Jimmy Kim argues repeat purchase rate—the share of customers who buy twice—is the only retention metric that matters. The second purchase drives most profit, and without tracking it, marketers become message deliverers instead of business contributors. He urges putting repeat purchase rate on every retention scorecard.
The reality of what a repeat purchase rate is, if you don't, as an email marketer or a retention marketer or whatever role you have that is working within the email side of it, if you're not really focused on this data point, the retention repeat purchase rate, this should be brought up to the top. The main reason why acquisition is happening is to drive repeat purchase rate. You know, when I ran a brand, what was really always interesting about the metrics that people didn't understand, and I quickly understood as we went and started scaling our paid media, was as we started to increase, we quickly learned that a one-time purchase is great, but getting them to make that second purchase is where the profit is made. And this is why it's really important. And the business understands that a retained customer on a repeat purchase drives profit. That is how you know retention is actually working. Otherwise, you are just a messaging delivery person, and that's not really helping the outcome of the business. It's really just delivering and creating the sales that a little bit quicker. But when you can actually show repeat purchase rate increasing due to your efforts, that's why it should be on a retention scorecard as a marketer, as an operator. Yeah.
