Half your customers buy once

Your best customers don't spend much more each visit. They come back more often.

A large retailer wanted to know where its next growth would come from. I led the work inside the business. We started with its own customer data, before looking at the market.

What we did

We split a year of active customers into groups by how they actually bought, not by age or postcode.

Loyal: three or more purchases in the year, above a minimum spend.
One-time: a single purchase in the year, whatever the amount.
The rest: everyone in between.

What it showed

Group	Share of customers	Share of sales	Came back next year
Loyal	26%	54%	70%
One-time	51%	22%	32%

Half the customers bought once. Nearly a third of all baskets held a single item. People were coming in with one job to do, doing it and leaving.

The gap between the two groups was how often they came. Loyal customers bought five or more times a year, and their baskets were only slightly bigger.

The customers who bought across the range

The two biggest product categories barely shared customers: only 15% bought from both. Those customers spent about three times as much as everyone else, mostly because they came back more often.

Nearly half of all customers bought from one category only.

A caution we wrote down at the time

The customers were counted from payment cards, and some people carry more than one. The numbers were not exact. The behaviour they showed was real.

Outside research said the same

Research into the wider market followed. Its largest opportunity was the one our own numbers had already pointed to: getting existing customers to buy across more of the range.

Where the growth could come from

More visits from the customers you have.
A bigger basket each visit.
Moving one-time buyers up, and keeping loyal ones from drifting away.
Winning back the customers who stopped.
New customers who have never bought.

What changed

It changed the focus in marketing. We chased three things: frequency, acquisition and product overlap.

Questions to ask of your own customers

What share of last year's customers bought once?
What share of your sales comes from customers who bought three times or more?
Do your best customers spend more each visit, or visit more often?
How many customers buy from more than one part of your range?
Of last year's customers, how many came back this year?

The customers page has more questions like these, and there is a companion piece on what it costs to win a customer.

The free 45-minute chat ends with a one-page readback of where I think the money is most likely being lost in your business. Ask for it here.

Half your customers buy once: where growth really comes from.