How Repeat Customer Insights tracks your customer acquisition sources in Shopify

Repeat Customer Insights now tracks how a customer was acquired. This article will explain how it translates Shopify's data into a useful filter.

First order sources

Every order in Shopify includes the order's source. On some orders it's a name like pos or web but others it's just a number like 346542.

This data is what Shopify uses to track which channel or app created the order but there's not much more than that. No UTM codes, no campaign ids, or even referrer urls.

Simple, but very limited.

Behavior-wise, the first order for a customer defines much of their behavior. A customer from SEO will behave differently than an email subscriber will behave differently than one from a retargeting ad.

Repeat Customer Insights uses its order sequencing to figure out the first order's source and assigns that as the acquisition source.

For example, if your customer first ordered online (web) and then ordered in your store (pos) then their acquisition source would be web and they'd show up in reports about web.

Filterable Store and Latency Metrics

With the latest release of the app, you can now filter the Store Report and Customer Purchase Latency Report by the customer's acquisition source.

Depending on your account level, you might see a few common order sources or all of the identified orders source Repeat Customer Insights has found.

There's an additional "All" source so you can see all your overall metrics too.

Additional sources will be added over time

One problem with the order sources are those numbered ones.

They are the ID number for the app that created the order. There is no list of those IDs provided by Shopify so I have to do some sleuthing to find out which app they belong to.

If you'd like to help me, please email me at my support address and mention the app or sales channel you'd like to see added.

By tracking and analyzing the customer's acquisition source, Repeat Customer Insights can now help you find out where your better customers are coming from. Not just by order volume, but by their long-term purchasing behavior.

Eric Davis

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Topics: Customer acquisition Metrics Repeat customer insights

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