Retention, measured rather than assumed
In short
Retention work is easy to do and hard to evaluate. Repeat rate rises for reasons that have nothing to do with the loyalty programme, and a before-and-after comparison will credit the programme with all of them. Everything here is written around holdouts and cohorts rather than dashboards.
The uncomfortable part of this cluster is that the most-quoted retention statistics are uncited, and the honest answer to most questions here is a measurement you have not run yet.
What loyalty mechanics do to repeat rate, measured rather than assumed.
What this covers
- 01What retention actually measures, and the metrics people confuse for itRead
- 02Raising average order value without buying itRead
Every article in this cluster
Customer retention, and the three metrics people confuse for it
Loyalty campaigns: how to tell if yours did anything
Common questions
Is it really cheaper to retain a customer than acquire one?
Usually, and the figure everyone quotes for it has no source anybody can produce. Measure your own: acquisition cost per new customer against the cost of the retention programme divided by the customers it kept. Both sides of that are knowable from your own data.
How do I prove a loyalty programme worked?
Withhold it from a random group and compare. Every other method — before and after, members against non-members, survey intent — is confounded by the fact that your best customers join first.
What is a good repeat purchase rate?
It is a function of what you sell. A coffee subscription and a mattress have nothing to compare. Your own rate over time, split by acquisition channel, is the only version of this number that can inform a decision.
See it on your data
Loyalz joins ad spend to settled order lines, so the numbers in these articles are columns rather than a spreadsheet you rebuild every month.
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