How to Encourage a Second Purchase
- The best way to get a second purchase is to deliver an excellent first-order experience; the second order is a consequence of it.
- Repeat purchase rate (customers who come back to buy again) and customer retention rate (customers kept over a period) measure different things, so track both.
- Run NPS twice: pre-delivery on the thank-you page for the shopping experience, and post-delivery a few days after the customer uses the product.
- Remove new customers from discount, upsell and cross-sell messages until they have received and tried their first order.
- Use Average Days Between Transactions (ADBT) to time the second-purchase flow; the chances of another order go down as time passes.
To encourage a second purchase, make the first one excellent. Measure how new customers feel with NPS before and after delivery, communicate every step of the order clearly, keep them engaged while they wait, and keep them out of sales messages until they have their products. Then use the average number of days between orders to decide when to ask for the next one.
Your latest acquisition campaign rocked, and now you have plenty of new customers to impress with your customer experience and lead to the second purchase. Sure. But how do you actually get a repeat purchase?
Many DTC brands regularly acquire lots of one-time buyers, while their retention rate and repeat purchases stay low. This guide covers what to do from the moment the first order is placed until the moment you ask for the second. If you want to go deeper on the repeat customer itself, read what a repeat customer is and how to identify one and how to calculate and improve repeat orders.
Why the second purchase matters
Before you think about customer lifetime value and loyal customers, you have to nail the first experience and adjust your marketing strategy to prepare new customers for the second order. Your mission is to generate an excellent customer experience from the first order, to win their trust and convince them your brand is the best alternative out there.
Two metrics tell you how well you are doing. Pay attention to both, because each one measures a different dimension of your business. For a longer comparison, see repeat purchase rate vs retention rate vs churn rate.
| Metric | What it measures | How to read it for the second purchase |
|---|---|---|
| Repeat purchase rate | The percentage of customers who return to your brand for a new purchase | The most direct signal of whether first-time buyers come back |
| Customer retention rate | The number of customers you manage to retain over a given period | Shows whether the relationship lasts beyond one extra order |
| Chances to buy again | The likelihood that a customer places another order | Watch how it changes with the number of orders and the days since the last one |
| Average Days Between Transactions (ADBT) | The typical time between one order and the next | Tells you when to start encouraging the second order |
How to encourage a second purchase
Introducing: the "Not Mess It Up the First Time" Starter Kit. The best way to get to the second order is not to f!ck up the experience with the first one.
New customers hire your brand, products or services to make their lives better. Now you have to deliver an excellent customer experience around their first purchase. The kit has four parts.
1. Pre- and post-delivery Net Promoter Score
The best way to measure customer satisfaction in eCommerce is to show or send a Net Promoter Score survey right after a customer places an order (pre-delivery), and again a few days after the customer starts using your products or services (post-delivery). This way you know whether everything is OK, marketing-wise and product-wise.
- Pre-delivery NPS evaluates the online shopping experience of your new customers. Include it on the thank-you page and capture their feedback while it's still hot and their attention is at its maximum.
- Post-delivery NPS measures how satisfied new customers are with the experience you created around their purchase. Make it part of your post-purchase communication flow and trigger it a few days after the customer has had the chance to test, try or use your products or services.
You can steal this post-purchase email flow I've created for you and learn how to use NPS surveys for better customer journeys.
Measuring NPS in this early phase of the relationship is essential. It allows you to take immediate action according to the scores you receive, resolve existing complaints or problems, and build further on a healthy foundation.
2. Detailed and transparent order status communication
Detailed and clear communication around the order is mandatory for a relationship built on trust. Customers who have a positive shopping and delivery experience are more likely to place their second order.
The success of your onboarding campaign depends on how you communicate with new customers via the site, email and SMS, and on the details you include in their customer account. To reduce buyer's remorse and keep communication transparent, your post-purchase communication needs to include:
- Thank-you page
- Order confirmation
- Payment confirmation
- Tracking number
- Shipping confirmation
- Estimated delivery date
- Real-time order tracking
- Customer support information
Add the human touch to all of your automated delivery processes, and make sure your customer support team always knows about the complaints or requests that automation can't solve.
3. A dedicated flow for longer shipping times
If your new customers' orders involve longer shipping times, create a dedicated flow that keeps them engaged while they wait for their products.
Think about educational content around their pain points and valuable resources about the products they just ordered. It could be exclusive content that only customers can access, like a custom workout for someone waiting for their multifunctional home gym station.
During this waiting period, you can also learn more about the customer's likes and dislikes, which lets you personalize future messages.
4. Unassign newly acquired customers from all sales messages
Stop targeting new customers with discounts, upselling and cross-selling messages before they receive their first order, because:
- You will annoy them with recommendations for new purchases when they didn't even receive their first order yet.
- You will show that you don't care that they didn't get their order yet, and that you only want to make $$$.
- You will increase your ticket numbers and overwhelm your customer support team.
- Customer satisfaction will go down in pieces.
- You might see a lot of unsubscribes.
- You will lower their chances of placing a second order because of all of the above.
Remove customers from any sales-oriented messages while they're still waiting for their first order and while they're experiencing the purchased products or services. Fine-tune your automated flows so they don't work against you.
Preparing new customers for the second purchase
As we said, to increase your chances of getting a second order, you must deliver a seamless first-time experience. Before you send sales-oriented messages to first-time buyers, make sure everything went well with their first order and that they are happy with the experience they received.
So when is it time to start encouraging new customers to place their second order? You'll get the answer by looking at the Average Days Between Transactions (ADBT) for your store. If you don't measure that metric yet, use the benchmark for your industry. The number of days varies by industry, so use your own data to adjust your campaigns.
- Confirm the first experience went well. Check the pre- and post-delivery NPS scores and resolve any open complaints before you ask for anything.
- Find your ADBT. Measure the average days between the first and second purchase for your store, or use your industry benchmark as a starting point.
- Trigger a flow designed for the next purchase. Knowing how long your customers take to decide on a new purchase, start the flow around that point, not in a general email blast.
- Personalize the message. Mix your creativity, your customers' behavior data, what you learned about their likes and dislikes, and product performance insights to create appealing messages.
- Watch the timing. Track how the chances of placing another order change as days pass, and move earlier if customers drift away before your flow reaches them.
You don't want to be too pushy, so keep in mind where customers are in their journey. The relationship is still fresh, and even though you made a good first impression, you want them to feel special.
On the other hand, you don't want to wait too long before nurturing them toward their second purchase, because the chances of placing another order decrease as time goes on. That is why the chances to buy again metric matters: it shows how important it is to deliver an excellent first experience and to keep relevant communication with newly acquired customers. If you do a good job, you will get better retention rates and increase customer lifetime value.
Find and nurture new customers with Nexus
To run the kit above at scale, you need to know who your first-time buyers are and where they are in the relationship. Nexus Customer Intelligence scores every customer on Recency, Frequency and Monetary value and places them in one of six segments: Soulmates, Loyal, New, Promising, About-to-Dump and Breakups.
- New customers. High recency, low frequency. According to the Nexus page, what happens in the next 60 days determines whether they become Soulmates or Breakups. The suggested actions are an onboarding sequence and a second-purchase trigger.
- Promising. Strong early signals that are not yet consistent. These customers need a nudge to establish a purchase pattern.
- NPS by segment. Nexus shows NPS broken down by RFM segment, so a low score from a New customer shows up as a signal that needs a response.
- Sync where you market. Nexus pushes RFM segments directly to Meta Ads, Google Ads and Klaviyo, so your post-purchase flows and your "no sales messages yet" exclusions use the same audience.
To pick the right customers to acquire in the first place, read identifying your ideal customer profile. For a template on customer-centric product decisions, see the Product Optimization Framework.
Frequently Asked Questions
A second purchase is the next order a customer places with a brand after their first one. It shows that the customer came back by choice, which usually means the first experience met their expectations. It is the step that turns a one-time buyer into a repeat customer.
Many first-time buyers never come back, so every customer who places a second order is a customer your acquisition spend actually paid off on. The second purchase shows loyalty and engagement, and repeat purchases add to customer lifetime value, revenue growth and overall business success.
Repeat purchase rate is the percentage of customers who come back to your brand for another purchase. Customer retention rate measures how many customers you keep over a given period. They measure different dimensions of your business, so track both.
Look at the Average Days Between Transactions (ADBT) for your store, or use an industry benchmark if you do not measure it yet. Start the flow that leads to the next purchase around that point, once the first order has arrived and you have feedback on it. Do not wait too long, because the chances of another order go down as time passes.
No. While customers are still waiting for their first order, or still trying the product, remove them from discount, upsell and cross-sell messages. Early sales messages can annoy them, raise support tickets, cause unsubscribes and lower satisfaction, which all reduce the chance of a second order.
A pre-delivery NPS survey on the thank-you page measures the shopping experience. A post-delivery NPS survey, sent a few days after the customer starts using the product, measures satisfaction with the product and delivery. Low scores let you fix complaints before they cost you the next order.
Use a CRM, an analytics tool or a customer data platform that connects orders to individual customers. These systems let you monitor purchase history, see who has bought once or more, and analyze patterns in repeat purchases. Nexus by Omniconvert, for example, puts first-time buyers in a New customers RFM segment and updates it from your Shopify data on every new order.
Include a thank-you page, order confirmation, payment confirmation, tracking number, shipping confirmation, estimated delivery date, real-time order tracking and customer support information. Clear, detailed communication reduces buyer's remorse and builds the trust a second order depends on.
The success of your acquisition campaigns needs to be followed by experiences that exceed expectations. Your relationship with newly acquired customers is in its early stage, so before you even think about how to generate the second purchase, put 100% of your focus on over-delivering what attracted them to you in the first place. Measure the first experience, communicate clearly, stay out of their inbox with sales messages until they have their order, and then ask for the next one at the right time. The second purchase will be a consequence of quality shopping and customer experience.
Turn first-time buyers into repeat customers
Nexus by Omniconvert segments your customers with real-time RFM, tracks CLV by cohort and channel, and syncs segments to Klaviyo, Meta Ads and Google Ads. Built on 13 years of eCommerce data from 7,000+ websites.