Returning Customer Rate is a tricky metric. In most of the industry it is the same as Repeat Purchase Rate except Shopify considers it something differently.
In Shopify, the Returning Customer Rate is the measurement of customers who bought a second time in a given period of time.
While it's similar to Repeat Purchase Rate, Repeat Purchase Rate requires the initial order and second orders to be fully within the time. Returning Customer Rate on the other hand allows for the initial order to be outside the period of time (details here).
Returning Customer Rate can be useful when you're looking at a narrow date range of behavior data, especially if you compare it to your overall Repeat Purchase Rate. This will tell you if customers are ordering again more or less.
Returning Customer Rate has nothing to do with returning customers.
Eric Davis
Retain the best customers and leave the worst for your competitors to steal
If you're having problems with customers not coming back or defecting to competitors, Repeat Customer Insights might help uncover why that's happening.
Using its analyses you can figure out how to better target the good customers and let the bad ones go elsewhere.