How to Get Customers to Buy Again: Loyalty, Email, Offers

Knowing how to get customers to buy again is the most profitable skill in eCommerce retention. You already paid to acquire these customers. Each extra order they place adds revenue without a new acquisition cost, and each good experience makes the next order more likely.

This guide covers the tactics that win the next order: the basics to fix first, loyalty programs, email, offers for loyal customers and campaigns by segment. To measure the result, see how to increase repeat orders and track the repeat order rate. Omniconvert Commander (formerly Nexus), the AI eCommerce growth engine, shows which customers are most likely to buy again and which are drifting away.

Why the next order matters more than the first

Acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one [Harvard Business Review, 2014]. Many stores also see the Pareto principle, or 80/20 rule, in their own data: a small share of loyal customers brings in a large share of sales.

A repeat customer is defined as a customer who has placed two or more orders with your store. The gap between the first and the second order is where most customers are lost. Measure your time between orders so you know how long that gap usually is, and plan every tactic below around it.

Fix the basics first

• Understand your customers. Learn their needs, pains and expectations, and how competitors serve them. Omniconvert Commander's customer intelligence shows who your customers are by how recently, how often and how much they buy.
• Run a store that is easy to use. Clear navigation, strong product pages with good photos and full descriptions, and a simple checkout guide people to the order without wasted effort.
• Give people content worth returning for. Paid ads create awareness, but pull marketing, such as content and email, builds the connection that brings customers back. The best results come from using both together.

Use a loyalty program that fits your customers

A loyalty program is one of the most common customer retention tactics. It rewards customers for choosing you again and can raise how much they spend without feeling like a demand. HubSpot describes six types.

Points: make rewards reachable

Points are the most common program, but many stores set the value too low. If a customer must buy for a year to earn a small discount, the program feels like a piggy bank that never fills up, and most people give up. Keep it simple and set the first reward close enough that a second or third order reaches it.

Tiered: give status, not only discounts

Tiered programs motivate customers to climb a ladder of status levels. Tiers also help you segment: you can send different emails to each tier, and the program becomes part of your brand identity.

Paid: deliver value from day one

Clarus Commerce argues that traditional programs train customers to wait for discounts, while paid programs give members benefits they can use at any time. A paid program can raise engagement, purchase frequency and average order value. Amazon Prime is the best-known example: 93% of US Prime members renewed after their first year, and 98% after their second [Beamer, 2020]. Before you launch one, ask whether your benefits are worth paying for in your niche.

Value-based and coalition: build on shared values

Value-based programs connect the brand to a cause, often by donating part of the proceeds from a product range. Coalition programs partner with another brand that your customers already like. Both need a deep understanding of what your customers value, so they are harder to run well.

Game-based: wake up inactive members

Many loyalty members never use their membership: the COLLOQUY Loyalty Census found that only 46% of US loyalty program memberships were active [COLLOQUY Loyalty Census, 2017]. Gamification, such as challenges, levels and badges, gives members a reason to engage again.

Send emails that earn the next order

For many businesses, email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for retaining customers. It follows customers from onboarding to follow-ups and new product launches. It is not only for upsells and cart reminders: useful content shows you care. Group customers by how often they buy, what they buy and their average order value, which is where customer intelligence pays off. For the first emails after an order, see these post-purchase email flows.

1. Make it feel personal

   Use the customer's name and match the message to their stage and interests. Write in a conversational style so they look forward to the next email.
2. Offer more than one newsletter

   Let people choose the topics they want. A single promotional newsletter loses attention over time.
3. Keep the design clean

   Use visuals to highlight the key sections, leave white space, and give each email one main call to action.
4. Educate and share your story

   Send guides, tutorials and behind-the-scenes content. The better customers know you, the stronger the emotional connection that drives repeat purchases.
5. Test different approaches

   Test subject lines, tone, length and calls to action, and see which segments respond. Judge each test on orders, not only on opens.

Do not forget transactional emails. Order confirmations and shipping updates have high open rates, so optimize your transactional emails to feel on-brand and add a relevant recommendation. For customers who have already stopped buying, a separate flow helps you win back lost customers.

Reward loyal customers with special offers

Every purchase leaves data in your analytics and customer platform. Use it to find patterns and segment loyal customers, because they are not all the same. Then choose from offers like these:

• Early access to new products and campaigns before everyone else.
• Discounts on products they reorder, based on their buying patterns.
• Seasonal offers with relevant products for the upcoming holidays.
• Referral rewards for bringing in new customers.
• Bundles that add something related to a product they already want.
• Free shipping on orders placed in the following month.
• A birthday gift card with a personal message.

Run campaigns by customer segment

You talk to existing customers differently than to new prospects. Good personalization depends on how well you use the data your customers share with you. Social media campaigns are another way to grow your repeat customer rate, as long as the targeting, visuals and copy feel relevant and not intrusive.

• First-time visitors: retargeting reminds people who left without buying. You can run it on Google, on Facebook with these Facebook retargeting strategies, or with LinkedIn ads. Exclude people who already bought, so they do not see ads for products they own.
• Existing customers: base ads on what they bought and how they responded to earlier campaigns. Build several ad concepts, one for each segment.
• Loyal customers: make them part of the campaign. With permission, feature their photos, reviews and stories. It rewards them and shows other buyers that your brand is authentic.

A simple plan to win the second purchase

1. Thank and reassure

   Send a personal thank-you and clear shipping updates. Overdeliver on your promise with fast delivery and careful packaging.
2. Help them use the product

   Send a how-to guide or tips, with no sales ask. Useful information at the right time can do more than a discount code.
3. Give a reason to return

   Offer a welcome benefit, such as early access or a first loyalty reward that is easy to reach.
4. Remind at the right moment

   Send a reminder or offer shortly before your typical time between orders runs out. Then track your repeat purchase rate to see what worked.

A common failure is a welcome discount sent to every first-time buyer on the day of the order. Customers who would have come back anyway take the discount, so the margin drops, and customers who were unhappy with the first order ignore it, so nothing changes for them. The repeat purchase rate barely moves while the cost per repeat order rises. Send the offer later, to the buyers who have not returned within the usual cycle, and fix the experience problems that kept the others away.

AliveCor used Omniconvert to run a structured A/B testing program and achieved a 21 percent lift in conversion rate, a 5 percent lift in revenue per visitor, and 94 percent statistical relevance across their experiments [Omniconvert, AliveCor case study]. That program tested conversion on the website, but the same discipline applies here: test each tactic against a control group before you roll it out.

Omniconvert Commander groups customers into RFM segments and calculates True Profit per order and per customer, so you can see whether an offer that wins a second order still leaves a profit. It pushes those segments directly to Meta Ads, Google Ads and Klaviyo, where your emails and ads run.

Buying again FAQs

Andrada Vonhaz

My journey in marketing and technology has always been fueled by a relentless passion for innovation. It all began in 2016 when I delved into the fundamental aspects of content and copywriting, alongside mastering social media dynamics, SEO, and PPC tactics. By combining these elements, I cultivated a deep understanding of marketing strategies, polished my project management skills, and became adept at communicating and monitoring marketing initiatives from inception to completion. My guiding principle is rooted in the belief that there’s always something new to learn and apply. It’s this mindset that drives me to continually evolve and innovate in the dynamic worlds of marketing and technology.