An Essential Guide to Preventing First-Timers from Churning – Part I
Converting first-timers to active customers can generate much value for your brand and increase ROI on the cost of acquisition. Here's one way to approach it (and three more to download)
Decided to continue reading here? Alright, perhaps that’s the right time to tell you that 59% of first-time purchasers (aka one-timers) will never make an additional order for most brands! Meaning, they will churn on you.
Gloomy, huh?
The good news is that first-timers can become a goldmine if you identify them appropriately, treat them right, and communicate correctly. Improving this metric even slightly poses an excellent opportunity for your business. The predicted average future value of repeat customers is 3X higher than that of one-timers!
So, how do you turn your one-timers into repeat purchasers?
It starts by setting up marketing campaigns that are personalized and relevant – to encouraging subsequent orders and increasing their customer lifetime value (CLTV). As you can see below, the likelihood of a customer making an additional order increases as the number of previous orders increases:
The one best-practice we’ll focus on here is “how to leverage first-order data to reduce the number of one-timers?” And we will show you how this methodology can be easily implemented using Optimove.
Leveraging First Order Habit Related Activities
We’re all creatures of habit, and people tend to have specific routines that don’t deviate much. This is also true when it comes to consumerism.
We’ve noticed a high correlation between several customer data attributes regarding the first and second-order, including:
Day
Time
Total spend amount
Product category
We can also tell you that customers are likely to make their next orders on the same day of the week as their first order. The same goes for the time of day, and the amount customers spend on their first and subsequent orders.
Using Optimove’s Target Groups, you can create customer segments based on the behaviors mentioned above. Such as the day the first order, the first product category ordered, and order amount thresholds.
When you have this kind of info in your pocket, you can schedule highly personalized recurring campaigns that will go out to customers at their preferred time of day – which is likely to increase engagement and encourage additional orders.
It’s simple, customers who purchase on a Monday should receive automated campaigns on Mondays, offering items from the same product category, and price ranges as their first purchase.
The matrix below demonstrates a marketing plan and personalization practice you can set up:
The bottom line is that being able to communicate with customers in a highly relevant and personalized manner increases customer loyalty and the likelihood of subsequent purchases—all the things we want.
You might think that customers who only made one order will not provide you with much information, but that’s not the case. Optimove users can easily access insightful and actionable data collected as early as the customer’s first order.
Stay tuned for the next part of this mini-series, where we will talk about how to power repeat purchases with product return data.
Gabriella Laster is Product Marketing Manager at Optimove, responsible for prospect marketing and product messaging. Gabriella holds a B.A. in International Relations and English Literature and an Executive MBA from Hebrew University.
