The thirty day drift: catching regulars before they're gone
Win-back campaigns usually fire at sixty or ninety days of silence, long after the habit has broken. The better moment is when a regular's own rhythm first slips.
Most shops have a win-back campaign. It usually works like this. If a customer has not ordered in sixty days, or ninety, they get an email with a discount and a line about missing them.
The trouble is the clock. Sixty days is a fixed number set by the shop, and it means very different things for different customers.
Everyone has their own rhythm
Some customers order every week. If one of them goes three weeks without ordering, something has already changed. By sixty days they have probably found another place, or moved, or changed their habits completely.
Other customers order every couple of months. Sixty days of silence from them is perfectly normal. Sending them a "we miss you" message is a little odd, and giving them a discount just gives away margin on an order they were about to place.
A fixed clock is too late for the first group and too early for the second.
Use each customer's own gap
The better approach is to work out each customer's normal gap between orders, then notice when that gap starts to stretch. If someone usually orders every ten days and it has been twenty five, they are drifting. If someone usually orders every fifty days and it has been fifty five, they are on schedule.
You do not need anything sophisticated to do this. For each customer with a few orders, take the typical time between their orders. Flag anyone whose current gap is well past their usual, perhaps one and a half or two times as long.
Be careful with the seasons
Ordering patterns move with the calendar. Summer holidays, the weeks after Christmas, the start of the school year. A family who orders less in July is not necessarily drifting away. If you can, compare against the same time last year or against your customers as a whole, so a quiet month for everybody does not flag half your list.
What to say to someone who is drifting
A drifting regular does not need a big discount yet. They need a reason to remember you. A short note from the shop, their usual order ready to repeat, maybe a small offer with a near expiry. The earlier you catch them, the less you need to give away.
Keep the heavier discounts for later, if the gap keeps growing. And always hold back a small random group so you know whether the messages are actually bringing people back, or whether they would have come back anyway.
