6 best customer retention software tools and platforms to drive repeat purchases

There’s no single piece of customer retention software that will magically create legions of happy, loyal, repeat customers. Retention is affected by many things—like the customer’s experience with your website or how helpful they found customer service—so it's no surprise you’d need a range of tools to improve it.

This guide takes you through six different types of tools, from experience insights to loyalty programs, to help you pick the best customer retention solutions for your team.

What is customer retention software?

Customer retention software is any tool used to measure, track, and improve your customer retention rate, i.e., your ability to keep customers using your store, product, or service over time. 

Types of customer retention tools

Since improving customer retention requires multiple steps, customer retention tools come in many shapes and sizes. Each type will help you solve a different element of retention. These include

• Analytics and data tools to accurately measure customer retention metrics and track them over time

• Automation platforms to connect customer data from different sources and see the bigger picture in one place

• Customer experience (CX) insights to measure and improve website experience and monitor customer satisfaction with voice of customer (VoC) feedback 

• Customer support tools to deliver better customer service and measure its impact

• Messaging platforms to send customers emails, SMS, and push notifications, encouraging them to come back

• CRM (customer relationship management) tools to manage multiple customer touch points in one tool

• Loyalty programs to incentivize repeat purchases

• Personalization tools to tailor content to each customer

You won’t need every type of tool to make an impact. Start by choosing two or three that align with your company’s goals and customer retention strategy. 

6 effective tools and software to measure and improve customer retention

1. Contentsquare: track retention metrics and improve customer experience with feedback and user insight 

What it is: Contentsquare (👋 hello!) is an experience intelligence platform. Tools like Heatmaps, Session Replay, Surveys and Retention Analytics in Product Analytics show your team customers behave on your website and let you direct feedback from them. 

Contentsquare’s Retention Analytics dashboard lets you attribute conversions to specific touchpoints so you can see which areas lead to happy customers—and which areas need improvement.

Why you need it: just because someone bought from you once, doesn’t mean they had a fantastic experience getting there—or a desire to repeat it. Optimizing your website to improve usability and hearing what customers love (and hate) will go a long way toward improving retention. And since the stumbling blocks faced by one-time customers may be the same ones preventing others from purchasing, you’ll also improve conversion rates in the process.

How to use Contentsquare to improve customer retention: 

• Map the full customer journey from entry to exit, and see customer drivers and pain points with our Journeys Analysis tool

• Use Retention Analysis to calculate your retention rate and understand when customers churn and what might be turning them away 

• Review different types of heatmaps like rage click maps (where users clicked multiple times on the same element) to quickly find website issues

• Apply the ‘clicked element’ filter to view replays from users who did (or didn’t) click an important element, like an ‘invite your team’ link, or the ‘checkout’ button

• Send customers a post-delivery email (or post-use for SaaS) to measure CSAT (customer satisfaction) and Net Promoter Score® (NPS); ask follow-up questions to understand what you’re doing well and what needs improvement

• For SaaS and subscription businesses, use Surveys to send a churn survey when customers unsubscribe to learn why they left

2. Zendesk: deliver better customer service

What it is: Zendesk is customer service software and sales CRM to deliver and optimize live customer chat and help documentation.

A customer conversation in Zendesk’s admin dashboard (source)

Why you need it: customer service is a big part of customer experience; optimize it to ensure your customers can find helpful information on their own, get timely answers from support staff, and are satisfied with the help they receive.

How to use Zendesk to improve customer retention: 

• Deliver customer service via a pop-up chat window

• Set up a Zendesk Answer Bot to help customers self-service common issues (like how to initiate a refund or what shipping options are available)

• Enable satisfaction ratings and monitor if customers are happy with the support they received

Alternative customer service tools: 

• Help Scout

• Intercom

• LiveAgent

3. ActiveCampaign: send personalized messages to entice customers back

What it is: ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation platform with email and SMS messaging, a landing page builder, engagement tracking, and CRM.

Why you need it: messaging customers by email, SMS, or push notification is an effective (and affordable) way to increase customer retention by encouraging people to come back with coupons, offers, or recommendations for future purchases. 

How to use ActiveCampaign to improve customer retention: 

• Trigger personalized emails for different stages of the customer journey 

• Use pre-built automations to send discounts and win back disengaged customers

• Segment messages based on when customers last purchased from you

• Track message engagement to measure customer retention efforts

• Integrate with other apps, like Aimtell for sending push notifications

Alternative tools: 

• Klaviyo: marketing automation for email and SMS

• Mailchimp: marketing, automation, and email platform

• Omnisend: ecommerce email marketing and SMS platform

• Campaign Monitor: email marketing platform

4. HubSpot: manage email, support, and customer data in one place

What it is: HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM platform for customer support, sales, and marketing teams. 

Managing customer service emails in HubSpot (source)

Why you need it: CRM software is designed to help you track, optimize, and personalize the customer experience, so you can create more satisfied customers and achieve more repeat purchases. 

How to use HubSpot to improve customer retention: 

• Target existing customers with personalized marketing campaigns

• Offer and monitor self-service, live chats, and email support to improve customer service

• Send customer feedback surveys to track satisfaction and customer loyalty

Alternative CRM platforms: 

• Salesforce

• Pipedrive

• Freshworks

• SharpSpring

5. Yotpo (formerly Swell): incentivize customer loyalty with rewards

What it is: Yotpo is an ecommerce marketing platform that collects customer reviews, sends SMS messages, and builds customized rewards and loyalty programs. 

Yotpo’s loyalty performance dashboard (source)

Why you need it: customer loyalty programs can incentivize shoppers to stay with your brand, even if your competitors offer similar products. 

How to use Yotpo to improve customer retention: 

• Build and launch a customer loyalty program using drag-and-drop design tools

• Segment and target customers with tailored SMS, MMS, and email messages

• Track loyalty program success with performance dashboards

• Use machine learning to predict the likelihood of repeat purchases

Alternative customer loyalty platforms: 

• Smile

• LoyaltyLion

• Zinrelo

6. Zapier: connect and automate your retention stack

What it is: Zapier is a workflow automation and app connection platform for linking tools together without coding.

An example of an automation—or Zap—created using Zapier (source)

Why you need it: since improving customer retention involves several different tools, connecting and automatically sending data between them will save you time, keep you organized, and avoid user error.

How to use Zapier to improve customer retention: 

• Connect any of your customer retention stack to automate actions, receive alerts, and compile data in your preferred tools, for example:

  • Send new Contentsquare Survey responses to Google Sheets to analyze them

  • Add customers to ActiveCampaign automations when they are charged on Stripe

  • Send Giftbit rewards for new contact property changes in HubSpot

Alternative automation tools: 

• Make 

• Tray.io

• Workato

• IFTTT

Choosing the right customer retention tools for your tech stack

We’ve linked to 20+ customer retention tools in this guide, and there are hundreds more you could choose from. Instead of succumbing to decision fatigue, we recommend starting with a platform we know works: Contentsquare. 

Seeing how customers use your website and collecting real customer feedback gives you ideas to improve customer retention, with the added side-benefit of improving conversion rates while you’re at it. 

FAQs about customer retention software

Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., NICE Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter ScoreSM and Net Promoter SystemSM are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., NICE Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.