A store owner is struggling with stagnant sales and low repeat purchase rates despite optimized ads. They want to reduce ad spending and find alternative growth strategies.
Key recommendations from the community:
Email marketing automation: Set up post-purchase flows, win-back campaigns (after 30 days), and personalized product recommendations. Include bounce-back incentives (10% discount codes) in order confirmations.
Loyalty programs: Implement tiered rewards systems offering points, exclusive perks, or free shipping thresholds. Suggested apps include Smile.io, Joy, BON, and 99minds.
Customer segmentation: Tag customers by purchase behavior (product type, size, preferences) and send targeted emails (max 2/month) with relevant products rather than generic promotions.
Subscription models: For replenishable items like beauty products, offer subscription options to generate recurring revenue.
Mobile app development: Build a branded app for more sustainable, cost-effective customer engagement beyond paid ads.
CRO optimization: Multiple experts offered to review the store’s conversion rate optimization and design if the URL is shared.
The discussion remains open with no specific resolution, as the original poster hasn’t shared their store URL or indicated which strategies they’ll pursue.
Hi everyone,
The thing is my sales just stagnates and only a handful of my customers come back for the second or third purchase. Nothing wrong with my ads, they are optimized i think. it’s just that I don’t want to keep pouring more and more money into it any more.
Anyone knows any tip to improve my sales? As I’m feeling like I reached a dead end
Any advice is highly appreciated. Tks!
You can try to add buy more save more to increase Average order value (AOV).
Provide subscription charge for beauty items (soap, perfum,…) if you have
Have you setup after purchased email campaign?
If your paid ad channels start to stabilize, I highly advise that you invest in more “sustainable” and cost effective channels. Here are some of my suggestions to help boost your sales in the long run:
1. Build your branded mobile app. And we highly recommend that you do so with OneMobile. Our app allows you to build a mobile app from pre-made themes and quickly submit it to App Store & Google Play Store using our Developer Account.
2. Run loyalty campaigns to encourage your customers to keep coming back for exclusive perks (e.g. free shipping for Diamond tier, accumulating 100 points for 20% discount code, etc.). Smile.io is the app we highly suggest you trying.
3. Plan your email marketing effectively. For instance, send email to old customers to incentivize them to leave a review for a $10 coupon, send them personalized product recommendations I hope that this helps.
I hope that this helps!
Hi @dream_catcher ,
Don’t give up just yet! Please let us know the URL of your website. I can provide tips regarding SEO and also small changes that can help improve your conversion rates.
Lee
I’m Garcia, a CRO expert from PageFly - Page Builder App.
I understand the frustration that comes with stagnant sales and a less-than-ideal return on your advertising efforts. While optimized ads are crucial, several other factors can impact customer retention and repeat purchases. Allow me to share some valuable insights to help you break out of this plateau and elevate your sales:
Here are some apps that can help you implement a loyalty program: Smile: Loyalty & Rewards, Joy: Loyalty Program & Reward, BON: Loyalty Rewards Referral…
By implementing these strategies, you can effectively improve your sales, strengthen customer loyalty, and achieve sustainable growth for your business. Remember, a customer-centric approach and continuous optimization efforts are key to unlocking your CRO potential.
Hope that my suggestions can help you!
Hi @dream_catcher ,
Thanks for sharing, it’s something many store owners experience, especially when ads bring in traffic but not long-term growth. It’s great that you’re looking beyond ads and thinking about ways to boost customer retention.
Here are a few tips to help improve repeat sales and overall revenue without increasing ad spend:
If you’re not already using email automations, you might want to try something like Retentionly – AI Email Marketing app**,** it’s built for Shopify and helps you launch flows like these in minutes. No need to be tech-savvy, You only pay for the emails you send, not based on your subscriber count, and we’ll even help set up everything for your store at no extra cost.
Hope this helps! You’re definitely not at a dead end, just at the stage where retention starts to matter more than reach. Feel free to reach out via live chat if you’d like help or have any queries.
Cheers,
Retentionly Team
If this helped, please mark it as a solution so others can find it too
Increasing repeat customer sales comes down to building long-term relationships and creating reasons for shoppers to come back. Here are some effective strategies:
Loyalty & Rewards Programs: Encourage repeat purchases by rewarding customers with points, discounts, or exclusive perks. Tools like 99minds can help you set up flexible loyalty and gift card programs tailored to your store.
Email & SMS Marketing: Send personalized follow-ups, product recommendations, or special offers to re-engage past customers.
Subscription Products: If your products are replenishable, consider offering subscriptions for convenience and recurring revenue.
Retargeting Ads: Utilize social media and Google Ads to reconnect with previous customers through tailored reminders.
Exclusive Offers & Early Access: Offer repeat customers VIP access to new launches and private sales.
Exceptional Service: A smooth, delightful shopping experience often makes the biggest difference in retention.
Pro tip: Keep an eye on your repeat purchase rate in Shopify Analytics; it shows you if your strategies are working.
When sales plateau, the key is focusing on customer retention rather than just ads. Try introducing loyalty programs, personalized email campaigns, and exclusive discounts for repeat buyers to encourage return purchases. Improving post-purchase communication, offering bundles or subscriptions, and collecting feedback can also help build stronger relationships with customers and boost long-term sales growth.
Hello @dream_catcher ,
I hope you are doing well!
Basically, there are several ways to increase retention and improve sales. I recommend AiTrillon, which offers multiple apps in one, so you don’t have to juggle between different platforms, and you will get everything in one.
What sets AiTrillion apart is its ability to provide personalized experiences for each customer, making your marketing strategies more targeted and effective. The platform uses AI-driven insights to optimize customer engagement, increase repeat purchases, and enhance overall business performance. Whether you’re a small e-commerce store or a large business, AiTrillion offers the flexibility and scalability to grow your sales and retain loyal customers.
I hope my suggestion or recommendation helps you.
You can start easy:
max 2 emails per month
add tags to your customers based on what they buy like shoes, flavor, variant, etc depends on your business and products you sell
customer segmentation is your friend, use customers tags and create super deep customer segments like:
“XXL size“, “size 43 shoes”, “4 years old age fit”, “organic lovers”
use these audiences to feed the native Shopify email, fill the subject and the body with the audience needs accordingly. No fluff, just relevant products → relevance > design
You can try to add buy more save more to increase Average order value (AOV).
Provide subscription charge for beauty items (soap, perfum,…) if you have
Have you setup after purchased email campaign?
I totally feel you — ads can bring traffic, but if customers don’t come back, it’s like filling a bucket with holes.
What you’re describing is actually one of the most common pain points for growing stores: you’ve nailed acquisition, but you’re missing retention.
One strategy that works wonders here is gamified loyalty — instead of just giving points or discounts, you make returning to your store fun and rewarding.
For example, with LevelUp Rewards, you can:
Turn first-time buyers into quests (onboarding missions with rewards at each step)
Create collectible badges for discovering products or collections
Reward repeat visits or monthly purchases with streak bonuses
The idea is to make your customers feel like they’re progressing — not just spending.
Stores using this kind of system often see a big jump in 2nd and 3rd purchases, because it builds emotional loyalty, not just discount-driven loyalty.
You don’t need to spend more on ads — just make your existing customers want to come back 
@dream_catcher I think you need to invest on the SEO except of paid ads.
One of the most effective long-term strategies to increase repeat sales is to map your customer journeys and curate your product catalogue around them.
Begin by identifying the various journeys your customers undertake. For example:
A new homeowner furnishing a house.
A parent preparing for a new baby.
A skincare enthusiast building a daily routine.
A hobbyist upgrading equipment over time.
For each journey, make a list of the typical items or needs that arise along the way.
This exercise helps you see your store not as a random collection of products, but as a guided experience that anticipates your customer’s next step.
Once you have these journeys mapped:
Curate your catalog to support them end to end — this creates a natural flow for repeat purchases.
Bundle and recommend related products to encourage discovery and loyalty.
Plan content and emails around those journeys (e.g., “What to buy next after your first order”).
Personalize marketing to where the customer is in their journey, instead of sending generic offers.
This foundation makes every other retention strategy — like loyalty programs, email campaigns, and remarketing — far more effective, because they’re built on a deep understanding of what your customer truly needs next.
Hope this helps.
Rahul
