PUBLISHED
31 May, 2023
Growth Marketing Manager
While acquisition tends to grab the spotlight, customer retention is the real secret to steady, sustainable growth. After all, on a long-enough timeline, 80% of your revenue will come from just 20% of your customers.
How do you find these customers and keep them engaged?
That's where customer retention software like UXCam comes into play. And in this guide, we'll be taking a look at some of the top customer retention software and tools on the market.
In a rush? Here's the TLDR list of customer retention tools and key takeaways:
UXCam: Best for mobile app retention optimization
Appcues: Best for mobile adoption
CleverTap: Best for personalizing experiences
Chameleon: Best for in-depth product adoption
Braze: Best for marketing automation
OneSignal: Best for push notifications
Now, let's dive into the details.
Customer retention software isn't a well-defined software category like “marketing automation tools” or “CRM solutions”. Rather, it's an umbrella term for a variety of tools that can be used to help you improve customer retention.
These tools range from customer service software and loyalty programs to email marketing and product analytics platforms. As long as they help you keep customers engaged, they can be considered customer retention software.
Best for mobile app retention optimization
UXCam is a mobile app analytics platform with tons of tools for boosting customer retention.
UXCam combines qualitative and quantitative analytics through features like session replays (with video), heatmaps, event tracking, and user segmentation. The result is the ability to gain holistic, on-demand insights into exactly how users are interacting with your product.
This can help identify user drop-offs and bottlenecks, run product experiments on designs and flows, and measure the impact of feature changes on user engagement. All in all, UXCam is an invaluable tool for mobile app retention optimization.
Session Replays: Watch user session replays with video to understand exactly how users are interacting with your product.
Heatmaps: View click heatmaps to measure user engagement with specific features and screens.
Event Tracking: Automatically track pre-set and custom events to get a better picture of user behavior.
Segmentation: Filter users into segments based on their activity and characteristics.
UXCam has a free-forever plan that lets unlimited users track up to 3,000 sessions monthly (with 6-month data retention).
Want to track more sessions or gain access to advanced features like heatmaps and segmentation? We also offer two paid plans—Growth and Enterprise—priced based on your needs.
And if you want to test these paid plans out, you can start with a 30-day free trial of either of our paid plans.
Easy to set up and use
Unlimited users with a free-forever plan
Ability to track both qualitative and quantitative data
Zero in on retention optimizations
Customizable plans
No publically available pricing
Fewer integrations than some competitors
Best for mobile adoption
Appcues is an aptly named product that lets you create guided user flows and product tours that “cue” users to take key actions that lead to aha moments.
Appcues can be used for everything from onboarding new customers to alerting existing users of new features. And, with features like A/B testing and real-time analytics, it's easy to understand the effectiveness of your flows and make improvements.
Guided User Flows: Create visually appealing and interactive guided user flows for onboarding, feature adoption, and more.
A/B Testing: Test different user flow variations to determine which performs better.
Analytics: Track real-time analytics on user flow performance, including click-through rate, engagement rate, and abandonment rate.
Appcues has three paid plans to choose from—Essentials ($249+/month), Growth ($879+/month), and Enterprise.
Essentials allow up to 3 users to create unlimited flows, while Growth and Enterprise have higher user limits (10 and unlimited, respectively) and additional features like unlimited event tracking and SSO.
Easy to set up and use
Unlimited flows with the basic plan
A/B testing features for optimizing performance
Fewer features than competitors
Can occasionally experience lag
Best for personalizing experiences
CleverTap is an all-in-one customer engagement platform that combines user analytics, segmentation, and multichannel marketing automation to help you identify high-value customers and keep them engaged with personalized experiences.
Analytics & Insights: Track user acquisition, engagement, retention, and more to gain a better understanding of user behavior.
Automated User Segmentation: Automatically segment users based on their behavior and characteristics.
Omnichannel Engagement: Reach out to customers across multiple channels, including email, SMS, push notifications, and more.
To learn about CleverTap's pricing, you'll need to contact sales.
Wide range of features for targeted mobile marketing and engagement
Provides real-time insights and analytics
Integrates with tons of third-party apps and tools
UI and onboarding can be somewhat complicated
Pricing can be high for larger businesses or those with complex needs
May not be the best fit for businesses focused on web-based marketing
Best for in-depth product adoption
Chameleon is a comprehensive tool designed to drive user adoption and revenue in the modern SaaS landscape. It provides a suite of features designed to give teams the most control, configuration, and customization of in-product user experience.
Product Tours: You can drive product adoption by creating powerful and engaging tours to guide your users through your product, making sure they understand its value.
Tooltips: You're able to provide inline help to your users. With tooltips, unblock users by giving them the information they need right when they need it.
Segmentation: You can target users with precision and tailor your in-app experiences to user segments, ensuring relevance and improving engagement.
A/B Testing: You're equipped to test variations of in-app flows to Identify what works best and continuously improve your user experience.
Chameleon offers three plans: Startup, Growth, and Enterprise. The Startup plan is monthly and usage-based, starting at $279 for 2000 monthly tracked users. The Growth plan adds unlimited micro surveys & launchers, A/B testing, and rate limiting and is billed annually with bulk pricing. The Enterprise plan includes all Growth features plus a multi-product account, user permissions, localization, SSO, and enhanced security. Pricing for each plan is based on your product's monthly tracked users.
Easy to set up and use
Deep customization options
Real-time, user-based triggering
Can be expensive
Best for marketing automation
Braze is a multichannel marketing platform (just like CleverTap) that helps you create personalized customer journeys across channels like email, push notifications, SMS, and more.
Braze runs on a powerful no-code automation engine that makes it super easy to set up complex campaigns—perfect for maximizing retention while minimizing cost and workload.
Campaign Orchestration: Create highly personalized campaigns that span multiple channels, including email, push notifications, and SMS.
Advanced Automation: Streamline processes with automation features like smart triggers, real-time messaging, and behavior-driven targeting.
Optimization: Optimize campaigns with A/B testing and real-time analytics.
To learn about Braze's pricing, you'll need to contact sales.
Offers an impressive set of features
Has AI-driven marketing automation capabilities
Offers a user-friendly interface
Pricing can be high for smaller businesses
Does not offer a robust reporting or analytics suite
Some users have reported technical glitches and issues
Best for push notifications
OneSignal is the leading push notification platform, with features like segmentation, A/B testing, and advanced analytics to help make sure your notifications are as effective as possible.
The platform also integrates with Appcues to create powerful, automated user journeys triggered by push notifications.
Web & Mobile Push Notifications: Send timely, targeted push notifications across web and mobile platforms.
Segmentation & Targeting: Segment users based on their characteristics and behaviors and target them with personalized notifications.
A/B Testing: Test different variations of notifications to optimize performance.
OneSignal has a free plan that supports unlimited push notifications and up to 5,000 emails.
Beyond that, there are three paid plans—Growth ($9/month), Professional ($99/month), and Enterprise (custom). More expensive plans offer more audience segments and higher message throughput.
Push notifications are highly reliable
Supports a wide variety of audience targeting and segmentation options
Offers a free pricing tier
Somewhat complicated to navigate
Limited reporting and analytics capabilities
Segmented push notifications can be pricey
Customer retention plays a big role in securing sustainable growth. Retention software makes it easier to optimize for retention by dissecting the experiences that lead to long-term usage.
With UXCam, you can track user flows, measure engagement, optimize performance, and much, much more. You can go beyond surface-level metrics like clicks and pageviews to gain deep insights into user behavior that will help you keep users engaged.
Ready to build a better product? Get started with a free trial and see how UXCam can help you create a product that keeps users engaged.
Related articles
Best ways & tools to do mobile app user behavior analysis
How to increase mobile app engagement
Most important mobile app engagement metrics to track
Best user engagement tools for product teams
AUTHOR
Growth Marketing Manager
Ardent technophile exploring the world of mobile app product management at UXCam.
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