When selling consumable or consumer packaged goods, it can be helpful to detect consumption patterns.
With some products it's easy, a 30-day supply of supplements will be consumed in about 30 days (unless someone takes more or less). We have pasta once a week (Wednesday) but even that varies a bit based on which type.
Most products don't have a daily or any easily recognized usage and most customers won't be able to even answer that if you ask.
It's best to go directly to the data, in this case the Average Customer Purchase Latency.
This metric measures the time in-between purchases. So if your latency tells you that your customers are ordering every two months and spending enough to order four packages on average, they are consuming a package every 15 days or so.
With this information you can now take their behavior into account. Email them about one and a half months after their last order and they'll likely be down to the last package. Offer them a replenishment offer or even just a basic reminder "hey, you ordered X, Y, and Z last time".
Easy automated campaign to bring back repeat customers.
Repeat Customer Insights can measure your latency overall, at certain times, and for a few other segments. For this sort of campaign, you can just use the basic Average Customer Purchase Latency.
Eric Davis
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