A Shopify store using Repeat Customer Insights recently asked me:
I see that once a customer orders 2 & 3 times, they become long term customers, and that is my challenge. Do you have any specific suggestions on how to do this?
Getting one-time customers to buy again is the central challenge for the majority of ecommerce stores. That behavior takes work to earn, but once you've got it to be repeatable then retention and loyalty becomes nearly effortless.
The best strategy I've found is building a New Customer Welcome Campaign.
These campaigns bring in a lot of different tactics and techniques all with the purpose of getting that 2nd order. Once that happens, your regular retention campaigns can take over and keep a customer.
This is such an important area that I've built an area in Repeat Customer Insights specifically for getting one-time customers to buy again. I named this Focus on: 1-to-2 Customers.
There's advice on building New Customer Welcome Campaigns in the app as well on my website.
One last point I want to make. Even though this is hard work, you should start to see gains with every little bit you release. Even if you can't focus 100% on it right now, working on this campaign a little bit each week or month will start showing results.
Eric Davis
Refine your automated marketing campaigns with better timing
When building any automated marketing campaign that sends messages over time, you need to know how long the campaign should be and how long to delay the messages. The Customer Purchase Latency metrics calculated by Repeat Customer Insights can help you figure out that timing.