Wait until the first product has been used, not before. Your orders show the right timing, product family by product family: look at how many days pass between the first and second order for customers who came back, and write to them a little before that date.
The benchmark
The number to pull is the median gap between the first and second order, calculated for each product family. A face cream gets repurchased within a few weeks, a coat more like a year later, and an average across the whole catalog blends the two rhythms.
Use the median, not the average. At a fashion brand the authors work with, which has a few tens of thousands of customers, the median is 139 days while the average tops 280, pulled up by people who return after two or three years.
A follow-up timed to the average would land after far more than half of returning customers have already reordered.
Check what your email tool calculates, too. The next order date that Klaviyo predicts for each profile ignores which products were purchased, and its documentation itself recommends building one flow per repurchase cycle when your products don't share the same rhythm.
The rule
The first message after delivery helps people use the product and sells nothing. The offer comes later, a little before the median for the product family purchased, and it builds on what the person already has at home: the logical add-on, the refill, the new color of the style they wear.
The steps
- The median by family. Shopify's customer cohort analysis report, in the Customers category of reports, groups customers by first order date and lets you filter the cohort by product name. Failing that, an export of orders with the product and customer ID is enough.
- The usage message, sent a few days after delivery, with care instructions and answers to the first questions.
- The review request, once the product has been tried.
- The offer, sent just before the median for the product family purchased, with a separate flow for each family.
- Tracking the share of new customers who reorder at 30, 60 and 90 days, cohort by cohort: the curve you're trying to push up.
A line to say to your leadership, in your own words:
"We no longer follow up on a fixed date. Each product family has its own repurchase gap, and our messages go out just before it."
The trap
The trap is the discount on the second order, which we have recommended ourselves: Conversion Club's post-purchase guide suggests testing a dated code, valid for 30 days, on the confirmation page. Orders from the same fashion brand show who benefits from it.
A quarter of second orders arrive within 30 days, even though the brand has no repurchase flow yet. In our reading, a code valid for a month mostly goes to customers who would have come back without it, and teaches them along the way that full price is for beginners.
In the plan the authors are building with the brand's team, the first reorder email goes out on day 100, after this spontaneous wave, and incentives wait for the later messages.
The rest of the second purchase is decided by the first delivery itself: whether the delivery date was met, the condition of the package, the fit. Someone disappointed by that first package won't open the follow-up.
