How to Get Shopify Repeat Customers: A Practical Implementation Guide

Repeat customers are the cheapest growth available to most Shopify stores. You have already paid to acquire them, they already trust your checkout, and they already know whether your product works. Yet many stores we audit send a thank you email, perhaps a review request, and then nothing until the next sale.

This guide shows how to measure repeat purchase rate with Shopify's own reports, which four levers move it, the order to build them in, and what UK rules on marketing consent and subscriptions mean for each. Every figure links to its source, and where published benchmarks disagree, we say so.

Quick Answer

To get more Shopify repeat customers, first measure your repeat purchase rate with Shopify's Returning customers, One-time customers and Customer cohort analysis reports. Then build four things in order: post purchase email flows timed to when customers actually reorder, a loyalty programme with thresholds set from your average order value, a subscription option for consumable products, and fixes to delivery and support. Most stores can put all four in place within 90 days.

Key Takeaways

• Measure before you build. Shopify's Customer cohort analysis report shows retention by the month customers first ordered, and its RFM analysis sorts customers into groups such as Champions and At risk.
• The window is short. In one agency's timing data for 40,397 repeat buyers, half ordered again within 30 days and about three quarters within 90.
• Most second orders repeat the first. The same dataset found 77% of second purchases were the same product, so reorder prompts usually beat cross sells for consumables.
• Benchmarks disagree. Every published repeat rate comes from a vendor measuring its own clients, and even the 28.2% average repeated on Shopify's enterprise blog matches a study of just 65 stores. Compare yourself with stores selling similar products, then with your own earlier cohorts.
• Consent caps email. In the UK, the soft opt in lets you email past customers about similar products, but only if you offered an opt out at checkout and in every message.
• Subscription rules are changing. New UK rules come into force in January 2027, so build any subscribe and save offer to meet them from day one.

Table of Contents

1. Why repeat customers matter more than new ones
2. How to measure repeat customers in Shopify
3. What is a good repeat customer rate?
4. The four levers, ranked by speed
5. Lever 1: post purchase email and SMS flows
6. Lever 2: a loyalty programme built on your numbers
7. Lever 3: subscribe and save for consumable products
8. Lever 4: delivery and support
9. The 90 day retention build
10. Common mistakes that cap repeat purchase rate
11. The Why Matters Perspective
12. FAQ
13. Final Thoughts
14. Related Articles

Why Repeat Customers Matter More Than New Ones

The case for retention usually rests on two famous numbers, and both deserve a closer look.

The first is cost. Harvard Business Review puts the cost of winning a new customer at five to 25 times the cost of keeping an existing one, while noting that the range depends on the study and the industry.

The second is profit. The claim that a 5% rise in retention lifts profit by 25% to 95% is usually credited to Bain & Company. The original research, Zero Defections by Frederick Reichheld and W. Earl Sasser, published in Harvard Business Review in 1990, studied service businesses: cutting customer defections by 5% raised profits by 85% in one bank's branch system, 50% in an insurance brokerage and 30% in an auto service chain. Those are not ecommerce figures, so treat them as evidence of direction rather than a forecast for your store.

Your own numbers are more persuasive. Take a store that wins 1,000 new customers a month at an average order value of £40, and assume each returning customer places one more order:

• At an 18% repeat rate, returning customers add 180 orders, worth £7,200 a month.
• At a 25% repeat rate, they add 250 orders, worth £10,000 a month.
• The difference is £2,800 a month, or £33,600 a year, from customers you have already paid to acquire, before counting any third or fourth orders.

Retention also multiplies every conversion gain, which our guide to why your Shopify conversion rate matters explains. That is why repeat purchase rate and cohort retention are the two numbers worth tracking before anything else.

How to Measure Repeat Customers in Shopify

Repeat purchase rate is the share of your customers who have ordered more than once:

Repeat purchase rate = customers with two or more orders ÷ customers with at least one order × 100

Shopify gives you both halves. Its customer reports include a Returning customers report, which lists everyone whose order history has two or more orders, and a One-time customers report, which lists everyone with exactly one. Divide the first count by the two counts added together. Both sit under Analytics, then Reports, filtered to the Customers category.

Two details catch people out. Shopify bases these reports on each customer's entire order history, not only the dates you select, so the result is a lifetime rate. And report availability can vary by plan, with third party guides disagreeing about which plans include the cohort report, so check what your own admin shows.

For a view over time, use the Customer cohort analysis report. It groups customers by the month of their first order and shows what each cohort did afterwards, as a heatmap or a retention curve. The Metric menu can switch the view to customer retention rate, and the cohort definition can filter first orders by sales channel, marketing channel, product or subscription. That lets you compare, for example, customers first acquired through paid social with those who first bought from an email.

Record these measures before you change anything:

The RFM customer analysis report is underused. It scores every customer on recency, frequency and monetary value against the rest of your own store, sorts them into 11 groups, and lets you open any group as a customer segment. That gives you ready made audiences for the flows later in this guide.

What Is a Good Repeat Customer Rate?

There is no independent benchmark for repeat purchase rate. Every published figure comes from a software company or agency measuring its own clients, so it pays to know where each number comes from:

• The 28.2% average repeated across many retention articles, including Shopify's enterprise blog, matches an undated Metrilo report on 65 stores that were already using Metrilo's retention tools.
• BS&Co, a US email agency, published a lower 18.8% in February 2026, measured across 156,110 customers of its direct to consumer clients and counting anyone with two or more orders in a 365 day window.
• Appbrew, a Shopify mobile app builder, published category medians in August 2026 from more than 250 Shopify brands over 12 months, ranging from 40.5% for pet care down to 4.9% for mattresses.

The two recent datasets compare like this by product type:

BS&Co reports three broad product groups, so its figures repeat across rows, and it gives no figure for pet care or mattresses.

The datasets disagree even within a category: Appbrew's fashion median of 22.7% sits well above BS&Co's typical 12% to 17%, while for food and drink BS&Co runs higher. None of the three is a neutral sample: each company measured its own clients, and the Metrilo stores were already investing in retention. What all three agree on is the shape: products that get used up sit at the top, and large one off purchases sit at the bottom.

So a 15% rate could be healthy for a homeware brand and a warning sign for a supplement brand. The most useful benchmark is your own previous year, cohort by cohort.

The Four Levers, Ranked by Speed

Email comes first because the window is short. BS&Co's timing table, covering 40,397 repeat buyers, shows 50.3% ordering again within 30 days and 76.4% within 90, so a flow that starts on day 60 misses most of them. That table is a wider sample than the 29,355 repeat customers in its 365 day benchmark, because it also counts second orders placed more than a year after the first.

Lever 1: Post Purchase Email and SMS Flows

This is the fastest lever to build and usually the first to show movement. The common mistake is not skipping email altogether. It is sending one newsletter to everyone instead of flows triggered by what each customer actually did.

Start with Shopify's own automations. In Shopify Messaging, formerly Shopify Email, go to Apps, then Messaging, then Automations. The post purchase templates include Thank customers after they purchase, which sends after the first and second orders, Upsell customers after their first purchase, and Win back customers, which fires once a set time has passed since the last order. The customer appreciation templates add Welcome VIP customers and a birthday email. Two limits matter: by default these automations send only to customers subscribed to marketing, and the SMS automations cover abandoned browsing, carts and checkouts only. For custom logic, or to trigger a message from another app, build the workflow in Shopify Flow.

Move to Klaviyo when you need more control. Klaviyo adds deeper segmentation, SMS throughout your flows and predictive fields such as expected date of next order. Those predictions switch on once at least 500 customers have placed an order, you have 180 days of order history including orders in the last 30 days, and some customers have ordered three or more times. As a Klaviyo Partner, it is the platform we build on by default, but the platform matters less than whether each flow is triggered by behaviour.

Build these flows, in this order:

1. Post purchase sequence. A thank you, then how to use or care for the product, then a review request once the order has actually arrived rather than when it shipped.
2. Reorder reminder. For anything that gets used up, time a "ready for another?" email to the product's usage cycle, or to Klaviyo's expected date of next order. BS&Co found that 77% of second purchases across 7,454 purchase journeys were the same product, so lead with the reorder rather than a grid of recommendations.
3. Cross sell. For durable goods, where customers rarely buy the same item twice, recommend what completes the first purchase instead.
4. Second order milestone. When a customer places a second order, move them into a separate track from first time buyers. Treating the two groups identically is one of the most common gaps we find in store audits.
5. Win back. Trigger it from your own purchase cycle, not a default 60 days. Shopify's At risk and Previously loyal RFM groups make a good audience, and the offer should build across two or three emails rather than opening with your biggest discount.

Check your consent position. In the UK, ICO guidance explains the soft opt in: you can email or text your own previous customers about similar products without separate consent, provided you offered a simple way to opt out when you collected their details and in every message since. It does not cover prospects or bought in lists. Because Shopify's automations only reach marketing subscribers, the share of buyers who subscribe caps what this lever can do, so make the sign up option clear at checkout.

Across 198 client stores we have worked with, email accounts for a median 30% of revenue, which is why this lever comes first. Our guides to optimising Shopify email marketing and keeping Shopify emails out of spam cover the build and the deliverability side.

Lever 2: A Loyalty Programme Built on Your Numbers

A loyalty programme only moves repeat rate if customers can see a reward within reach. Programmes usually fail on threshold design, not on the choice of app.

The arithmetic is simple. With an average order value of £40, a first reward at £200 of spend needs five orders. If fewer than a third of your customers ever place a second order, almost nobody reaches it, and the programme becomes invisible.

A structure that works for most Shopify stores:

• Entry level. Points from the very first order, redeemable early, so the first reward lands around the second purchase.
• Middle tier. Unlock it at roughly two to three times your average order value, so £80 to £120 in the example above, with a visible perk such as free delivery or early access.
• Top tier. Size it from your RFM Champions group rather than a template, and choose perks that cost little but feel exclusive, such as priority support or first access to new products.

Cost the rewards before launch. Points worth 5% back cost £2 on a £40 order, so check that against your gross margin and your existing discounting, not only against what competitors offer.

Smile.io, LoyaltyLion, Yotpo Loyalty and Rivo are common Shopify options, and Recharge includes loyalty features for subscription brands. Whichever you choose, connect it to your email platform so tier changes trigger their own messages. "You have just reached Silver" is one of the easiest repeat purchase emails you will ever write.

Lever 3: Subscribe and Save for Consumable Products

For products that run out, such as coffee, supplements, skincare or pet food, a subscription turns the next order from a decision into a default. It is far less useful for durable goods with long replacement cycles.

There are two main routes. Shopify's free Shopify Subscriptions app covers straightforward plans inside your admin, although it does not support bundles and needs one of Shopify's supported payment gateways. Recharge, where we are a partner, suits brands that need bundles, a richer customer portal and more retention tooling. Our comparison of Recharge and Shopify Subscriptions and our guide to adding subscriptions to Shopify walk through the choice.

Once subscriptions are live, the Customer cohort analysis report can filter first orders by subscription, so you can check whether subscribers really do return more often than one time buyers in your store rather than assuming it.

Plan for the law as well. The UK government has announced that new subscription rules come into force in January 2027. Businesses will need clearer upfront information, regular reminders and a much easier way to cancel, and a new 14 day cooling off period will let customers cancel after a trial ends or a long term contract renews. Build your sign up, reminder and cancellation journeys to that standard now rather than retrofitting them. Heavy discounting and awkward cancellation are among the subscription mistakes we see most often.

Lever 4: Delivery and Support

This lever rarely looks like a retention tactic, but one bad delivery can undo months of email and loyalty work. Fix anything actively broken on day one, then run a structured review once you know where complaints cluster.

• Stock accuracy before peaks. A cancelled order after checkout is one of the quickest ways to lose a customer for good, so check inventory sync before every sale period.
• Tell customers about delays first. A delay message sent before the customer asks changes the whole tone of the conversation.
• Make returns and exchanges easy to start. A customer who swaps a size is still a customer; one who has to fight a returns process usually is not.
• Set a response time and keep it. A same day first response on support tickets, with a clear escalation route, protects the customers most likely to reorder.
• Time review requests to delivery. Asking for a review before the parcel arrives tells the customer your process comes first.

The 90 Day Retention Build

For a store starting with little retention infrastructure, this is the sequence we use. It runs for 13 weeks, just over 90 days.

1. Weeks 1 and 2: measure. Record your lifetime repeat rate, cohort retention, RFM groups, typical time to second order and the share of buyers subscribed to marketing. Fix anything actively broken in delivery now.
2. Weeks 3 and 4: post purchase flows. Launch the post purchase sequence and reorder reminder first, then the second order track and the win back flow.
3. Weeks 5 to 8: loyalty programme. Install the app, set thresholds from your actual average order value, and connect tier changes to email.
4. Weeks 9 and 10: subscribe and save. For consumable products, add a subscription option built to the January 2027 UK rules.
5. Weeks 11 to 13: delivery, support and review. Audit delay messages, returns and response times, fix the step causing the most friction, then compare your newest cohorts with the figures you recorded in week 1.

Email usually moves the numbers first, with loyalty and delivery fixes compounding over the following months. Judge progress by cohort rather than by a single monthly figure, because a store's lifetime repeat rate changes slowly even when newer cohorts are clearly improving.

Common Mistakes That Cap Repeat Purchase Rate

• Going quiet after the thank you email. Suppressing recent buyers for 30 to 60 days mutes you during the window when many second orders happen.
• Leading with cross sells for consumables. If most second orders repeat the first, the reorder is the recommendation.
• Copying loyalty thresholds from a template instead of setting them from your own average order value.
• Running loyalty and email as separate systems, so a customer reaches a new tier and never hears about it.
• Measuring retention monthly instead of by cohort, which hides exactly when customers drift away.
• Treating first time and repeat buyers the same in every flow and campaign.
• Launching subscriptions that are hard to cancel, which damages trust now and is exactly what the January 2027 rules target.

The Why Matters Perspective

Most stores we audit already have the tools for retention. What they lack is sequence and measurement: flows that fire on behaviour, loyalty thresholds that match real order values, and a cohort view that shows whether any of it worked.

Real result: one of our clients, a food subscription brand, raised its repeat purchase rate from 55% to 72% within 90 days by following this sequence.

As a Shopify Select partner, a Klaviyo Partner and a Recharge Partner, we build these systems across all three platforms. Retainer clients are not tied into long contracts, and our pricing is published on our website. Explore our Shopify packages or our Shopify subscriptions service if you want help finding where your store is losing customers.

FAQ

What is a good repeat customer rate for a Shopify store?

It depends mainly on what you sell. Across more than 250 Shopify brands, Appbrew found 12 month medians ranging from 40.5% for pet care and 22.7% for fashion down to 4.9% for mattresses. The widely quoted 28.2% average matches a study of just 65 stores. Compare yourself with stores selling similar products, then with your own cohorts.

How do I find my repeat customer rate in Shopify?

Go to Analytics, then Reports, and filter to the Customers category. Divide the number of customers in the Returning customers report by the combined total of the Returning customers and One-time customers reports. For retention over time, use the Customer cohort analysis report.

How long does it take to improve repeat purchase rate?

In our experience, post purchase email flows can show movement within the first month, loyalty programmes take one to three months, and a full retention system needs three to six months to shift customer lifetime value. Judge progress by cohort rather than by one monthly figure.

Can I email past customers without their consent in the UK?

Usually, under the soft opt in. The ICO allows you to email or text your own previous customers about similar products if you offered a simple opt out when you collected their details and in every message since. It does not cover prospects or bought in lists.

Does adding a subscription option increase repeat customers?

For consumable products, usually yes, because the next order becomes the default rather than a new decision. It is less effective for durable goods with long replacement cycles. In the UK, new subscription rules come into force in January 2027, so build clear information, reminders and easy cancellation in from the start.

Is Shopify Messaging enough, or do I need Klaviyo?

Shopify Messaging covers the essentials, including thank you, upsell, win back and VIP automations, but by default sends them only to marketing subscribers. Klaviyo adds deeper segmentation, SMS throughout your flows and predictive timing once you meet its data thresholds, starting with 500 customers who have ordered and 180 days of order history.

Final Thoughts

Repeat customers are not won by one clever email. They come from a system: measure by cohort, reach customers inside the window when they are most likely to reorder, make rewards reachable, turn consumables into subscriptions where it fits, and remove the delivery and support friction that quietly sends people elsewhere. Build it in that order over 90 days, then let the cohort report tell you what is working.

Related Articles

• How to Optimise Your Shopify Email Marketing
• Klaviyo Flows Every Shopify Subscription Brand Should Build
• Recharge vs Shopify Subscriptions: Which Is Right for Your Store?
• How to Add Subscriptions to Shopify
• The Biggest Shopify Subscription Mistakes Brands Make
• Shopify Subscription Metrics Every Merchant Should Track
• How to Increase Shopify Conversions: 10 Proven Strategies
• Your First 90 Days: A Marketing Plan for New Shopify Stores