Absence is hard to see
A new customer shows up on a dashboard. A customer who did not come back shows up as nothing. That is why money flows to acquisition and retention gets filed under "later". The first job is to make the absence visible, by putting a dollar figure on it.
The five usual causes
- Nothing happens after the order. The confirmation email is the last message they get, until a sale.
- No reason to come back. Nothing tells the customer what to buy next, how to use what they bought, or what is new.
- Wrong timing. The message arrives before they need the product again, or long after they have bought elsewhere.
- Everyone gets the same message. A first-time buyer and a ten-time buyer receive the same email and the same 10% off.
- The first order was a discount order. Some customers came for the price. Without a full-price reason to return, they wait for the next sale.
How to check each one
- Count the automated messages a new customer receives in their first 90 days. If the answer is one, that is your first finding.
- Find the median days between first and second order, and compare it with when your emails send.
- Compare the second-order rate for customers whose first order used a discount code and those whose did not.
- Check whether your best customers are treated any differently from everyone else.
Each check takes an hour or less with an order export. They show which cause matters most for your business, so you fix that one first.
What to fix first
Start with a post-purchase sequence and a win-back flow for customers who are overdue. Then look at segmentation. These are the first jobs in our e-commerce work because they are usually the quickest to build and the easiest to measure.
Questions
Is it normal for most customers to buy only once?
Yes. For many brands a majority of customers order once. That is exactly why even a small lift in the second-order rate is valuable. The aim is to improve your own rate, not to reach zero one-time buyers.
Could it be the product rather than the marketing?
Sometimes. If reviews, returns and support tickets point to a product problem, follow-up emails will not fix it. Check those first. We tell clients when that is the case.
Want this worked out on your own data?
The free Profit Leak Detector takes a couple of minutes. Or book 30 minutes and we will look at your numbers together.