Learn about the top 5 retention automation software tools that can help you enhance customer loyalty, streamline retention efforts, and drive business growth.
Did you know you have a 20% chance of selling a product to a new customer and a 60% chance of selling that same product to a returning customer?
In fact, existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers.
Therefore, it just makes sense to invest in customer retention software that converts your existing customers into brand loyalists. And fortunately, there are a number of software platforms that can help make this process easier.
Customer retention software is a tool that businesses use to keep their current customers coming back to buy more products or services. It uses data and analytics to identify customer behaviors, preferences, and needs and then provides personalized experiences and offers to enhance customer satisfaction and engagement.
Customer retention software tools provide a way to store customer data, contact information, and purchase history. Customer interactions, such as phone calls, emails, and live chat sessions, can also be tracked.
Keeping a record of and analyzing this information helps businesses improve customer retention by enhancing their customer service and support processes, as well as their marketing and sales efforts.
If you want to choose the right customer retention platform for your business, you’ll need to take a few things into consideration:
The size of your business, your industry, and your budget: With so many options available on the market, you want to ensure you find the right one for your business.
The features your business and customer need: Every customer retention platform offers different features and functions, so choose the one that lets you handle as much as possible on the same platform.
The onboarding process and amount of training/support needed: Learn how difficult it is to set up and use the platform and find out if you will have access to any training or support.
Let's highlight the top five customer retention software platforms that really make a difference.
Just want the highlights? Here’s a quick rundown of our list of the best customer retention tools that convert customers:
| Platform | Price Range | Pros | Cons |
| Patch | Free 14-day trial and then pay 1¢ per contact. |
Create automated customer journeys, build perfect-timed email and SMS campaigns, and use built-in, customer loyalty programs, to drive customer retention. |
This platform is designed for eCommerce businesses and may not be the best fit for other industries. |
| Omnisend | Free plan to start before choosing between their Standard plan ($16 / month) or Pro Plan ($59 / month). | Drive more revenue by streamlining communications into a single workflow, helping you effectively engage customers across multiple channels. | Each of their pre-built templates differs in format and lacks full customization. |
| MoEngage | Pricing for each of their three plans is not listed. | Harness the power of AI-driven personalization, customer analytics, and automated cross-channel engagement to deliver superior customer engagement. | The user interface, dashboard, and templates fall short when compared to other software programs in this industry. |
| Gainsight CS | Pricing is tailored specifically to your needs. | Proactively manage retention and reduce churn with Gainsight’s automation flows, scorecards, and reports. | Due to the variety of special tools available, users often face a learning curve and long loading times. |
| Heap | Free version to start before you select from one of their three plans (pricing is available upon request). | Automatically collect information from visitors as they browse, so you can analyze their behavior and tailor the perfect customer experience for them—all in one place. | The learning curve for all of Heap’s features and functions is steep. |
Patch is the ultimate all-in-one solution for eCommerce businesses looking to retain customers and maximize customer lifetime value.
The platform provides a full suite of customer retention tools for eCommerce brands, including a customizable loyalty program, automated customer journeys, email/SMS campaigns, and more.
The best part?
You can segment your audience based on specific metrics allowing you to send tailored messages to the right customers at the right time—increasing conversion rates in the process.
While Patch’s platform is versatile enough to handle any eCommerce store, it’s most likely not the best fit for certain industries or smaller companies that don’t focus on high-volume or repeat purchases from customers.
Omnichannel campaigns: Reach your customers how they want to be reached via email, SMS, or both with a personalized message tailored just for them.
Automate the Customer Journey: Patch allows you to map out a journey for each of your customers and create custom campaigns based on those stages.
Advanced Analytics: Patch has made analysis of customer behavior easier than ever with its new RFM feature. Within seconds, you’ll be able to segment your customers by type and see how they stack up in terms of monetary value and interactions.
Built-In Customer Loyalty Program: Patch’s platform brings customers back 2-3x more than other loyalty solutions thanks to an easy, automated experience and unparalleled customer engagement.
Two-way Messaging: Connect your business to your customers in real-time in the most convenient way. Get a textable number that your customers can actually respond to! With an easy-to-use portal and app, Patch can connect you and your customers from anywhere.
To show you just how right they are for your business, Patch offers a 14-day free trial. During this period, you’ll have access to advanced retention dashboards with insightful data that shows you where your customers are leaving in their journey.
And when you’re ready to up your retention game, sign up for Patch Pro. With just one cent per contact, Patch Pro is affordable for any size business.
Omnisend is an omnichannel eCommerce marketing automation platform that helps businesses drive more revenue by streamlining communications into a single workflow.
Using the platform’s streamlined automations across multiple channels, businesses engage their eCommerce customers and turn them into loyal, satisfied customers and followers.
Omnisend’s drag-and-drop campaign composer is the perfect tool for building and retaining your customer base since it allows businesses to create personalized messages based on data from previous campaigns or shopping behaviors.
If you’re looking for more intricate omnichannel marketing where you can fully customize your email templates and unify their look across all channels, then this might not be the best option for your business.
Drag and Drop Workflows: Integrate email, SMS, web push notifications, and more into one workflow, so customers receive personalized experiences.
Pre-Built Campaigns: Create highly targeted marketing campaigns quickly and easily with pre-built templates.
Performance Reports: Customer lifecycle segmentation provides marketers with detailed information on how and where to focus their efforts based on data analysis, showing the best content for different audiences or which stages of the funnel they are performing best in.
Omnisend offers a free package for businesses to test out and two paid packages that unlock additional features.
Free: This plan gives businesses a taste of everything Omnisend has to offer. They allow users to send a limited number of email, SMS, and web push notifications to up to 250 customers.
Standard ($16 / month): This plan is targeted toward small to medium businesses who want to up their email marketing game. This plan still limits the number of email and SMS messages but unlocks unlimited web push notifications.
Pro ($59 / month): This plan gives access to Omnisend’s premium features, from unlimited emails to advanced reporting.
MoEngage offers a comprehensive solution that combines powerful customer analytics, automated cross-channel engagement, and AI-driven personalization to help marketers deliver more relevant messages to customers.
Marketers can leverage the platform’s innovative and engaging solutions to learn everything they need to know about prospects and existing customers while ensuring all messages land in the right place every time.
This platform offers a superior customer experience by engaging customers across channels and providing personalized experiences.
Even though MoEngage boasts a wide range of unique features, the user interface, dashboards, and templates are somewhat lacking compared to its competitors.
Drag and Drop Customer Journeys: Create cross-channel onboarding or reactivation campaigns that guide your customers through their journeys with just a few clicks.
Sherpa AI: This intuitive AI engine determines which message variant will work best for every customer when they should receive it, and the best channel to reach them.
Behavior Trend Analysis: Find out which customer segments are most active (or inactive), and see how often people engage with specific campaigns.
Retention Cohorts: Analyze how customers behave over time, identify the reasons why your customers leave, and figure out how to retain them.
MoEngage offers three different pricing options. The Starter package is built for small businesses looking to increase their customer engagement, while their Growth and Enterprise packages are built for larger businesses looking to maximize engagement.
If you want to know the specific prices for each package.
Gainsight is a powerful solution that helps you proactively manage retention by predicting when customers will stop buying from your company before they do so, and it also enables proactive strategies to reduce churn and increase customer loyalty.
With the help of data-driven tools, teams have centralized access to customer journeys and how to help them achieve their goals.
Gainsight’s automation flows and scorecards enable companies to scale efficiently by increasing product adoption rates, preventing churn, and growing customer communities.
With so many tools to choose from, it’s not uncommon that users run into two major problems–a learning curve and slow loading times.
Health Scoring: Accurately predict future risks and opportunities for your customers with unprecedented precision.
Renewal Center: Analyze data from each client’s purchase history to determine their likelihood for renewal and provide them with a customized experience that will keep coming back again.
Proactive Measures: Use tools like Cockpit, Playbooks, and Timeline to get a 360-degree view of your customers and boost retention rates.
Gainsight’s pricing is customized to your needs. They offer a free consultation so you can discuss the details of what exactly these services will entail and whether or not they’re right for you.
Heap is a customer insights platform that gives you insight into your customers’ journeys by combining both quantitative and qualitative data.
The platform takes a deep dive into your customers’ actions and helps you tailor the perfect customer experience.
Since Heap automatically collects information from visitors as they browse your content, it is a great tool for analyzing your customers’ behavior.
Like some other platforms on this list, Heap features and functionality have a steep learning curve.
Illuminate: This tool scans your entire dataset for information and automatically identifies what’s happening at each stage of your customer’s journey so it can provide actionable intelligence on demand.
Dashboards: Improve coordination and align core business metrics using data-driven insights.
Auto-capture: Capture every detail with ease using Heap’s single code snippet. No more missing data or missed opportunities!
Heap provides a range of options for businesses to choose from, starting with the free version. Test out some of their most popular features before selecting from their Growth, Pro, or Premier plans (contact them for estimates).
Aside from choosing the right customer retention systems for your business, there are a few other common challenges.
Integration: Sometimes retention platforms don’t integrate well with your company’s CRM. If it doesn’t, then there may be some problems when trying to find out why customers are leaving or gain accurate insights.
Data Accuracy: Occasionally, data from customer retention software is incorrect or inconsistent. Make sure all of your customer records are up-to-date since this information informs your retention strategies.
Learning Curves: Many retention platforms come with their own learning curve, so you can understand how to maximize the solution.
The days of using multiple tools to manage your data, loyalty programs, and retention strategies are gone.
Patch provides the ultimate solution for customer retention.
With a single, easy-to-use platform, you can prioritize your loyal customers and engage with them more effectively than ever before—saving time and money compared to other tools.
Find out just how easy it is to use. Get in touch with our team for a free demo.
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