Sprout Social achieved faster time-to-insight, accelerating product development with Mixpanel

Sprout Social is a leading provider of social media management solutions that enables businesses to streamline their social media engagement, analytics, and reporting. Sprout’s intuitive platform puts powerful social data into the hands of approximately 30,000 brands so they can deliver smarter, faster business impact. Named the #1 Best Software Product by G2’s 2024 Best Software Award, Sprout offers comprehensive publishing and engagement functionality, customer care, influencer marketing, advocacy, crisis management, and AI-powered, predictive business intelligence. Sprout’s software operates across all major social media networks and digital platforms.

As Sprout Social’s product suite expanded and user needs evolved, the company saw an opportunity to scale its analytics capabilities. Teams needed faster access to real-time data to keep pace with innovation – and Mixpanel helped unlock that potential.

“Previously, our product organization had to rely on other teams to pull data, which created bottlenecks,” explains Blake Kurinsky, Director of Product Management at Sprout Social. “Product managers, designers, and engineers were all dependent on data specialists, which slowed down our iteration cycles.”

This dependency highlighted opportunities for improvement across the organization. As Sprout Social continued to manage multiple products, platforms, and client types across different regions, it became clear that faster, data-driven insights would empower teams to make quicker decisions and drive even more impactful results.

The core issue was clear: teams needed direct access to real-time data to make informed decisions quickly. “We needed to democratize data access and allow teams to act faster and more efficiently,” Kurinsky notes.

Mixpanel strengthened Sprout Social’s approach to analytics by putting powerful, real-time insights directly into the hands of team members across the product organization. The platform’s self-service model eliminated the traditional bottlenecks while maintaining the analytical depth needed for complex product decisions.

“Mixpanel allowed us to quickly scale our analytics practice across the entire organization,” says Kurinsky. “It provided an easy-to-use, self-service platform for non-technical users while offering the power we needed for more complex queries.”

The implementation enabled product managers, designers, and engineers to independently track feature performance, measure the success of product changes, and monitor user behavior—all without requiring specialized data expertise or waiting for other teams to provide reports.

Sprout Social leveraged Mixpanel’s most powerful features to gain deeper insights into user behavior and product performance.

Funnel and Flow analysis reports

Mixpanel’s funnel reports and flow reports became indispensable for understanding multi-step user workflows and identifying friction points. These tools allowed Sprout Social’s teams to quickly assess whether new features were performing as expected or needed iteration – allowing them to deliver competitive advantage to their customers.

“Funnels and flows are indispensable for us,” shares Kurinsky. “They help us understand how users are moving through the product, and we can quickly identify which workflows are working or failing. With Mixpanel, we can adjust quickly based on the data we see.”

AI-powered feature optimization

Sprout Social’s strategic investments in AI-powered features, such as their “suggested replies” feature that stores pre-written responses for common inquiries, required precise measurement to validate their impact. Mixpanel provided the real-time tracking capabilities needed to measure efficiency gains and user adoption.

“We saw a direct decrease in time-to-action after launching AI-powered features,” explains Kurinsky. “With Mixpanel, we could track these changes in real-time, monitor the impact, validate the benefits of these features for our users and guide future investment.” These optimizations ultimately improved customer satisfaction and retention while creating a more efficient platform.

Faster, more confident decisions

The most dramatic transformation was in decision-making speed. Decisions now happen within minutes, empowering rapid iteration and confident product outcomes.

“The time-to-insight has gone from days to minutes,” says Kurinsky. “We can now make data-driven decisions in seconds rather than waiting hours or days for reports. This speed is invaluable in a fast-moving industry like ours.”

Empowered teams across the organization

While product managers and designers were the initial adopters, Mixpanel’s accessibility led to unexpected adoption across engineering teams, who began incorporating analytics into their daily workflows.

“What’s been particularly exciting is seeing teams that traditionally may not use data as part of their decision-making process—like front-line engineering—now engage with Mixpanel,” notes Kurinsky. “This broad adoption has created a culture of data-driven decision-making across the organization.”

Cross-functional alignment

Perhaps most significantly, Mixpanel became a unifying force across departments. By providing a single self-service location for data, teams could collaborate more effectively around shared metrics and insights.

“Mixpanel has helped bring all our teams closer together,” highlights Kurinsky. “It’s no longer about working in silos or waiting for data from another department. Everyone can access what they need, and we’re all aligned around the same metrics.”

As Sprout Social continues to evolve—particularly in AI and product-led growth initiatives—Mixpanel remains central to their strategy. The platform will guide decision-making for new features, measure the success of innovations, and ensure the product experience continues evolving with customer needs.

“In the future, Mixpanel will continue to play a key role in our product strategy,” concludes Kurinsky. “As we scale and innovate, we’ll rely on it even more to measure success, guide personalization, and accelerate experimentation across our entire product suite.”

The transformation speaks to a broader truth about modern product development: in today’s fast-moving market, the ability to quickly access and act on data insights isn’t just an advantage—it’s essential for survival and growth.