Last Updated: February 2026

Customer Retention Strategies: How to Audit What's Broken and Fix It

Most ecommerce brands know retention matters. Few have customer retention strategies grounded in actual data.

We've analyzed purchase data from 160K+ DTC customers across 16 brands. The average repeat purchase rate is 30.7% — but the range runs from 12% to 58%. That's not a small gap. The brands at 58% aren't selling better products. They have better infrastructure: the flows, segments, and timing that turn first-time buyers into repeat customers.

This is the customer retention strategies framework we use in every client engagement to assess retention health, diagnose what's broken, and prioritize fixes.

The Three Numbers That Tell You Where You Stand

Before you fix anything, you need to know where you are. These three metrics tell you most of what you need to know about your retention health.

Repeat Purchase Rate

What percentage of customers buy more than once. Our benchmark data across 156K DTC customers:

• Average: 30.7%
• Range: 12% to 58%
• Fashion/apparel: ~25%
• Consumables/food: ~40%+

If you're below 20%, you likely have a structural problem — not a product problem. Something in your post-purchase experience is broken or missing. If you're between 20-35%, you're in the normal range but there's significant upside. Most of the improvement comes from the first 30 days after purchase. If you're above 40%, your fundamentals are working and the focus shifts to increasing purchase frequency and AOV among repeat buyers.

Use our churn calculator to model the revenue impact of improving your repeat rate.

Time to Second Purchase

How long it takes a first-time buyer to come back. This is where the data gets interesting.

From our survival curve analysis of 78K first-time buyers:

• 8.8% repurchase within 30 days
• That 30-day window accounts for 67% of all 90-day retention

Read that again. Two-thirds of the customers who will come back within 90 days do so in the first 30 days. After day 30, the probability of return drops dramatically.

This has massive implications for your flow architecture. Your post-purchase flow, your second-purchase nudge, your replenishment timing — they all need to be calibrated to this window, not to arbitrary round numbers.

Email-Attributed Revenue Share

What percentage of total revenue flows through email. Our attribution data across $35M in ecommerce sales:

• Average: 33% of revenue attributed to email
• Range: 15% to 50%+
• Healthy accounts see roughly 40-60% of email revenue from flows

If you're below 20%, your email program isn't pulling its weight. Either you're under-sending, your flows are missing or broken, or your attribution is misconfigured. If you're at 30-40%, you're in a healthy range and optimization matters more than rebuilding.

What We Find In Almost Every Account

We've audited dozens of Klaviyo accounts. The same problems show up over and over.

Broken Flow Filters

This is the most common issue, and it's invisible. Flows look like they're running, but the filter logic is wrong.

The most frequent mistake: using OR logic for exclusions instead of AND. "Has not started checkout OR has not placed order" sounds right. It's not. With OR, someone who placed an order but didn't start checkout still passes through. The correct logic is AND — they must meet all exclusion conditions.

We find this in roughly half the accounts we audit. The flow has been running for months, generating revenue reports that look fine, while quietly sending the wrong messages to the wrong people.

Missing Abandoned Cart Flow

Almost everyone has an abandoned checkout flow. Very few have a separate abandoned cart flow. These are different events in Klaviyo — "Started Checkout" vs. "Added to Cart." A customer who adds to cart but never reaches checkout is higher in the funnel and needs different messaging and timing.

If you only have the checkout flow, you're missing everyone who drops off between cart and checkout. That's a significant chunk of recoverable revenue. See our abandoned cart flow guide for the full setup.

Weak or Missing Post-Purchase Flow

This one hurts the most because of the 30-day window. Most accounts either have no post-purchase flow or a single "thanks for your order" email that does nothing.

A real post-purchase flow should:

• Collect first-party data via a post-purchase survey — differentiated for first-time vs. repeat buyers
• Bridge to the second purchase with product education, usage tips, and cross-sells
• Request reviews, timed for after the product has been received and used
• Hit multiple touchpoints across the first 30 days — not just one email and done

No First-Party Data Collection

No post-purchase surveys. No quiz data synced to profiles. No welcome flow branching based on customer intent. The account has tens of thousands of profiles and knows almost nothing about them beyond purchase history.

This limits everything downstream — your segmentation, your personalization, your flow branching. You can't build a differentiated post-purchase experience if you don't know anything about the customer.

"60-Day Engaged" as the Primary Segment

This is probably the most common and most frustrating problem we see. The brand sends almost all campaigns to a "60-day engaged" segment — anyone who opened or clicked in the last 60 days.

This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: people fall out of the engaged segment, stop receiving emails, and never re-engage because they're not getting emails. Meanwhile, the brand pays for thousands of profiles that never receive a single message.

Engagement-based segmentation optimizes for open rates. Purchase-behavior segmentation optimizes for revenue. These are not the same thing.

Under-Sending

Brands are afraid of sending too many emails. So they send two campaigns a month to their engaged segment and wonder why email revenue is flat.

Our data from 79M emails across 16 brands shows that revenue correlates with volume — up to a point. Most brands are nowhere near that point. Revenue per email decreases as volume increases, but total revenue keeps climbing. They're under-sending, not over-sending.

Recognize these problems? We fix them for DTC brands every week. Get a free retention audit to see exactly where your account stands.

The Five Levers That Actually Move Retention

The customer retention strategies below are email-specific, because that's what we do. There are other retention levers — product quality, customer service, loyalty programs — but these are the ones you can fix in Klaviyo this week.

1. Post-Purchase Flow — Own the 30-Day Window

67% of 90-day retention happens in the first 30 days. This is your post-purchase flow's job.

• Days 1-3: Order confirmation, set expectations (shipping time, what to expect)
• Days 3-5: Post-purchase survey while the buying decision is fresh
• Days 7-10: Product education, usage content, "here's how to get the most out of this"
• Days 14-21: Cross-sell based on actual purchase data, not random recommendations
• Days 21-28: Second-purchase nudge, social proof, review request

Split this flow for first-time vs. repeat buyers. First-timers need trust-building and education. Repeat buyers need recognition and relevant cross-sells. If you're sending the same post-purchase emails to both, you're leaving money on the table.

2. Welcome-to-Second-Purchase Bridge

Your welcome flow shouldn't just deliver a discount code and disappear. It should be the beginning of a journey that leads to the first purchase — and then hands off to the post-purchase flow to drive the second.

The handoff matters. If someone uses their welcome discount and there's no post-purchase flow to catch them, you've spent money acquiring them and then gone silent during the most critical retention window. Our time-to-first-purchase data shows that 66% of subscribers have already purchased before the welcome flow even sends — which means the post-purchase side is even more urgent than most brands realize.

3. Winback Timing — Based on Data, Not Guesses

Most winback flows trigger at 90 days or 60 days because someone picked a round number. Your winback timing should be based on your actual repurchase data.

If your median time between purchases is 45 days, a 90-day winback means you've already lost most of the recoverable customers. Your winback should trigger around 1.5x your median repurchase window — so around day 67 in this example. See our winback flow guide for the full setup with data-driven timing.

4. Purchase-Behavior Segmentation

Stop segmenting by engagement. Segment by purchase behavior:

• Customers vs. non-customers — fundamentally different messaging
• One-time vs. repeat buyers — different intent, different offers
• Active vs. lapsing vs. lapsed — based on your actual repurchase data, not arbitrary windows
• High-value vs. standard — by LTV, not just last order value

Each of these groups needs different messaging, different offers, and different frequency. A one-time buyer who purchased 4 months ago needs a winback. A 5x buyer who purchased last week does not need a discount. Build your segments around purchase behavior and the rest of your email program gets smarter automatically.

Our Audience Builder can help you create these segments in Klaviyo.

5. Campaign Frequency

Send more email. Most brands we work with are under-sending. They send 2-4 campaigns a month to a narrow engaged segment and leave money on the table.

The key is segmenting properly so you're sending the right content to the right groups. A buyer who purchased 3 times in the last 6 months can handle 3-4 emails a week. A prospect who signed up 2 months ago and never bought needs a different cadence and different content.

Our data across 79M emails shows revenue per email decreases as volume increases — but total revenue keeps climbing. Send until the marginal cost (unsubscribes, deliverability risk) outweighs the marginal revenue. Most brands are nowhere near that point.

Where to Start

If you just read this and recognized half these problems in your own account, here's the priority order:

1. Fix what's broken. Audit your flow filters for AND/OR logic errors. Check that all active flows are actually triggering correctly. This is free money — you're already paying for these flows, they're just not working right.
2. Build what's missing. If you don't have an abandoned cart flow (separate from checkout), build it. If your post-purchase flow is a single email, expand it. If you have no winback flow, create one.
3. Fix your segmentation. Move from engagement-based to purchase-behavior-based segments. This changes everything downstream — your campaign targeting, your flow filtering, your reporting.
4. Increase send frequency. Once your segmentation is right, start sending more. Test expanding beyond your engaged segment. Watch revenue, not just open rates.
5. Add data collection. Post-purchase surveys, welcome flow branching, quiz data. This is the foundation for everything in steps 1-4 to work better over time.

For the operational checklist — the exact items to review in each section of your Klaviyo account — see our quarterly email audit framework. And for a visual map of every flow type and how they connect, see the complete guide to Klaviyo flows.