Skip to main content
michael_lifecycle
Contributor I
Contributor I
September 20, 2026
Question

Can Klaviyo actually tell you which one-time buyers are worth trying to win back?

  • September 20, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 15 views

I'm curious how Shopify + Klaviyo merchants handle this in practice.

Suppose you have a group of customers who purchased once but never placed a second order.

Identifying them is easy.

The harder question is:

Which of those customers were actually likely to buy again — and which ones were probably never going to return anyway?

How do you make that distinction today?

Do you rely on:

- purchase history
- email/SMS engagement
- browsing behavior
- product purchased
- segments or predictive data
- manual analysis

Or is this still mostly judgment?

I'd especially like to hear from merchants or in-house retention/CRM operators who have dealt with this using real store data.

If you'd rather not share details publicly, feel free to message me.

2 replies

Bobi N.
Partner - Platinum
Champion & Partner
September 21, 2026

Everyone that ever bought is worth trying to win back again. Just depending on what channel you using (Email, SMS, WhatsApp etc..) you need to make sure they are active on that channel. If someone is not opening their emails there is no point of sending them emails but as long as people are engaging and they bought in the past there is always chance you convince them to buy again.

Head Email Marketing Technician at Flowium
michael_lifecycle
Contributor I
Contributor I
September 21, 2026

That's interesting — so your default is essentially to keep everyone eligible for win-back, but use channel engagement to decide where to reach them.

Have you seen cases where engagement looked strong, but the customer still wasn't realistically likely to purchase again?

For example, because of the product they originally bought, normal reorder timing, acquisition source, or another factor.

I'm trying to understand whether channel engagement alone is usually enough, or whether merchants still need another layer to distinguish "reachable" from genuinely "recoverable."