New Customers ... Here We Go!!!

Between now and the Supply Chain Apocalypse of 2022 (read this tread on Twitter), studying new customers and studying the impact of first purchase attributes on future spending activity will be important. Some of your customers will tolerate the issues. Some of your customers will not be customers as a consequence. Building an entire business based on what happens in China could become a dicey proposition ... a fatal proposition for some.

But that's a problem for 2022. Until then cross your fingers and hope that toilet paper is available.

As you already know, most e-commerce brands thrived during the COVID-bump of 2020. Because annual repurchase rates are generally low for e-commerce brands, sales growth is highly dependent upon new+reactivated buyers. With a veritable plethora of new+reactivated buyers in 2020, life was comparatively good (commerce life, that is).

Those days are gone now.

Trends in customer acquisition are trending back toward 2019 levels for so many of you. This means that customer acquisition is no longer easy, it's hard, and you (that's you ... the reader) play a disproportionate role in how loyal your customers will be in the future based on the criteria customers possess during a first order.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we're going to talk about how much influence you have on future sales/profit based on the "type" of customer you acquire. This work was inspired by a random user on Twitter who was furious that a fusion of Apple/Facebook were "killing businesses". Wrong. The owners of the businesses made the mistake of trusting Apple/Facebook, and are now getting what they deserve.

What a first-time buyer purchases dictates future loyalty.

When a first-time buyer purchases dictates future loyalty.

Quantity of items purchased by a first-time buyer dictates loyalty.

Price points purchased from dictate loyalty.

Marketing channel purchased from dictates future loyalty.

New vs. Existing items dictate future loyalty.

Items selling above/below their historical average dictate future loyalty.

Cancelled items in a first order dictate future loyalty.

Returned items in a first order dictate future loyalty.

Winning items in a first order dictate future loyalty.

We'll talk about all of that and more, starting tomorrow.

P.S.: Lots of unsubs in the past few days, and they're coming from old-school companies, old-school vendors, and old-school conference organizers. This means we are on to something. Same thing happened in 2013-2014 when we started talking about the importance of merchandise ... it chased away the establishment. You are the anti-establishment. Thanks for coming along on this journey!!