How to use Klaviyo to segment New and Repeat Customers
Klaviyo is so much more than an email marketing platform. With its incredible segmentation, it can be used as a defacto CRM or business intelligence tool.
A great place to start is by segmenting the number of Unique Customers for a given period (eg. week, month, quarter). This is one of the three most important metrics of ecommerce. The other two being Frequency and Average Order Value (more on this later).
Once you have synced your ecommerce platform to Klaviyo, you can begin segmenting your audience based on purchasing behaviour.
A simple segment definition of ‘Placed Order at least once between dates‘ will give you a count for the number of unique customers for that given period. Just be aware that the date fields can be a little glitchy.
But you can also take this one step further, to find the number of New customers and the number of Repeat customers.
To find the number of New customers within a given period, start by cloning the segment above. Then you need to define two conditions: Placed Order zero times before [start date] AND Placed Order at least once between dates [start and end].
To find the number of Repeat customers within a given period, again start by cloning the segment above. Then change their first condition from zero times before [start date] to at least once [before start date].
Now use the data to look for trends
Repeat the above steps for each given period (week, month, whatever). Then use Google Sheets or Excel to create a visual representation of trends. This can provide a great insight to the health of an ecommerce store.
A further step is to use Google Sheets or Excel to translate the absolute numbers into a percentage breakdown of New vs Repeat customers.
Generally speaking, the Pareto rule usually applies here. Typically, most ecommerce stores are made up of around 70-80% New and 20-30% Repeat customers.
However, this will vary depending on a few factors:
- the age of the ecommerce store
- the nature of the products being sold
- whether or not there is a customer acquisition campaign underway
If the site is very new, or if the products have a very long shelf life, you might expect a higher percentage of New customers.
However, if the site has been operating for more than a year, or is selling a wide range of complimentary products, or replenish-able products and Repeat customers still amount to less than 10%, this could point to a retention issue.
Give it a try for yourself and share your experience in the comments section below.
