Customer.io Interactive Demo
Explore a demo of Customer.io, an automated messaging platform designed to help businesses send relevant and personalized messages to their customers.
What is Customer.io?
Customer.io is a customer messaging platform that helps product and marketing teams send targeted, behavior-driven messages to users across email, push notifications, SMS, in-app messages, and webhooks. Founded in Portland, Oregon in 2012, Customer.io serves over 6,500 companies including Segment, Codecademy, and Buffer.
Unlike traditional email service providers, Customer.io is event-driven — you send customer data and events (signups, feature usage, purchases) to its API, and then build automated campaigns triggered by those events. This makes it possible to send highly relevant messages based on exactly what each user has or hasn't done in your product.
Customer.io's visual campaign builder lets you design multi-step, branching message journeys with conditions, delays, and exit criteria. Segments can be defined by any combination of attributes and behaviors, updating in real-time as user data changes.
How to get started with Customer.io
- 1
Connect your data source
Send customer events and attributes to Customer.io via its JavaScript snippet, mobile SDK, or server-side API. You can also use a CDP like Segment to route data automatically.
- 2
Define your customer segments
Create segments based on user attributes (plan type, company size) and behaviors (has/hasn't triggered specific events within a time window). Segments update in real-time.
- 3
Build your first campaign
In the Campaigns section, create a trigger-based campaign. Choose a trigger event, add a delay if needed, then build your message — email, push, SMS, or in-app.
- 4
Write and preview your message
Use Liquid templating to personalize messages with customer attributes. Send a test message to yourself before launching, and use the People section to preview how the message will look for a specific user.
- 5
Analyze performance
Monitor open rates, click rates, and conversion events in the campaign analytics dashboard. Use A/B testing to optimize subject lines and message content.
Explore more Customer.io guides
Step-by-step interactive demos and tutorials for Customer.io.
Who is Customer.io most useful for?
Growth and lifecycle marketers at SaaS companies who need to move beyond batch-and-blast email to behavior-triggered, personalized messaging. Pair Supademo with Customer.io by embedding demo links in your onboarding emails — so new users can watch an interactive walkthrough of a key feature at exactly the right moment in their journey.
Product teams responsible for activation, retention, and feature adoption campaigns. Use Supademo to create feature announcement demos and send them via Customer.io to users who haven't yet discovered a key part of your product.
Mobile app teams who need to coordinate push notifications, email, and in-app messages around user behavior. Share Supademo walkthroughs of how your Customer.io campaign logic works with new team members, helping them understand the system without reading documentation.
Developer-led marketing and product teams comfortable with APIs and data modeling. Use Supademo to document your Customer.io data architecture and share it with engineers and marketers collaborating on campaign logic.
Looking for alternatives to Customer.io?
Here are four tools worth evaluating depending on your needs.
More powerful for large-scale cross-channel campaigns at enterprise. More complex to implement and significantly more expensive — Customer.io is better for product-led growth companies.
Similar positioning to Customer.io with strong email, push, and SMS capabilities. Slightly more marketer-friendly UI; Customer.io is more developer-centric.
Best-in-class for e-commerce brands, with deep Shopify integration and revenue-attributed reporting. Customer.io is better for SaaS products with complex behavioral data.
Stronger CRM features and a more visual automation builder. Better for SMBs that want marketing automation without heavy API integration. Customer.io requires more technical setup.
FAQs on Customer.io
Commonly asked questions about Customer.io. Have more? Reach out and our team will be happy to help.
What is Customer.io used for?
Customer.io is used to send automated, behavior-triggered messages to customers via email, push notification, SMS, in-app messaging, and webhooks. It's particularly popular for SaaS onboarding sequences, feature adoption campaigns, and churn prevention workflows.
How does Customer.io differ from Mailchimp?
Mailchimp is primarily a list-based email marketing tool — you send campaigns to segments defined by attributes. Customer.io is event-driven and behavioral — messages are triggered by what users do or don't do in your product, making them far more relevant and timely.
Does Customer.io require coding knowledge?
The initial setup requires a developer to instrument events via API or SDK. Once data is flowing, marketers can build and manage campaigns using the visual builder without writing code. The Liquid templating language used for personalization is learnable by non-developers.
Can Customer.io send SMS and push notifications?
Yes. Customer.io supports email, push notifications (iOS and Android), SMS (via Twilio), in-app messages, and webhooks — all from the same campaign builder, so you can coordinate messages across channels.
How does Customer.io handle unsubscribes?
Customer.io automatically manages email unsubscribes and bounce lists. Unsubscribed contacts are excluded from all future email campaigns. You can also implement custom suppression logic based on user attributes or behavior.
Is Customer.io GDPR compliant?
Yes. Customer.io is GDPR compliant and supports data deletion requests. You can delete customer data via API, and Customer.io processes data under standard contractual clauses for EU customers.
Can I A/B test in Customer.io?
Yes. Customer.io supports A/B testing of subject lines, message content, and even campaign logic. You can split your audience, run the test for a defined period, and promote the winning variant.
Does Customer.io integrate with Segment?
Yes. Customer.io has a native Segment integration — if you're already using Segment as your CDP, you can route all events and user traits to Customer.io without any additional instrumentation.