Costs
What is a good ecommerce repeat purchase rate by industry in the US?
Ecommerce repeat purchase rate by industry in the US: illustrative ranges by vertical, plus the monthly cost of a retention program that moves the number.
What to take away
- A good repeat purchase rate is the one your store beats next year, not a figure lifted from another vertical.
- Illustrative US rangesconsumables 40 to 55 percent, beauty 30 to 45 percent, apparel 20 to 35 percent, home goods 15 to 30 percent, furniture 8 to 18 percent.
- A store with 10,000 to 50,000 contacts spends $240 to $2,300 a month on retention, after $1,500 to $6,000 of one-off setup.
What the benchmark range covers
The US Census Bureau publishes a quarterly ecommerce estimate. The online share of total US retail sales has held near 15 to 16 percent in recent quarters. That sizes the market. It says nothing about how often a customer comes back.
Repeat rates come from a narrower source: benchmark reports published by retention software vendors that sample Shopify stores by vertical. Most US repeat customer rate figures in circulation trace back to samples like these, and each report sets its own window.
Treat every published range as illustrative. The spread inside one vertical is wide, and your own twelve-month trend beats a stranger's average. Our notes on ecommerce analytics cover what a repeat-rate movement can and cannot prove.
Repeat purchase rate equals the count of customers with two or more orders in a window, divided by the count of distinct customers in that same window.
| Vertical | Illustrative repeat rate | Common window |
|---|---|---|
| Pet food and consumables | 40% to 55% | 12 months |
| Beauty and supplements | 30% to 45% | 12 months |
| Apparel and footwear | 20% to 35% | 12 months |
| Home goods and small decor | 15% to 30% | 12 months |
| Furniture and large appliances | 8% to 18% | 24 months |
Line by line costs of hitting a retention target
The table prices a modest retention program for a US store with 10,000 to 50,000 contacts. Figures are monthly, in USD, at published vendor tiers.
Monthly retention program cost
- $240 to $2,300monthly program total
- $1,500 to $6,000one-off setup costs
- 10,000 to 50,000contacts priced
| Line item | Monthly cost, low to high (USD) |
|---|---|
| Email platform, 10,000 to 50,000 contacts | 60 to 500 |
| SMS platform plus message credits | 50 to 350 |
| Loyalty or points app | 0 to 300 |
| Post-purchase and win-back rebuild, amortised | 0 to 400 |
| List hygiene and deliverability monitoring | 30 to 150 |
| Copy and design, part time | 100 to 600 |
Added together, that lands between $240 and $2,300 a month. Contact count and message volume move the total more than app choice does.
One-off costs sit outside the monthly figure. Migration, IP warming, template design and segment build usually fall between $1,500 and $6,000, paid once rather than every month.
Three numbers to settle:
- Your contact count, including anyone who has not opened in a year.
- Your per-segment SMS rate, not the headline per-message rate.
- The discount depth your flows use, priced across a full year.
The ecommerce retention marketing breakdown sorts the flows by what they usually return.
Fixed against variable
Fixed costs repeat at the same level whether you send a campaign or not. Platform subscriptions, app seats and monitoring tools sit here.
Variable costs scale with activity: SMS segments, email sends above your plan tier, printed inserts, and the margin given away in a win-back offer.
One-off costs belong in neither column. Migration and template work happen once. Recurring costs return every month. Squeeze both into one line and the budget looks cheap in month one and dear by month six.
Any repeat-rate figure you publish for customers falls under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which covers deceptive claims about performance as well as price.
Example: a California apparel store and a Texas hardware store
Illustrative arithmetic, not a case study. A California apparel store lifts its twelve-month repeat rate from 22 percent to 27 percent by rebuilding post-purchase ecommerce email marketing and adding a 15 percent second-purchase offer. Platform and message costs rise about $180 a month, and the discount costs roughly $9 per returning customer.
A Texas hardware store runs a different curve, because a drill bought once is rarely bought twice. Its repeat rate sits near 11 percent on a 24-month window. Texas caps combined state and local sales tax at 8.25 percent, and California layers district taxes on a 7.25 percent base.
What the tools do not include
Platform quotes stop at the software. List growth, creative strategy, deliverability recovery and legal review sit outside them. A cheap platform without sender reputation work costs more, not less.
Lifecycle messaging also has to clear US email law. The CAN-SPAM compliance guide sets the opt-out and identification duties that apply to every commercial send, including purchase-triggered messages.
Where budgets leak
Discount depth is the largest leak. A 20 percent second-purchase code on a 40 percent margin item makes a returning customer break even.
Dead contacts are the second. Platforms bill on stored contacts, so 40,000 unengaged records cost the same as 40,000 engaged ones and deliver less.
Subscriptions are the third. An app bought for one campaign keeps billing after it ends. Where the program charges on a recurring basis, the FTC Negative Option Rule governs renewal and cancellation disclosure.
Quarterly app audits catch the rest. Our ecommerce marketing tools ratings separate the categories worth paying for from the ones a spreadsheet handles.
