Repeat Purchase Rate: How to Get Holiday Buyers to Order Again in Q1

To increase repeat purchase rate, focus on the second order. In one analysis of 156,000+ DTC customers, the average repeat purchase rate was 18.8%, so about 4 in 5 buyers never ordered again. Work the levers in this order: product fit, post-purchase experience, replenishment timing, loyalty, subscriptions, then offers.

This is the pillar for our Q1 retention series. Each lever links to a deeper post. If you only have time for one, start with the replenishment email flow or, for gift-heavy stores, holiday gift buyer segmentation.

What is repeat purchase rate?

Repeat purchase rate is the share of customers who bought more than once in a set period. Klaviyo's formula: returning customers divided by total customers, times 100.

The period matters more than the formula. A 12-month rate on the same store will always be at least as high as a 90-day rate. Always state the window.

Two related numbers make it useful:

• Time to second order. The median days between first and second purchase. It tells you when to ask.
• Cohort repeat rate. The share of customers acquired in one month who ordered again within 30, 60 or 90 days.

The cohort view is the one to manage. A blended store-wide rate mixes loyal 5-year customers with people who bought yesterday. It moves slowly and hides problems.

For BFCM, the cohort is everyone whose first order landed between Thu Nov 26 and Wed Dec 2, 2026. Our post on how to retain Black Friday customers sets up that cohort and its 30, 60 and 90 day checkpoints.

How do you calculate repeat purchase rate in Shopify?

Shopify gives you 3 ways, all under Analytics, Reports. The Shopify customer reports help page lists them:

Watch the definition. A Shopify staff reply on the community forum says the returning customer rate is returning customers divided by returning plus first-time customers in the selected period. That is a period rate, not a cohort rate.

For BFCM buyers, use the cohort report. Find the row for November 2026. Read the retention columns for months 1, 2 and 3. Compare against your October 2026 row.

If you need exact days, export the Returning customers report. It includes first and most recent order dates. Subtract them in a sheet for customers with exactly 2 orders to get time to second order.

How do you calculate repeat purchase rate in Klaviyo?

Klaviyo has 2 routes, depending on your plan.

Cohort analysis. Klaviyo's cohort analysis report includes a post-purchase view showing how often customers make at least 1 follow-up purchase within a year of their first. You can filter by product or by discount code use. It is available on Klaviyo Personalization (formerly Marketing Analytics) and Advanced KDP.

Segments, on any plan. Build 2 segments:

1. Placed Order at least once, where the first order falls between Nov 26 and Dec 2, 2026.
2. The same group, plus Placed Order at least twice over all time.

Segment 2 divided by segment 1 is your BFCM cohort repeat rate. Check it on Mon Jan 4, Mon Feb 1 and Mon Mar 1, 2027.

Predictive analytics. Each eligible profile shows Average Time Between Orders, Churn Risk Prediction and an expected date of next order. Eligibility needs at least 500 customers with orders, 180 days of history, orders in the last 30 days, and some customers with 3+ orders. Smaller stores will see blank fields. Our Klaviyo segmentation guide covers the segment builder in more depth.

What is a good repeat purchase rate?

It depends on what you sell and how often people use it. Published numbers vary, so here is the range with sources named:

Two cautions. First, these use different windows and definitions, so they are not directly comparable. Second, your own October cohort is a better benchmark than any of them.

Klaviyo's BFCM 2025 data shows why the number matters right now. Repeat purchases rose nearly 14% year over year, against a 9% lift among new buyers. Average discounts fell from 29.6% to 26.2%. Growth came from customers who returned.

Which levers increase repeat purchase rate the most?

Here are the 6 levers, ranked by how much they usually move the second order and how fast you can ship them:

Offers sit last on purpose. They work, but they train buyers to wait, and they cost margin on orders that would have happened anyway.

1. Is the product the reason people do not come back?

Often, yes. No email sequence fixes a product that did not deliver. Check this before building flows.

Pull 3 numbers for the BFCM cohort: return rate, review score and the top 5 reasons in support tickets. If returns cluster on sizing or shade, fix the product page and offer exchanges first. Our guide to turning returns into exchanges covers Shopify settings for that.

Also check your entry product. Some products bring in buyers who never return. Compare repeat rate by first product purchased. Klaviyo's cohort report can filter by product. In Shopify, export orders and group by first SKU.

Service quality feeds this. A Genesys study cited by Shopify found 85% of consumers had spent less or stopped buying after poor service. Holiday ticket backlogs are a retention risk.

2. What should happen after the first order?

The first 30 days after delivery set up the second order. The buyer needs to use the product well, see a result and know what to buy next.

A post-purchase flow does that. Trigger on Placed Order. Send an order confirmation that sets expectations, a how-to-use email timed to delivery, and a check-in at day 14 with a cross-sell. Our Klaviyo post-purchase flow post has the full build.

Split gift buyers out of this flow. A person who shipped your candle to their sister does not need usage tips. They need a different message, and the recipient needs a path to become a customer. That is the whole of our gift buyer segmentation post.

Flows earn their place. In Klaviyo's 2026 benchmark of 183,000+ accounts, flows were about 5.3% of sends but nearly 41% of email revenue. Flow click rates averaged 5.58% against 1.69% for campaigns.

3. When should you remind people to reorder?

Just before they run out. Klaviyo's help center gives the rule: for a 30-day supply, send the first reminder about 25 days after purchase, then a second 3 days later.

This is the lowest-effort lever for consumables. It needs a days-of-supply number per product, a Placed Order trigger filtered by product, and a filter that stops the flow once the customer reorders.

Klaviyo's predictive expected date of next order helps when usage varies. Klaviyo itself warns against counting down to it for repeat buyers, because they would get the same sequence before every order. Use it mainly for one-time buyers.

The full setup, including days-of-supply math and subject lines, is in our replenishment email flow guide.

4. Does a loyalty program increase repeat purchases?

It can, if customers buy often enough to earn something. A Deloitte survey cited by Shopify found 72% of consumers said loyalty programs make them more likely to spend with a brand, and 56% said they spend more because of one.

Survey intent is not behavior, though. Run the math on your own data. If your median customer orders twice a year, a points program that pays out at 500 points may never pay out.

For Q1, use loyalty as a non-discount reason to return. Credit BFCM buyers with points on their first order. Email the balance in January with what it buys. Points are a cost you can cap, unlike a sitewide 20% off.

Our D2C loyalty program guide covers program types and when they are not worth running.

5. Should you push subscriptions instead of reminders?

Push subscriptions when the product is used on a fixed cycle and the buyer wants the same item each time. Coffee, supplements, pet food and razors fit. Skincare with 4 steps and seasonal shades fits less well.

Subscribers stay. Recharge's 2023 report on 15,000+ merchants found subscribers averaged 45% retention after 6 months and 33% after 12 months. Recurly's 2026 data, cited by Shopify, puts ecommerce subscription churn at 4.25%, with 1.38% of that involuntary.

That involuntary share is failed payments. Card updater tools and dunning emails fix much of it. Our subscription churn guide covers both.

The practical Q1 move: offer subscribe and save inside the second replenishment reminder, not the first. Let the buyer reorder once on their own terms first.

6. When do offers make sense?

Use offers for a specific job with a specific end date. Avoid the default "15% off your next order" in every email.

Here is the math on a fictional $3M supplement brand. AOV is $60 and gross margin is 65%, so each order earns $39 before marketing.

A 20% code costs 3 times the free sample. It also applies to buyers who would have reordered anyway. If you run a code, hold it back for the last reminder to people who have not reordered. Our January sale strategy post works through when a Q1 sale is worth it and what to run instead.

When is repeat purchase rate the wrong goal?

Some products are bought once a decade. A mattress brand with a 4% repeat rate is not failing. Chasing reorders there wastes effort.

For low-repeat products, shift the goal:

• Referrals. Ask happy buyers to send a friend a code.
• Accessories. Sheets and pillows after the mattress, cases after the phone stand.
• Reviews and UGC. These lower future acquisition cost.

List size also matters. A store with 800 BFCM buyers can run one post-purchase flow and one replenishment flow. It does not need predictive segments, a loyalty app and 6 Q1 campaigns. Do the 2 flows well, in-house, in Klaviyo's templates.

And if your margins cannot fund a second order at all, fix pricing and AOV before retention. Our D2C customer lifetime value guide shows how to check that.

What should a Q1 plan for holiday cohorts look like?

The goal: get BFCM and December first-time buyers to a second order by Mar 31, 2027, mostly at full price. Here is a week-by-week outline:

Three things make this work.

First, list health in January. BFCM adds unengaged signups. Mailing them in January hurts inbox placement for everyone else. Our list cleaning guide and deliverability checklist cover it.

Second, paid and email must agree. If a BFCM buyer gets a prospecting ad at 30% off while your email offers points, you lose margin. Exclude recent buyers from prospecting and use Meta retargeting only for non-repeaters.

Third, use one offer deadline. One clear offer with an end date in mid-March beats a running discount.

How do you know if your Q1 plan worked?

Compare the BFCM cohort to last year's BFCM cohort and to October 2026 first-time buyers. Track 4 numbers at 90 days:

1. Cohort repeat rate.
2. Median days to second order.
3. Share of second orders placed with a discount code.
4. Gross profit per customer after incentive costs.

A higher repeat rate with 80% of second orders on a code is a weaker result than a smaller lift at full price. Klaviyo's cohort report can filter by discount code. In Shopify, export orders and check the discount column.

Then write down what you would change for BFCM 2027. Which entry products brought repeat buyers? Did bundles beat single items? Did gift recipients convert? That list shapes next year's offer.

For context, email drives 35 to 40% of revenue for our top clients, and we work with 100+ D2C brands. If you want a second pair of eyes on your cohort data before January, book a call.