines your communication efforts. The main benefit of using brand ambassador management software is efficiency. The right software tool can save your business time and effort, and allow you to focus on growing your overall marketing strategy. You’ll need software if you want to scale.
You might wonder, do you need brand ambassador software at all? After all, most businesses start out managing their brand ambassador programs with spreadsheets and standard messaging tools. But while these DIY tools can do the job, all the information can get a bit tangled when you start engaging more ambassadors. It can become very difficult to track ambassadors’ efforts, communicate with them, and reward them in a timely manner.
If you’re working with several different ambassadors, social media channels, and types of user-generated content, using brand ambassador software just makes more sense.
Plus, no matter what type of brand ambassador you decide to work with, an organic, user-generated marketing strategy usually yields much greater ROI than traditional paid advertising.
Who is a brand ambassador? Why are they important?
A brand ambassador is someone who actively represents your brand in public, both online and offline. They already love your brand and its products, and have built up their own following. Therefore, they’re the perfect person to increase brand awareness among their networks and be a long-term face of your brand.
As a notable personality who officially represents your brand, an ambassador can successfully drive sales and grow your business through word-of-mouth marketing. The right brand ambassador helps your business stand out and establishes a level of trust in the market.
Brand ambassadors have several skills and characteristics that help them represent you. They’ve already built a name and following in their niche. Partnering with them can result in instant brand awareness and amplify your growth. This will also create warm leads, as the ambassador’s following trusts their recommendation (making the followers more likely to purchase from you).
What exactly is a brand ambassador program?
Put simply, a brand ambassador program is the formal system you’ll use to manage ambassadors, track their efforts, and reward them for their hard work. It standardizes the way your company works with all of your individual ambassadors.
Usually, a brand ambassador program is focused on a specific goal, such as increasing brand awareness, driving conversions, or accelerating sales.
What does ambassador software do?
Here are the main features brand ambassador software offers:
- Omnichannel social media campaign and brand ambassador management
- Ability to discover and recruit brand ambassadors via social media platforms and other channels
- Detailed tracking and automated management of ambassador activities
- Real-time communication between brands and brand ambassadors
- Verification of social posts and other ambassador-generated content
- Analytics and reports for referrals, sales, and overall reach
- Clear system to issue and track ambassador payment and rewards (e.g., points, incentives, referral commissions, gift cards, free products, etc.)
- Storage and management for user generated content (UGC)
How can you create a successful brand ambassador program?
In addition to choosing the right brand ambassador software, you’ll need to know your ideal brand ambassador, find and recruit the right ambassadors, offer motivating rewards, and follow ambassador management best practices.
Visit our complete guide for everything you need to know about running a brand ambassador program.
What are alternatives to brand ambassador management platforms?
If you’re running a few different marketing programs, you might want to know what makes brand ambassador software different from the tools you’re already using. Or maybe brand ambassador software isn’t what you’re looking for at the moment. There are many other digital marketing tools you can use build your own software stack.
Here are some alternatives to brand ambassador software:
Influencer marketing software
What’s the difference between an influencer and a brand ambassador? Influencers and brand ambassadors both represent your brand. But there are several key differences between brand ambassadors and influencers:
- Influencers represent your brand in the short term, while ambassadors represent your brand through long-term relationships.
- Influencers haven’t necessarily used your product before you recruit them to promote it, but brand ambassadors are typically existing fans of (and advocates for) your product.
- Influencers promote your brand online, but brand ambassadors promote your brand both online and offline.
Because of these key differences, influencer program software is placed in a different category from brand ambassador software.
Advocate marketing software
Advocate marketing software is an umbrella term for any type of software used to find representatives to promote your brand. In fact, ambassador program software is one type of advocate marketing software.
The term “advocate marketing software” is also commonly used to refer to employee advocacy software, which is a sub-type of brand ambassador software. Employee advocacy software empowers your employees to represent and advocate for you in the long term (see Referral Rock, Social Seeder, and Ambassify in our list above).
Referral marketing software
Referral marketing software helps you set up a customer referral program. It rewards your customers, partners, employees, and other brand fans for sharing you with others in their network. The software can also be used to reward any new referred customer the first time they make a purchase, increasing their engagement and customer loyalty.
Another major benefit of referral software is its ability to track all shares and sales, and easily monitor the ROI of your referral program. The reward and tracking features in referral marketing software make them flexible enough to also manage brand ambassador programs (see Referral Rock in our list above).
Affiliate marketing software
Affiliate software lets you distribute affiliate links for content creators to place on their personal channels. Whenever someone clicks on the affiliate link and makes a purchase, the affiliate software tracks the sale and awards the responsible affiliate with a cash commission.
Affiliate software is similar to brand ambassador and referral software, but as I mentioned in the beginning of the article, the way affiliates and ambassadors operate is a bit different.
Affiliates focus on driving sales, generally relying on adding an “affiliate link” into content that ties back to your product or service. They haven’t always used your products. Ambassadors are more focused on building relationships and showcasing products genuinely, are outspokenly direct about promoting the brand and could even be called “brand evangelists”.
PRM software
PRM software helps you manage relationships with marketing and sales partners (sometimes referred to as channel partners or strategic alliances).
This type of software lets you track the sales your partners make and instantly issue rewards. Some brand ambassador software programs (including Referral Rock) are flexible enough to manage other types of partners, so they fall under the PRM umbrella.
Brand mention software
Brand mention software (also called social listening software) sends alerts whenever someone mentions your brand name online, categorizes these mentions as positive or negative, and tracks how often people are talking about your brand (see Brand24 and Awario in our list above).
Brand mention software can help you find your biggest fans on social media, based on the content and frequency of their mentions. You can then contact these fans right through the software.
Tracking brand mentions is part of recruiting the best brand ambassadors, and brand mention software does overlap with the brand ambassador category. However, brand mention software doesn’t help you manage and track ambassador marketing campaigns or issue rewards — you’ll typically need another type of brand ambassador software to do this.
Mobilize your biggest fans with brand ambassador software
A brand ambassador program is an effective way to engage your most devoted customers and brand fans and encourage them to share your products in public. The key, however, is finding the best ambassadors and motivating them with a great experience and the right rewards and incentives.
Brand ambassador software can make the process much easier. In my experience, Referral Rock stands out, particularly if you’re a small- to medium-sized B2B or B2C business that wants to run a program with customers, employees, or influencers (or a combo).
Check out this case study to see a real-life example or learn more about building a brand ambassador program!