• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 19, 2022

Email teams should make sure they don’t misread buying signals from seemingly lapsed customers.

At-risk and lost buyers are almost as likely to buy as active purchasers, according to new results from Bluecore’s 2022 Retail Ecommerce Benchmark study.   

The conversion rate for an at-risk buyer is 0.12%, versus 0.11% for active purchasers. The click rate for those at-risk customers is 1.96%, compared to 2.06% for active shoppers.   

Of course, new arrivals produce a 4.28% click rate and post-purchase buyers come in at 4.04%. Wish-list buyers click at a 7.75% rate.  

Moreover, at-risk and lost customers are not far behind active customers when it comes to engagement. 

In fact, the non-buyers actually have a higher click rate in the sporting goods category — 9.91% versus 7.66% for active purchasers. This indicates that non-buyers are browsing, and should be nudged along.  

The click rates in the jewelry & luxury vertical total 12.86% for active buyers, 10.12% for at-risk buyers and 8.59% for lost customers, while non-buyers have a 7.92% rate.  

Another finding is that the more a shopper purchases, the more likely they are to buy again. This is a bit of direct-marketing wisdom validated by digital results.  

Overall, 50.47% of customers are likely to buy after the fourth purchase and 46.31% are likely to purchase again after the second. In contrast, only 15.17% will do so after the first purchase. 

The consumer electronics presents the most dramatic proof  —68.01% of customers bought after the 6th purchase, compared with 14.69% after the first. 

But don’t think active shoppers should be ignored: While they comprise only 30.88% of shoppers In the $0-%$99 average order range, they generate 53.27% of the revenue. 

And in the $100-$249 order value range, they pull 54.08% of the revenue while making up 30.18% of total customers. 

All that said, the majority of shoppers are first-time buyers, and that’s true across every vertical: In the home category, they make up 68.60% of the total, and in consumer electronics 61.93%. 

Yet while active buyers are a smaller subset of a brand’s total shopper base, they account for a greater share of the revenue.  

Active buyers contribute 62.72% of revenue in the Health & Beauty vertical, while constituting 32.16% of the base. Similarly, active purchasers produce 54.16% of apparel revenue, while comprising only 32.16% of the total.  

In two sectors, non-buyers actually drive more revenue than shoppers in any other lifecycle category: Sporting Goods & Outdoor (49.50%) and  Floral (72.95%).

Bluecore analyzed data from more than 35.5 billion campaigns across email and ecommerce sites by a subset of the firm’s ecommerce customers from January 2021 through December 2021.