Repeat purchase email strategy: how to make the second order automatic

This guide is for founders of food, beverage, supplement, skincare and wellness brands doing $500K to $20M a year who are paying for first orders and not getting enough second ones.

Why is the second order the one that matters?

You pay to get the first order. Ads, influencers, discounts, samples, whatever it took. The second order is where that spend starts to pay you back.

And for a consumable product, the second order is the easiest sale you'll ever make. The customer has tried it. If they liked it, they're going to need more. Your job is to be there at the right moment with the easiest possible way to buy.

The other reason is control. Ads are rented, your list is owned. A subscription wellness brand had a month where store revenue fell 37% and new customers dropped from 1,657 to 223. Email's share of revenue went from 41% to 53% that month. When the paid side dried up, the people already on the list kept buying.

Across the brands I work with, about 32% of total revenue comes from email on average. That's revenue you don't have to rent.

What does a repeat purchase email strategy include?

Six parts. Each one catches the customer at a different moment between order one and order three.

1. Post-purchase flow. The days right after the first order. Thank them, help them use it, set up the reorder.
2. Reorder reminder (replenishment) flow. Right before they run out.
3. Back-in-stock emails. When something they wanted is available again.
4. Subscription reminders. Before each charge, for customers on a subscription.
5. Winback flow. When a customer has gone quiet past the point they should have reordered.
6. Campaigns to customers. Sends built for people who've already bought, separate from what you send to people who haven't.

In my Flow System, every flow is split into separate paths for customers and for people who haven't bought yet. That split is the backbone of a repeat purchase strategy. A customer and a browser need different emails, even inside the same flow.

Let's go through each part.

1. Post-purchase: set up the reorder before they need it

The post-purchase flow covers the stretch between "order placed" and "running low." It has three jobs: make them feel good about buying, help them get results from the product, and plant the idea of the next order.

First-time buyers need more help here than repeat customers. They don't know how to use it yet, what to expect, or how long it lasts. Repeat customers already know, so their path can be shorter and point them toward other products or a subscription.

The post-purchase flow was one of the flows rebuilt for the skincare brand I mentioned above. I break down what to send, email by email, in my guide to the post purchase email flow.

2. Reorder reminder: the highest-earning email you're probably missing

If your product runs out, build the reorder flow before anything else. This is the one I feel strongest about.

Across four consumable brands in my pooled data, replenishment flows earned about $2.23 per person. That's about 28x the best campaign in the same sample. Only two of the four brands had one built.

A skincare brand's reorder reminder flow grew 496% in one month as new customers hit their reorder window. That's the nature of this flow. It collects on every customer you've already won, right when they're running low.

The setup is simple: trigger on the order, filter to the product, wait until they're close to running out, then send a reminder with one button to buy again. The hard part is timing. Too early gets ignored, too late and they've bought elsewhere.

I cover the build in how to set up a Klaviyo replenishment flow and the timing in replenishment email timing.

3. Back in stock: your biggest send of the month

When something sells out, the restock email is your biggest send of the month. Treat it that way.

A snack brand doing about $650K a month sent a restock email with the subject line "We're back baby!" It made $48,771 from 30,498 people, the brand's best campaign ever. Six different restock emails from that brand each made more than $16,000. Its back-in-stock emails earn about 1.7x the brand's average per person, $0.26 vs $0.15.

People who wanted the product and couldn't get it are about as warm as an audience gets. If it's something people use up, some of them are past customers who ran out while it was gone.

One warning. A fitness gear brand sent a restock email that got a 0.40% click rate, double its other sends, and made $0. Across the portfolio, about 20 sends showed opens and revenue but zero clicks, which meant tracking was broken. Click every link before you hit send. Clicks with no sales means something broke.

More on this in my post on Klaviyo back in stock emails.

4. Subscription reminders: the email subscribers actually want

If you sell subscriptions, the reminder before each charge is the most important email in the whole program.

A subscription wellness brand's "your order is coming up" reminder made $47,321 in one month. That was 74% of all its flow revenue.

That email does two things. It heads off the surprise charge that makes people cancel. And it gives them a reason to touch their subscription: add something, swap a flavor, skip if they're stocked up. Give people the option to skip or swap before you give them the option to cancel.

Active subscribers should also stay out of your replenishment flow. They already have an order coming. I walk through pre-charge reminders, skip and swap, and cancellation emails in my post on subscription churn emails.

5. Winback: keep going past email one

A winback flow goes to customers who should have reordered by now and didn't. Most brands send one or two emails and stop. That's a mistake.

In my pooled data across four consumable brands, winback email #3 earns about 2x what email #1 does, $0.23 vs $0.11 per person. The later emails do more of the work, not less.

My rule is to keep welcome flows short and keep cart and winback flows long. A lapsed customer needs more than one nudge, and each email can try a different reason to come back: what's new, what they're missing, and eventually an offer.

I get into how many emails and how to space them in how long should a winback flow be.

6. Campaigns to customers: segment, and always ask for the sale

Flows catch people at specific moments. Campaigns fill the space between them. For repeat purchase, the key is sending customers something different from what you send people who haven't bought.

Three things I'd get right:

• Segment instead of blasting. A fitness tech brand sent to an engaged segment of 7,145 people and earned $0.19 per person. A full-list blast to 49,475 earned $0.04. Smaller, warmer lists make more per send.
• Pair content with a reason to buy. Content warms people up, but somebody has to ask for the sale. A wellness brand ran a month of all-educational sends with no offer, and campaign revenue went from $3,146 to $110, down 96.5%.
• Give customers news. New products are the best excuse to email a past customer. A haircare brand's new product launch email made $31,059 from 395 orders, and email went from 23% to 47% of total revenue that month.

Sending more is less scary than it sounds. In my pooled data, 3 of the 4 brands saw no rise in unsubscribes when they sent more.

What happened when a skincare brand rebuilt this system?

This is the clearest example I have of what a repeat purchase system looks like when it's working.

The skincare brand rebuilt its flows: welcome, post-purchase, reorder reminder, browse, window shopper and winback. Here's what the numbers looked like:

Inside that, the reorder reminder flow grew 496% in one month as new customers hit their reorder window.

The flow share is the part I'd pay attention to. Going from 60% to 83% means most email revenue now comes from automation that runs every day, whether or not anyone sends a campaign that week.

Where should you start?

If you're building this yourself, don't try to launch all six at once and do them badly. Here's the order I'd go in for a consumable brand:

1. Reorder reminder. If your product runs out, this is first.
2. Subscription reminders, if you sell subscriptions. For the subscription wellness brand above, it was 74% of flow revenue.
3. Post-purchase. So first-time buyers get to the reorder window happy.
4. Winback. For everyone who slips past it.
5. Back in stock. Set it up before your next sellout, not during.
6. Customer campaigns. Once the flows are running, build a calendar around your segments.

For context, when I take on a brand, the full flow system is installed and live in the first 7 days, then personalized once early data comes in. That's with a system I've already built 60+ emails for. Doing it from scratch takes longer, which is why the order matters.

If you're not sure what's already in your account and working, start with a Klaviyo audit checklist.

How do you measure a repeat purchase email strategy?

Look at a few numbers every month:

• Revenue per person on each flow. This tells you which flows pull their weight. Compare your reorder flow against your campaigns.
• Flows as a share of email revenue. If it's low, your automation is missing pieces.
• Email as a share of total revenue. Across my portfolio, the average is about 32%. Yours will depend on category and how much you spend on ads.
• Clicks, not opens. In my pooled data, click rate tracked revenue at 0.65 and open rate at 0.32. Apple Mail auto-opens pushed open rates past 85% on some segments, and for one brand, open rate actually tracked revenue negatively.

Give a rebuild time. I work in 90-day blocks. A lot of brands notice a lift in the first 30 days, and most see it within 90. I won't promise a number, and you should be wary of anyone who does.

Where these numbers come from

The $2.23, 28x, winback, unsubscribe and click-versus-open figures come from pooled data across 4 consumable brands: 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. It's a small sample, so treat it as directional. The other figures each come from a single brand, and the 32% is the average shown across the brands I work with.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.

Instagram @jackintheinbox LinkedIn