Take a minute to consider these two points:
A return customer is 73.72% more likely to make a second purchase
A return customer spends an average of 16.15% MORE than a new customer.
If you’ve been spending the majority of your time trying to get new customers and you haven’t put enough effort into selling more to your current customer base, then you’re probably going to see low ROI from your email and other marketing efforts.
Here’s some quick math to show the differences between new acquisitions versus getting sales for your current audience.
I’ll keep the numbers simple so that we don’t get too crazy here.
Let’s say you have 100 customers who are already on your email list that you’ve segmented as customers who’ve made a purchase.
You target them with emails to get them to purchase something. The average cart is $100, and your conversion rate is 1%
100 x 1.73% (because they are 73% more likely) – 1-2 sales
100 customers x 1% = 1 sale
Then add the return average cart value (ACV) spending 16.5%.
So, with 1-2 sales at $116.50 (I added 16.50 to the $100 ACV) to drive you anywhere from $116.50-$232 in revenue, which cost you just time.
Now on the flip side of this, you could have spent money on ads to target people who haven’t bought from you and acquired a new customer for $100.
With that same math, you would have spent $300 to get that one person which means you’re now -$200 in the hole and you spent time waiting for those 100 clicks.
Even if we dropped the CPC in this example to just $1 you’re only breaking even.
So to restate, with this example:
- Focusing on repeat customers gained you revenue of $116.50-$232, while
- focusing on getting 1 new customer means you lost $200 or maybe broke even
The power of a repeat customer is more than JUST numbers.
It’s the time, the process, and care. It’s about the nurturing process and how important it is in the customer journey.
And really, it could be the difference between your online store thriving or shutting down.