There is a wide range of platforms to build an online store with, but it requires more than just running an e-store to succeed in commerce today. Once your store is ready, you should think about the ways to fulfill its maximum potential. Turning one-time visitors into return customers is a challenge, but fortunately there are special tools for that. Check them out in our fresh 30 Client Retention eCommerce Tools list.
Striving for more revenue, many retailers focus all the efforts on reaching new customers and ignore the importance to retain those who have already entered their online marketplaces. No doubt, customer base expansion matters, but statistics show that the probability of selling to a new prospect is much lower (5%-20%) than the probability of selling to an already existing customer (60%-70%). Moreover, 70% of companies say that customer retention is cheaper than acquisition of new buyers.
As you can see, it makes sense to improve your customer retention strategy if you want to increase your bottom line and save on marketing. In this post, you will find a variety of eCommerce tools that can help with this initiative. Depending on the purpose, they are divided into three categories, namely customer abandonment solutions, loyalty programs, and customer personalization tools. What’s cool, many of these tools have free trials lasting mainly from 14 to 30 days, so you can experiment with them for a while to make sure they can serve your purposes properly.
10 Customer Abandonment Tools
Let’s start with the tools meant to deal with customers abandoning your store. A lot of online shoppers enter a store, browse through its inventory, add some items to carts, but never check out. This is currently one of the major eCommerce problems, and the stats revealed by Barilliance prove it. According to this eCommerce technology provider, 74% of carts were abandoned by online shoppers in 2013, and the percentage keeps growing. So, we decided to help retailers cope with such a headache and compiled a set of 10 customer abandonment tools. Before you check them, let’s figure out what features a decent tool of this category should have.
Exit Intent Pop-ups. When visitors are about to leave your store, a message with a discount, alternative product or any other special offering appears in a pop-up window. It motivates buyers to check more of your merchandise and increases a chance of coming across the right option for them.
- Real-Time Analytics. This feature provides a comprehensive report on customers’ behavior. In such a way, you can target different segments of your audience with different offers, which will help you win favor of each customer.
- A/B Testing. Test different pop-ups and email marketing messages to choose the most impactful one. No more guesswork, start making result-proven decisions.
- Cart Abandonment Emails. Incentivize cart abandoners to return to your store and complete their purchases by sending them personalized emails. Emails can be composed of abandoned items or relevant offers.
Now, explore each tool of this category with the help of a checklist highlighting its features, integration with eCommerce platforms and pricing.
AbandonAid
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – yes
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento, Shopify, WordPress, PrestaShop, OpenCart, ZenCart, osCommerce
- Free Trial – 30 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at 5% of recovered sales + $50 cloud fee
In addition to essential features, AbandonAid comes with ready-made email templates and easy-to-use editor to customize them. What’s cool, its price depends on the recovered sales, which means it’s a fair game with no risk to pay for more than you get.
* * *
OptiMonk
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – yes
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – no
- Integration with Platforms –WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop, Shopify, Magento
- Free Trial – 14 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $29
OptiMonk pop-ups are supplied with options to control the timing, feature best-selling or any other products and set links redirecting visitors to any desired page. The starting price is comparatively low, so it’s a reasonable solution for retailers staying within a tight budget.
* * *
Picreel
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – yes
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – no
- Integration with Platforms –WordPress, Joomla, Shopify, Magento, Drupal, PrestaShop
- Free Trial – 30 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $19
Picreel is equipped with editors to modify pop-ups and add timers, CTA buttons and other interactive elements to them. There is also a built-in form to collect visitors’ feedback. As for pricing, the tool is quite cheap.
* * *
Rejoiner
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – no
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento, WooCommerce
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – $1000
Rejoiner also provides checkout funnel optimization, pre-submit email capture, and custom email templates. With a monthly fee of $1000, it seems to be overcharged as compared to other tools with similar functionality.
* * *
Cart Closer
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – yes
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – no
- Integration with Platforms – Magento
- Free Trial – 30 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at 5% of saved cart revenue
Cart Closer is also notable for multiple filtering options including the traffic source, amount in the cart, customer and product types. Its cost is determined by the percentage of the saved cart revenue, so you pay exclusively for what you get.
* * *
CartStack
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – no
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – yes
- Integration with Platforms – WordPress,Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, osCommerce, ZenCart
- Free Trial – 30 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $29
CartStack is an inexpensive solution providing multi-site performance for a single price. It’s also supplied with a visual editor to customize email templates and a white label option for your personal branding.
* * *
Exit Monitor
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – yes
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – no
- Integration with Platforms – WordPress, Shopify
- Free Trial – 14 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $39
Exit Monitor can also let you segment and filter your campaigns down to specific web pages. It allows for more efficient audience targeting. The tool belongs to inexpensive solutions of this category.
* * *
OptinMonster
- Exit Intent Pop-ups –yes
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – no
- Integration with Platforms – WordPress, Joomla, Shopify, Magento, Drupal, PrestaShop
- Free Trial – no (instead, there is a 100% refund policy over the next 14 days after purchasing)
- Monthly Fee – starting at $9
OptinMonster also gives an access to data-driven sidebar forms, floating bars, after-post and in-line forms. And the best thing about is a possibility use its feature-rich package for an extremely cheap price.
* * *
Receitful
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – no
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – no
- Cart Abandonment Emails – yes
- Integration with Platforms –Shopify, WooCommerce
- Free Trial – 14 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $19
Receitful also offers data-backed product recommendations and up-selling options. So, don’t miss an opportunity to increase your conversion and personalize customers’ experience with this cheap tool.
* * *
Exit Intent
- Exit Intent Pop-ups – yes
- Real-Time Analytics – yes
- A/B Testing – yes
- Cart Abandonment Emails – no
- Integration with Platforms – WordPress, Shopify, Magento
- Free Trial – yes
- Monthly Fee – starting at $9
Exit Intent offers a variety of pop-up themes for multiple purposes. They include discounts, testimonials, subscription, feedback, video, and others. Each theme of this cheap tool can be customized in such areas as palette, headline, button text, URL, and video URL.
* * *
Among the tools listed above, AbandonAid seems to be the most promising one. It features exit intent pop-ups to target customers who are about to leave your store and cart abandonment emails to reach those who have already left it. The tool also supports a lot of eCommerce platforms, languages and currencies. You can try it out free of charge for 30 days.
10 Loyalty Program Tools
The next category of our Client Retention eCommerce Tools list embraces loyalty programs. With their help, you can reward customers for interacting with your online store. According to the Access Development blog post, 78% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase if offered rewards, and 69% choose the retailer with a loyalty program. In such a way, it’s reasonable to create your own loyalty program, and the following tools will help you. Just like in the previous block, let’s find out first what features a good tool of this category should have.
- Rewards. Offer customers rewards for various actions, particularly purchases, referrals, subscriptions, social shares, reviews, etc. It will let you enhance your web store promotion, increase sales, and get higher SEO rankings. Rewards can be of different types including points, badges, coupons, deals, and others.
- Gamification. Turn shoppers’ experience into a funny game by allowing them to compete with each other. This feature allows you to add a ranking board to your loyalty program. The more rewards a customer gets, the higher he/she ranks up on the board. Gamification provides a high level of customer engagement.
- Analytics. Track the performance of your loyalty program to find out how it influences customers’ behavior.
Compare the tools of this category using checklists of their main features below.
Loyalis
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – yes
- Analytics – yes
- Integration with Platforms –Shopify
- Free Trial – 15 days
- Monthly Fee – $149
Loyalis is a mobile-friendly tool allowing you to reward even those shoppers who use your store on the go. By means of a white label option, you can keep your loyalty program branded the way you need.
* * *
Antavo
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – yes
- Analytics – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento, WooCommerce
- Free Trial – 7 days
- Monthly Fee – set individually
Antavo is packed with a lot of extras. One of them is a customizable landing page showing all the rewards and activities of customers. There are also different notifications meant to remind shoppers about their opportunity to earn points, e.g. a floating panel, video banner, and auto-email.
* * *
Sweet Tooth
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – no
- Analytics – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento, Shopify, Bigcommerce (WooCommerce is coming soon)
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – starting at $59 + free plans for Shopify
Using Sweet Tooth, you can also send email messages to customers. Each notification can be customized by the color, font and image to create a unique experience.
* * *
S Loyalty
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – no
- Analytics – no
- Integration with Platforms – Magento, Shopify
- Free Trial – 14 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $19.99
S Loyalty is a cheap solution to build a loyalty program, but keep in mind that it lacks gamification. What attracted our attention about this tool is Past Orders Import. This option allows you reward customers for purchases that were made before the tool installation.
* * *
BigDoor
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – yes
- Analytics – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento, WordPress, Drupal, Shopify
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – set individually
BigDoor also provides geo-targeted segmentation of customers and an option of A/B testing. The latter can let you experiment with different reward campaigns and choose the most optimal one. The tool boasts a white label design, which gives freedom for your personal branding.
* * *
LoyaltyLion
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – no
- Analytics – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Shopify, PrestaShop, Magento
- Free Trial – 14 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $159
LoyaltyLion has an option to reward customers for referrals via social networks and email. So, if you want to want to increase your revenue through referrals, give a try to this tool with a reasonable price.
* * *
Collect Loyalty
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – no
- Analytics – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento
- Free Trial – 14 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $29
Collect Loyalty is a cheap tool allowing you to promote your loyalty program in social networks and via email automatically. You can brand your program by adding your store logo to emails, coupons and even Apple Watch.
* * *
The Loyalty Box
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – no
- Analytics – yes
- Integration with Platforms –WooCommerce, Magento
- Free Trial – 14 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $50 + setup & training from $100
The Loyalty Box ensures multi-store and multi-currency support, which will let you reward the audience on an international scale. If you are currently running a loyalty program that doesn’t bring desired results, you can import your existing customers from it to The Loyalty Box. This is what the tool stands out for among its alternatives.
* * *
NextBee
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – no
- Analytics – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Shopify, OpenCart, VirtueMart
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – $1500 + setup fee – $3600
NextBee is the most expensive tool from this category, even though it doesn’t seem to have many distinctive features compared to its alternatives. What we’d like to mark out is its flexible rule configurator, A/B testing, data integrity protocols, secure APIs, mash-up widgets and single sign-on plugins.
* * *
Perkville
- Rewards – yes
- Gamification – no
- Analytics – no
- Integration with Platforms – Shopify
- Free Trial – yes
- Monthly Fee – starting at $99
Perkville is a comparatively inexpensive tool with an automated rewards and referral program. One of its cool features is a photo sharing campaign, which allows you to reward customers for sharing photos with your products.
* * *
One of the best customer loyalty and retention eCommerce tools listed above is definitely Antavo. Not only does it come with all the must-have features, but it also has many extras. You can try Antavo out for 7 days at no cost.
10 Customer Personalization Tools
Now, let’s check the last category of our Client Retention eCommerce Tools list. It consists of the tools that can help you personalize your shopping experience. An individual approach is an essential factor in winning customers’ favor, but personalization requires much more than simply addressing a person by name in an email. For that reason, we’ve compiled a set of tools that analyze customers’ behavior and identify individual preferences of each of them. Look through the main personalization features that a decent tool of this category should have.
- Personalized Product Recommendations. Show customers the items and brands that are relevant to their interests, particularly product types, styles, prices, etc. It will help you enhance your cross- and up-selling strategies.
- Personalized Emails. Send customers personalized messages with relevant products based on their recent browsing behavior. In such a way, you can convince them that your inventory includes what they need.
- Website Personalization. Adapt your promo content (e.g. banners), product navigation (e.g. search) and many other things to customers’ individual preferences.
Look through brief checklists of these tools, and choose the most suitable one for your store.
Barilliance
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – yes
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento, osCommerce, PrestaShop
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – starting at $250
Barilliance allows you to display real-time notifications of shoppers’ activity, which can let you create a sense of urgency. The tool also provides a cart abandonment solution to help you bring customers back to your store.
* * *
UNBXD
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – no
- Website Personalization – no
- Integration with Platforms – Shopify, Magento
- Free Trial – 14 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $24 (Shopify) and $99 (Magento)
UNBXD comes with 10 up- and cross-selling recommendation widgets to show different products, e.g. recently viewed, also bought, category best sellers, etc. An integrated WYSIWYG editor allows you to change a widget name and product image size.
* * *
Bunting
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – yes
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Shopify, Magento
- Free Trial – 30 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $150
Bunting is a great option for busy users, as it works out of the box. What attracted out attention is integration with 3 powerful tools meant to cope with click fraud. You can also take advantage from A/B testing.
* * *
RichRelevance
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – no
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – variable
RichRelevance is equipped with the technology constantly evaluating the performance of your product recommendations. In such a way, you can come up with the most effective algorithm for personalized interaction with customers.
* * *
Personyze
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – yes
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms – WordPress
- Free Trial – 30 days
- Monthly Fee – starting at $0.00
Personyze is a powerful tool providing easy popup & banner management, advanced A/B testing, and landing page optimization. You can also target the audience by behavioral, geo-location and CRM data. What’s cool, the basic pricing plan of the tool is available for free.
* * *
QuarticON
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – yes
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms - Magento
- Free Trial – 30 days
- Monthly Fee – variable
QuarticON offers automated cross-selling and ranking options for deeper customer engagement. Using this mobile-ready tool, you can also create visually appealing ads in no time by means of a built-in drag-and-drop manager.
* * *
Certona
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – no
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – variable
The personalization technology of Certona allows you to build first-time visitor profiles after 3-4 clicks.In such a way, you can learn more about your customers beginning from the first moments of their staying on your site.
* * *
Magnetic Merchandising
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – yes
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – variable
With Magnetic, you can cater every single page of your eCommerce site to customers’ needs and desires, not only product pages. Although there are not many distinctive features, the tool is still worthy to try.
* * *
Apptus
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – yes
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms – any eCommerce platform
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – variable
Apptus won’t let you waste a single pixel of your e-store space. With its aid, you can personalize everything, from promo content to your product navigation and search. The tool can be integrated with any eCommerce platform, which makes it a versatile solution.
* * *
Monetate Merchandising
- Personalized Product Recommendations – yes
- Personalized Emails – no
- Website Personalization – yes
- Integration with Platforms – Magento
- Free Trial – no
- Monthly Fee – variable
Monetate makes it possible to create filters for prioritizing best-sellers, new arrivals, and other special offerings of your store. There are also elegant target badges to mark unique product attributes.
* * *
Bunting is definitely a smart tool to try among others. It provides personalization of product recommendations, emails and other things on your site, e.g. banners depending on customers’ geo location, weather conditions in that area, and their favorite brands. Feel free to use it for 30 days at no cost.
* * *
Here we are. We hope our selection could help you find the right tool to make the most of each customer. As the majority of these tools have free trials, you can start improving the efficiency of your store today without a moment’s hesitation or any investment. Have you already used any of these tools? Can you recommend any other tool to deal with abandoning visitors, reward customers and personalize your shopping experience? Feel free to share your advice with us and our readers in the section of comments below!