13 A/B testing and CRO solutions for companies in regulated industries

 Choosing the right conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool to do successful A/B testing can be complicated when you’re in a highly regulated industry, like banking, healthcare, and insurance. As a marketer in these industries, you know you need to remain compliant with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

You know the tools you employ must be compliant and secure, as well as user-friendly in running your marketing campaigns. But how do you know exactly what to look for when shopping around for the right CRO tools that are also compliant? How will they help you make data-driven decisions? Are they ready to sign business associate agreements (BAAs)? 

We asked the experts to weigh in on their preferred tools when using them in compliant-heavy industries.

CRO Tools for Experimentation and Analytics

CRO is all about improving your conversions and conversion rates, and none of that would be possible without first knowing what your results are and how visitors interact with your site or product. Experimentation, segmentation and analytics go hand in hand and are, therefore, instrumental in your optimization efforts.

1. Kameleoon: Secure A/B testing and personalization for CX-centric organizations

Kameleoon is a full-stack A/B testing and personalization platform that helps brands optimize and personalize any digital experience. As key players in highly regulated industries like healthcare and banking, Kameleoon is GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA compliant and has data centers in the major markets to ensure they follow regional security rules. It also offers consent management features so that clients can decide what data can be collected.

"Kameleoon gives marketers, developers, and product managers a powerful tool to help brands build impactful customer experience optimization programs."

- Ben Labay, Managing Director, Speero by CXL 

2. Google Analytics: Use a data-safe analytics platform

Google Analytics is the most widely used website analytics service that lets users track website visits, bounce rates, conversions, etc. Thanks to its HSTS security protocol, Google encrypts all the data it collects to ensure an extra layer of privacy for visitors.

“Google makes use of HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which means that it makes use of all encryption protocols to keep the data safe. It also follows all protocols to encrypt all communication between end-users, servers, and websites.”

- Jessica Chase, Sales and Marketing Manager, Premier Title Loans

3. Mixpanel: Protect customer data and comply with global regulations

Mixpanel offers web analytics on how your customers view and use your website and product and provides detailed insights so you can make more informed decisions. They also allow users to control the data they track so you can easily avoid collecting PHI or PII.

“[Mixpanel goes] the extra mile to understand our complex HIPAA policies and requirements.”

- Julia Sanders, Director of Operations, PatientPing

4. Heap: Encrypt your PII data for analysis

Heap Analytics is an alternative to Google Analytics that is more focused on product-based sites and allows you to see every interaction your visitors make with your products. Heap uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) in conjunction with Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) in order to encrypt PII data.

“Heap Analytics is one of the most helpful tools I use for conversion rate optimization. Its user interactions, including clicks, form submissions, and transactions, help you discover the behaviors and marketing channels that attract the most users, which acts as an avenue for conversion. Heap offers a straightforward data analytics dashboard and essential monitoring of website interactions without the need for any additional tasks to be set up or maintained. As you make improvements to your websites and gather data, Heap may be a great alternative to Google Analytics. Furthermore, Heap is committed to ensuring the security of its users by using automatic PII detection and encrypts all data with TLS and HTTPS.”

- Andriy Bogdanov, CEO and Co-Founder, Online Divorce

5. Hotjar: Analyze your visitor behavior

Hotjar offers another layer of website analytics, specifically heatmaps and visitor behaviors. It maintains data confidentiality by only providing the company with the necessary information, such as test results or analytics, without sharing the website visitor’s private information.

“Hotjar has high-security protocols that keep user data confidential. Marketers can privately access the session recordings, which keeps the user’s information secure and inaccessible. It is a worthy tool to be used in healthcare and other industries where user data needs to be kept private.”

- Scott Keever, Founder and CEO, Scott Keever SEO

6. Contentsquare: Remain compliant with data protection laws

Contentsquare provides digital experience analytics to help you better understand your customer behaviors. Contentsquare doesn’t use third-party cookies and allows the option for first-party cookies, while your customers can also easily opt-out of data collection.

“Consumers today expect standout experiences online but are not prepared to sacrifice privacy in order to get them. Contentsquare’s cookieless solution allows brands to stay one step ahead of the constant changes in the industry, and provides them with a modern, non-invasive way to access business-critical insights."

- Jim Lundy, Founder, CEO & Lead Analyst, Aragon Research

7. Fullstory: Optimize your digital experience

Fullstory focuses on the digital experience your site offers and uses its digital experience intelligence software to provide a more complete picture to drive growth. Data is collected and stored securely thanks to a SOC 2 Type II security protocol, and only select employees have access to the data centers where this information is kept.

“For security, FullStory holds a SOC 2 Type II attestation and stores all its data with Google Cloud. FullStory uses data centers that are equipped with state-of-the-art security access barriers. Furthermore, they only allow limited access to their employees when it comes to data accessibility. This makes the software inclusive for users of all industries.”

- Gary Taylor, CEO, bookyourdata.com

8. Piwik PRO: Collect data, don’t compromise on privacy

Piwik PRO is the only analytics suite to lead with user privacy and data security. It offers on-site data centers or private cloud hosting to maintain privacy.

“One HIPAA-compliant tool that we use is the Piwik PRO Analytics Suite. This tool allows us to track customer behavior across websites and mobile apps without compromising on user privacy. The data and reports provided are like that of Google Analytics. Yet, Piwik PRO offers on-premise and private cloud hosting options. And the data is never shared with external servers or third parties.” 

- Thanh Khuu, CEO, Compliant.io

Tools for Customer Service

A customer’s journey doesn’t start and end with the “buy now” button. A client or patient’s experience is also critical to getting them to that “buy now” stage and keeping them as long-term customers.

9. Zendesk: Look for documentation to support compliance

Zendesk is a customer service software that allows your team to communicate better with your existing and potential customers. It offers advanced data encryption and security in its higher-end tiers and provides documentation to support their compliance.

“Zendesk is primarily a consumer service platform, but it also serves a vast spectrum of tools for sales teams, comprising a customer service management (CRM) platform, live chat, social messaging, and omnichannel communication. It is an exceptional customer service platform that presents a quality CRM, and is excellent for integration with an email marketing and automation tool that doesn’t have a built-in CRM. It proposes an Advanced Security add-on, accessible to its Professional and Enterprise plans, that allows you to achieve HIPAA compliance with data stored on the platform. It provides a good amount of documentation to support compliance with its products.”

- Shiv Gupta, Marketing Director, Incrementors Web Solutions

10. Tars Chatbot: Use AI without compromising privacy

Tars Chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based customer service bot to help customers get the appropriate assistance they need. To ensure all the data collected, including from conversations, it has a dedicated team that is responsible for the security of said data.

“We use the Tars Chatbot creation tool for improving conversions for some of our European clients in the insurance industry. We chose this platform because it was one of the few tools that are GDPR compliant and also came with compliant chat templates for improving the conversions on some of our landing pages. To comply with the GDPR, Tars has a dedicated team member that oversees the data of their users, uses cryptography and hash features to salt passwords in case of data breaches, and gives users the right to access their data at any time.”

- Neil Morton, Founder, Descripr

Tools for CRM & Call Tracking

Optimization is about every step in the customer, client, or patient journey, and there are many ways to improve their experience with your brand. Using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool means you can have a more complete snapshot of your client’s or patient’s experience with your brand, including email marketing, your funnel, and even call tracking. This information is helpful when it comes to optimizing the customer’s experience.

11. Tealium: Collect customer data while respecting customer preferences

Tealium is a customer data platform that collects customer data across all your platforms so you can translate and integrate that information to improve customer experiences. Their software also allows you to control and collect first-party data while maintaining enterprise security and remain compliant with privacy regulations.

“As a business, we’ve always had a strong philosophy when it comes to how we gather, share and manage data. Our customers’ privacy has been a key priority and we always treated the user data with the biggest respect. This approach has enabled us to build strong, trusted relationships with customers. When GDPR arrived and with the disappearance of third-party cookies, Colruyt Group has been well-positioned to navigate these changes because of the way we’ve always collected, managed and used, customer data. For any new solution that we implement, it is critical for it to support what we are trying to achieve in data management. Tealium iQ surpassed all of our expectations and we were surprised how quickly we saw an ROI. Even though we started with a specific issue, and in solving that we unlocked so much more.”

- Devid Dekegel, Head of Digital Analytics, Colruyt Group

12. Enquire: Software designed for the healthcare industry

Enquire is a CRM tool designed specifically for seniors’ homes and the healthcare industry. Because of this, it understands the importance of HIPAA compliance and has it built-in. It also provides recommendations when needed to remain compliant depending on how you’re using the data.

“Enquire is an expert CRM, marketing automation, and communication center solution created especially for older living and healthcare services. So, if there is any software provider that is making all out in terms of HIPAA compliance, it’s Enquire. There are plenty of recommendations produced for HIPAA compliance. It is knocking in Microsoft Trust Center for data surveillance, which comprises extensive help for compliance across every region, including HIPAA and GDPR. It provides more in-depth documentation linked to GDPR compliance and the qualities it gives to help you remain compliant.”

- Austin LaRoche, CEO, ATAK Interactive

13. CallRail: Do telemarketing with HIPAA compliance built in

CallRail tracks and analyzes your phone calls so that you understand what campaigns drove those calls and sales. CallRail already has HIPAA compliance built into its software, which makes your job easier.

“True conversion optimization requires understanding the entire patient journey. For inbound call tracking for medical practices we consult choose CallRail for its built-in HIPAA compliance."

- Tigh Loughhead, Founder, Forcery