You landed your first customer—amazing! But don't stop there. Improving your repeat purchase rate is key to driving sustainable revenue growth for your business.
Your repeat purchase rate measures the percentage of customers who have placed more than one order with you over time. A higher rate means more customers are coming back to buy again, fueling your bottom line.
In this guide I will discuss how we have helped ecommerce brands get better repeat purchase rates using interactive emails.
What is repeat purchase rate?
Repeat purchase rate is a metric that is used by retail and ecommerce stores to measure the percentage of customers who return after a purchase to make another one within a specific time frame. It gives you an insight into the kind of customer experience you’re providing your customers with and the kind of customer loyalty you’re getting in return.
How to calculate repeat purchase rate
Before you start to calculate your repeat purchase rate, you’ll need to define these variables:
The time frame for analysis. (1 month, 1 week, etc.)
Total number of customers who have purchased from you during that time frame.
Total number of customers who have purchased from you more than once during that time frame.
Once you have defined these, you can calculate the repeat purchase rate for your business using the formula below:
What’s a good purchase rate?
What can be considered as a good purchase rate varies from industry to industry. However, a repeat purchase rate of 20-30% can be considered as a decent rate.
If you can get 20-30% of customers coming back every month and making a purchase from your store, you should do pretty well.
- Alex Schultz, VP of Growth, Facebook
How to increase repeat purchase rate
You can employ several tactics to boost your repeat purchase rates, like targeted automation and personalized campaigns. But one powerful strategy that is proving to be vital is utilizing interactive emails to keep your brand top-of-mind and deliver engaging experiences.
As such, I am sharing below some proven ideas and tactics you can deploy to increase repeat purchase rates using email gamification.
Deliver interactive experiences with emails
Interactive email might sound complicated, but it simply means adding app-like experiences directly into your email campaigns. This allows subscribers to browse products, play games, view Instagram feeds, take quizzes, and more—without ever leaving the email.
Interactive email has been a game-changer for improving our repeat purchase metrics. The engaging experience keeps our products fresh in customers' minds and provides an easy path to purchase again.
- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty
Some examples of how to use interactive emails to drive repeat buys:
Product carousels/galleries to showcase new launches or recommend complementary items
Embedded Instagram feed or user-generated content gallery to increase brand affinity
Gamified spin-to-win with prize discounts to entice purchases
Quizzes to capture preference data and personalize future recommendations
Clickable, shoppable hotspots to let subscribers easily add to cart
After incorporating interactive emails, we saw repeat purchase rates increase by 22% in just a few months.
The interactivity creates excitement and gives subscribers a reason to consistently engage.
- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty
Combine interactive email with your other campaigns
Of course, interactive email is just one piece of the repeat purchase puzzle, but it can supercharge the performance of your existing campaigns. Engaged subscribers who have fun, memorable experiences with your emails are far more likely to turn into repeat buyers.
Some strategies that can benefit from interactive emails are You'll want to combine it with other proven tactics like:
Adding interactive product catalogs or gallery carousels in upsell and cross-sell flows post-purchase to encourage add-on or complementary buys
Running a referral program inside the email as an incentive for your VIP customers
Personalized win-back campaigns for lapsed buyers, with tempting offers and games like spin-the-wheel or jackpot widgets inside emails.
Interactive emails make our campaigns feel fresh and our brand feel innovative. It pays off with customers who just can't resist coming back for more.
- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty
Level up with a multi-channel approach
While interactive email is powerful on its own, the biggest gains come from using it as part of a multi-channel retention strategy that combines email, SMS, web, and more.
The interactive data you collect from emails—quiz responses, poll results, product interests—provides a goldmine of insights to power the rest of your repeat purchase efforts. Use that data for:
Use automated nurture streams
Build automated nurture streams that adjust messaging based on responses shared by subscribers in interactive emails.
For example:
Subscribers who engaged with a clothing brand's "Build Your Outfit" carousel could receive an automated email flow showcasing full looks with those pieces
Those who took a cooking/flavor quiz from a food brand could get AI-recommended recipes and product pairings
These tailored nurture streams feel personalized and keep your brand top of mind between purchases.
Send segmented campaigns
Leverage interactive data to build hyper-targeted segments for campaigns aimed at driving repeat purchases from specific groups, such as:
Lapsed buyers who showed interest in a new product line by taking part in an interactive quiz
High-value customers who may be great candidates for member pricing
Subscribers in certain regions or with particular affinities to localize offers
Use SMS outreach
The data doesn't just strengthen your email efforts—it can also turbocharge SMS campaigns. Use SMS as a complementary channel to:
Send reminders to purchase wishlist or cart items
Share exclusive flash sales based on interests
Invite subscribers to take a quiz or poll for a surprise
Announce new interactive email launches/experiences
SMS allows us to quickly re-engage subscribers who showed interest in an email campaign but didn't purchase. That one-two punch of channels is incredibly powerful.
- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty
Leverage web personalization
Interactive email data can even inform the experiences you deliver on your website through personalization and predictive analytics. Customize web versions of quizzes, galleries, and product recommendations to specific segments.
By connecting interactive email insights across your marketing ecosystem, you create a seamless, harmonized experience that keeps customers engaged and loyal.
A bridge to better retention
At the end of the day, interactive emails provide a bridge between making one-time purchases and becoming a loyal, repeat buyer. The engaging experiences make customers feel emotionally invested in your brand.
Pair that with nurture streams, segmentation, SMS outreach, and web personalization—all powered by interactive data—and you have a comprehensive strategy for maximizing customer lifetime value.
Interactive emails were a game-changer, but integrating that data across channels was truly transformative. We're able to deliver amazing experiences no matter where customers engage with our brand.
- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty
In case you are looking for an easy interactive email marketing platform, do check out Mailmodo. We would love to help scale your retention and create some amazing interactive email campaigns.
You can try Mailmodo for free here.
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