Using your customer behavior to improve unpaid traffic channels

Recently a Repeat Customer Insights customer was asking about which reports help with unpaid traffic:

We heard of Repeat Customer Insights from our web dev team, who has another client who has worked with you previously. They use these lists primarily for paid advertising, creating lookalike audiences, etc. That's all great but not quite where we're focusing at the moment so wondering if you have any recommendations for actionable reports we can utilize for unpaid purposes?

Let me see if I can give you a few ideas. Which reports you use will depend on which marketing strategies and channels you're using.

Customer segmenting campaigns like email and direct mail are about as popular as ad audiences among my Shopify customers. Quite a few customers use the segments for creating targeted email campaigns and there are a few others using direct mail now too.

New customer welcome campaigns and win-back campaigns are also really effective with the segmenting and don't require ads.

The Customer Purchase Latency report can help dial in the timing of any campaign and can also help figure out your approach to discounting (e.g. hold off a discount if a customer is still likely to purchase soon).

The Cohort reports can help you spot seasonal cycles and larger patterns (e.g. multiple-years, gift-buyers). These can be tied in with discounting plans, seasonal launch calendars, or anything else that you have to slot into a larger annual calendar.

The First Product Analysis can help see which products and variants are creating the most valuable customers in both total spend and how often they buy again. Those are ones to focus on with any marketing you do (i.e. promote your winners, not your whiners).

You might also find my knowledge base useful. I group articles into the different topics, one per report plus the Strategy group that looks at more business-level advice or uses multiple reports.

Eric Davis