It is harder than ever to acquire customers profitably with online marketing. Google and Meta keep getting more expensive. That makes it even more important to keep customers active once they have been won and encourage them to purchase again in order to generate profit. This sounds obvious and logical at first, but this exact step of customer retention is left to chance by most online shops. Instead of working on repeat-purchase campaigns, most marketing teams spend their time on new-customer acquisition. That leaves a lot of potential unused and makes life unnecessarily difficult.

Often there is an implicit belief that customers will simply come back on their own. In highly competitive online retail, that is no longer the case. Repeat purchases can and must be constructed.

To help you with this, we created this guide, which focuses on the core statements and gives you a quick, actionable plan. For each section, we have linked a more detailed article with the derivations for deeper reading.

The one-time buyer problem: why is it important to convert first-time buyers into second-time buyers?

Most buyers in online shops are one-time buyers, on average 78%. Turning them into repeat buyers offers an enormous opportunity to increase profitability. Repeat buyers have several advantages over new customers. The most important are:

  • Higher conversion rates -> existing customers regularly convert at 5% to 10%, compared with “only” 2% to 4% for typical new-customer campaigns.

  • Lower marketing costs -> moving an existing customer to a repeat purchase is around 5 to 7 times cheaper than acquiring a new customer.

  • With every additional purchase, the probability of further purchases rises -> your customer lifetime value increases disproportionately with every additional order. The most important purchase is your customer’s second purchase.

Sample calculation for illustration

Assume you have 100,000 customers. Your average basket value is €100. The distribution of your customers by number of purchases follows average values, with 78% first-time buyers. That means you currently have 78,000 customers who have bought from you only once. You now convert 10% of these one-time buyers into second-time buyers, meaning 7,800 customers, which brings you an additional €780,000 in revenue. Across their full lifetime, your 7,800 new second-time buyers will make further purchases and generate a total of €1.3 million in additional revenue.

For a detailed analysis, it is worth reading our article on the one-time buyer problem.

The second-purchase campaign

An effective second-purchase campaign should be relevant for the customer and happen at the right time.

Unfortunately, most merchants make it too easy for themselves, give vouchers that are far too high and leave a lot of money on the table. Shortly after purchase, it is more important to offer your new customer additional options and support discovery. Only when the customer begins to become inactive and is close to churning should you reactivate them with high voucher values.

For your second-purchase campaigns, you can use different angles and content. For example:

  • Cross-selling and bundles

  • Upselling and subscription

  • Refill campaigns

  • Feedback campaigns

  • VIP offers and flash sales

  • App, membership and loyalty program

can be used to move customers to a repeat purchase without having to offer the highest discounts.

It is also important to use the right marketing channels for your campaign. The combination of email and direct mail, for example with postcards, plays the essential role. With email, you can reach customers quickly and inexpensively and collect the easy conversions. However, you reach only a small fraction of customers who have given you permission for email marketing. This is where direct mail comes in, allowing you to reach all your customers even without consent.

You can find further details and strategies for designing second-purchase campaigns in our article:

Master the second-purchase campaign: the key to customer retention in online retail.

The right timing for the second-purchase campaign

The optimal timing for a second-purchase campaign varies by shop and industry. To start, analyze how many days pass between the first and second purchase for your repeat buyers. Based on that, determine the median and the 75th percentile. These are good moments for your second-purchase campaigns. The focus is on contacting customers neither too early nor too late. In the next section, we give you an example of how you can ideally use both moments for your marketing.

For a detailed explanation of how to determine the right timing, see our how-to:

Find the right timing for your repeat-purchase campaigns

Example campaign

To finish, let us bring everything together and give you a concrete example of what a second-purchase campaign can look like.

For our example, assume that you sell organic supplements to strength-training and fitness-oriented customers. 50% of your repeat buyers made their second purchase after 30 days, the median, and 75% of all repeat buyers after 60 days, the 75th percentile. With this knowledge, you now want to convert first-time buyers into second-time buyers.

A good sequence could then look like this.

1. Directly after purchase: start with a thank-you email and an information series about fitness and the role of supplements, your email welcome series. These emails should not be promotional, but informative, and should strengthen the customer’s confidence in the purchase.

2. 30 days after purchase: start your cross-selling campaign via email and postcard. Inform customers about suitable products and offer a 10% voucher. Optional: send an additional reminder email after 7 days.

3. 60 days after purchase: send a winback campaign via email and postcard with a 15% voucher, followed by an optional email reminder after 7 days.

4. 120 days after purchase: send your reactivation offer via email and postcard with a time-limited 20% voucher. Optional: we send an email reminder around 7 days after postcard dispatch and one final reminder 7 days before the voucher deadline.

Each phase aims to reach customers at different times after the first purchase and promote repeat purchases through targeted offers and reminders. With tools such as Klaviyo and PostPal, this workflow can be automated. Feel free to contact our team of e-commerce experts at any time, and we will help you find the ideal flow for your business.

Did this guide help you? Send us your feedback at service@getpostpal.com.

And if you want to find out how you can solve your one-time buyer problem with postcard marketing, we look forward to hearing from you at any time.