Why Most Black Friday Customers Never Buy Again (And 3 Moves to Fix It Now)

Steve Hutt: Well, hey there. Welcome back to eCommerce Fastlane. It’s Steve here today, and this whole episode is about one thing: the second order.

Black Friday is November 27th, and a lot of you are likely going to have a really big weekend. Some of you will even have your best revenue days ever, which I think is awesome. But here’s the thing that keeps coming back to me.

Let’s say you pick up 2,000 new customers over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That would be a great weekend for a lot of people. Fast-forward to the end of February. How many of those 2,000 people have come back to make another purchase? For most brands, it’s a pretty small number. Many of those customers may never come back.

So the real question isn’t how good Monday night looks. It’s this: What are we going to do right now to get that second sale in February?

That’s why I’m recording this solo episode today. It’s incredibly important for lifetime value and retention, not just getting the first sale, but figuring out how to get the second.

Here’s the good news: Almost everything that decides whether a second order happens can be set up next week, depending on when you’re listening to this. We’re getting close to the Super Bowl time of year for ecommerce, but there’s still time.

If you count 90 days from November 27th, you land around February 25th. That’s the date I want you to circle on your calendar.

I’ve discussed this in the past, including when I was at Shopify. I always told the brands I managed that it’s important to think about what happens after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That’s why I get people to circle February 25th.

By the end of this episode, I’m hoping you’ll know three things: what you can still change before Black Friday, what you can’t change and why that’s okay, and the one number to pull in Q1 that will tell you whether Black Friday actually worked.

All right, let’s get into it. Here’s the shift I want you to make: Black Friday is not the biggest sales event of your year. I know that sounds weird, but it’s the biggest acquisition event of your year.

Think about that for a second. Black Friday is not the biggest sales event of your year. It’s the biggest acquisition event of your year.

I read an article from Adobe recently, and I think they forecasted $275 billion in U.S. online holiday sales this year, up almost 6.7% over last year. They also expect traffic from AI tools to retail sites to jump about 130%.

A lot of new people are coming to your website, and a lot of them are strangers. They found you through a deal, through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or a gift guide. They don’t know your story yet.

Here’s why that matters. There’s a retail marketing platform I follow called Ometria. They looked at their retailers and said in a recent article that only 4% of their new Black Friday customers bought again within 12 months. They also said Black Friday customers were six times less likely to come back than a typical new customer.

That’s interesting, right? Another study I read, from a company called OptiMonk, put the 12-month repeat purchase rate closer to 22%. I’ll make sure these links are in the show notes.

So that’s 4% in one dataset and 22% in another. That’s a huge spread, and honestly, I think that’s the point. Nobody’s average is going to be your number, and your number is the one that counts.

I also found a slightly older article from Bluecore, another commerce platform. Based on their data, about 60% of second purchases happened within the first 100 days. After that, the odds dropped off.

The window is short, roughly late November to late February. That’s why I got you to circle the 25th. That’s your opportunity to get the second sale.

But let’s get the hard part out of the way. Your offers are probably locked in, and they’ve likely been locked for weeks. Most agencies want your theme, checkout, and apps frozen by November 13th. Even Shopify has a code freeze happening around that time.

It’s not just a Shopify thing. It’s an agency habit, and I believe it’s a smart one. I’m not going to tell you to rethink your discount codes, revisit the offer, or try to work around that freeze.

Here’s the good news I want you to take home: What you can change is everything that happens after the order confirmation.

That’s the crux of what I’m talking about today. Almost none of it touches your theme or checkout. It lives in your email and SMS tools and Shopify Flow.

There are three things I believe you can do today, or early next week, before things get really busy.

Number one is to tag the cohort. It’s simple. Set up a rule in Shopify Flow so that when an order comes in, and it’s the customer’s first order, you add a tag such as BFCM 2026 to that order. Turn it on before your deals start, leave it running through December, and that’s it. It’s about 10 minutes of setup.

The reason to bother is that in February, you want to look at those people exclusively as a group. Tagging them as part of the BFCM 2026 cohort lets you do that. You don’t want to mix them in with everybody else. If you don’t tag them now, you’ll be doing a little guessing later.

That’s move number one. Move number two is to give your first-time buyers their own path.

Here’s the mistake I see over and over: Someone buys from you for the first time on Black Friday, and the very next day, they get dropped into the same promotional blasts as everybody else.

They get the Cyber Monday email, the last-chance email, probably a gift guide, and another 30%-off email. That’s five sales emails before their package even shows up.

What did that teach the customer? That you’re a discount brand? That they should wait for the next sale?

I would split them out. Your existing customers get the promotional calendar and the flows you’ve set up for email, SMS, and push notifications. Your brand-new Black Friday buyers get a welcome.

That leads to move number three: Decide what they hear and when.

I recommend sketching this out in a Google Doc or somewhere similar. There are four important touchpoints for these brand-new Black Friday buyers. These are tried and true, and I really want you to learn from them. I’ll put them in the show notes so you can see them.

The first is day zero: the confirmation. We all know this email, but most confirmations read like a receipt. That’s the standard Shopify approach.

I think it makes sense to make yours sound more like a person. Say thank you, add a little personalization, and tell them when their order is expected. If holiday shipping is slow, be honest about the timing. That’s the day-zero receipt, so take a look at what Shopify is sending and modify it.

The next touchpoint is day three. Their package is probably still in a truck, or it may not even have been fulfilled yet. Send something useful.

What that looks like depends on what you sell. It could be advice on getting the most out of what they bought, or the story of why you started the company. But don’t give them an offer.

Here’s a smart addition: Ask one simple question. Was it a gift?

That one answer changes everything you send next. It’s important to ask whether it’s a gift, and day three is a good time to do it.

The third touchpoint is 14 days after the order. In all likelihood, the order has arrived. You may have software that lets you check the tracking and confirm delivery, which is ideal.

If it has arrived, you’re checking in, asking how it’s going, and pointing them toward help if they need it. I also think this can be a good spot to ask for a review.

You don’t want to send a check-in and ask for a review when they haven’t even received the product. We see those reviews, even on Amazon, where someone says, “I don’t know. I haven’t received the product yet, but I’m sure it’s okay.”

That’s a big fail. Don’t do that. Make sure they have the product, check in, and ask for a review if they can provide one.

The fourth touchpoint is 45 days out. This is when I think you can start asking for the second order. That will probably land in mid-January, when their inbox is a lot quieter. Even those early-January inventory blowout sales have probably passed.

I would make this more about what fits their needs than about urgency. If you sell something that runs out, this is a great time for a refill reminder. If you don’t, that’s fine. Show them what goes with what they bought, or what other people who bought that product also purchased.

Here’s my take on the offer: If they came in on a 30% discount, don’t instantly hand them another 30% discount. Try something a little more creative, such as free shipping, a free gift with purchase, or early access to something new.

This is 45 days after their order. Give them something that says you’re worth coming back to, rather than another blanket 30% off. It also shows the customer that you’re not always on sale.

All of this reminds me of a case study I found while researching these recommendations. It came from an agency called Flowium, spelled F-L-O-W-I-U-M, and they shared numbers for a jewelry brand.

The brand picked up more than 77,000 new customers over Black Friday and the holidays last year. Only 17% of their November buyers came back within the first six months. For December buyers, it was about 13%.

My first thought was that a lot of those December orders might have been gifts, so the person buying wasn’t necessarily the person using the product. That’s why I suggested asking whether it was a gift in one of those four touchpoints.

Knowing that information lets you adjust the follow-up. You can update the thank-you series or create a bounce-back email for first-time buyers. The flows driving repeat orders were those basic follow-ups.

Keep in mind that this is an agency telling its own story, but it matches what I’m hearing from merchants.

Now, let’s fast-forward to Q1. Hopefully, you’ve added the BFCM 2026 tag. At 30, 60, and 90 days, ask one question: What percentage of those customers bought again?

Run those queries, including around February 25th. Then compare that with a normal group, such as people who bought from you for the first time in October. That comparison will tell you more than any industry statistic ever will.

There’s one technical note here. Shopify changed how it counts sessions on September 21st. Bots are now filtered out by default, and some shopping journeys that skip the normal page view now count. Shopify says to treat that date as a new baseline.

Orders, sales, and customer counts didn’t change. Comparing this year’s conversion rate with last year’s Black Friday may be an apples-to-oranges comparison. Score the season on orders and new customers, then score it again in February on second orders.

Let me break this down by stage so you can see how it works.

If you’re doing under 10,000 orders a month, keep it simple: one tag, one thank-you email that sounds like you, and one check-in after delivery. Honestly, I believe a personal note from you as the founder will go further than a fancy flow.

If you’re doing more than $100,000 a month, I think you need to build the four-touchpoint path I described. Split new buyers from existing customers, and build the 30-, 60-, and 90-day report now so it’s waiting for you in February.

If you’re doing more than a million dollars a month, you probably have all the flows already. The question is different: Are your first-time Black Friday buyers actually on their own path, or are they sitting in the main flows with everybody else?

Double-check that. Pull last year’s holiday cohort this week and see what it did. That’s the bar to beat.

As you may know, I run most things, including decisions in my own business, through what I call an 18-month test: Will this matter a year and a half from now?

There are a lot of shiny objects out there, and people have to decide what they’re going to use and what they’re not. Most trends fail that test. I believe this passes easily because it isn’t a trend. The second order has always been where the business gets built.

If you do one thing this coming week, put that tag in place. Use Shopify Flow so that when a first-time order comes in, it gets the BFCM 2026 tag. It’s about 10 minutes, and it’s the one thing I really don’t want you leaving until February.

Do it now. In February, you’ll thank yourself when you can research, tag, and filter those people. Make sure they’re not in the standard flow. Put them in a special flow for first-time Black Friday and Cyber Monday customers.

That’s it. Thank you for hanging out with me. I love doing solo episodes because they get me thinking about what we can do that’s easy and tactical. It’s important to me that you learn these things, but also implement them. That’s the key.

If this helped you, put it into practice or pass it along to another founder or marketer in the Shopify world. I’d appreciate that.

If you like this sort of thinking, I publish a few thought leadership articles each week in my newsletter at fastlaneinsider.com. I think we’re almost at 60,000 founders and marketers over there now, so go check it out.

Enjoy your weekend, and we’ll be in touch next Tuesday. Take care.