Lapsed Buyers

Here's a case where I can measure repurchase rates by year of recency - going back a whopping twenty-two years.

Tell me what you observe?

Say you are told that there is a "pot of gold" in your lapsed buyer audience. So you go apply some "vendor magic" to customers who last purchased 9 years ago, and the "magic" works 5% better.

• 1,945 * 0.05 = 97 additional buyers.

A pot of gold worth 97 buyers.

This company acquires 230,937 new customers per year.

Now obviously it can be helpful to increase the number of 13-24 month buyers by 5% (34,292 * 0.05 = 1,715 buyers). But still ... it's 1,715 buyers. It's nothing.

Think about how much time you spend trying to "tickle the buying bone" of your lapsed buyer file.

Think about how much time you spend trying to acquire new customers.

Focus on the latter.