How to Get a Second Purchase Faster (and When to Send Replenishment and Win-Back)

Direct answer: To get a second purchase faster, send the first replenishment or cross-sell email 30 to 60 days after the first order, ahead of your average reorder gap. Sticky Digital recommends cross-selling from your highest-LTV products into customers whose first order was a low-LTV product, and starting win-back only after a customer passes your account's average days to a second order. Both timings should come from your own Klaviyo data, not a benchmark.

What Sticky Digital sees across the accounts we manage

We pulled first-to-second purchase data from Hiro, our analytics platform, for three Sticky Digital accounts: a wellness brand, a skincare brand, and a kids' brand. All three cover first-time buyers from January 2024 through September 2025, tracked for 12 months, non-subscription orders only.

The average time to a second order was 99 days for the wellness brand, 120 for skincare, and 135 for the kids' brand. Those numbers look like a reason to wait. They are not.

The average hides a long tail. Between 40% and 53% of each account's 12-month repeat buyers had already reordered by day 62, and 49% to 64% had reordered by day 90. A message timed to the average arrives after most of the people who were going to come back have come back.

How long does it take to get a second purchase?

It depends on the category more than on anything a flow can change. Here is what the three accounts looked like.

Three accounts is a small sample, and none of them is a benchmark for your category. What they show is the shape: a second order is a slow event, most of it lands in the first three months, and the 12-month repeat rate ranged from 10.8% to 33.9%.

One more number matters. Hiro credits a campaign or flow with some repeat orders and not others. Email and SMS were credited with 2.6 of the wellness brand's 14.5 points of 12-month repeat rate, 18.4 of the skincare brand's 33.9, and 7.1 of the kids' brand's 10.8. Attribution is not proof of cause, but a wide gap like that is a reason to look at what the account sends between day 30 and day 90.

When should replenishment emails go out?

Between 30 and 60 days after the first order for most consumable products. That window sits before the average reorder gap and inside the stretch where roughly 40% to 53% of eventual repeat buyers return.

Adjust it by product. If a bottle, jar, or bag has a known use-up date, set the trigger ahead of that date, because a reminder that arrives after the product runs out is a win-back message wearing the wrong subject line. If the product has no use-up date, such as apparel, furniture, or other durable goods, replenishment does not apply. Send a cross-sell in the same 30 to 60 day window instead.

What to send in that window

Cross-sell from high-LTV products into low-LTV first purchases. Not every first order leads to the same customer. Hiro's retention-by-product view ranks first products by repurchase rate and LTV, and the gap between the top and bottom of that list is usually large. A customer who started on a product that rarely leads to a second order should see the product that does.

Run that against your own data before you write a word of copy. The right cross-sell path is a ranking exercise, not a creative one.

When should a win-back flow start?

After the customer passes your account's average days to a second order, and not before. In the three accounts above, that threshold was 99, 120, and 135 days. Treat it as a starting hypothesis to test, since the right trigger is the point where a customer is later than a typical repeat buyer and your replenishment messages have already had their chance.

Keep the two flows from overlapping. A customer still inside the replenishment window should be suppressed from win-back, and a customer who reorders should leave both. Brands that skip that suppression logic send a "we miss you" message to someone who bought yesterday.

Why the second purchase stalls

The most common setup we would check for is a gap between flows. A post-purchase series that ends in the first two weeks, followed by a win-back that starts at 180 days, leaves the 30 to 90 day window with nothing in it. That window is where the curve above does most of its work.

The cause is usually timing set by habit. Someone picked 180 days years ago because it sounded like a lapsed customer, and nobody went back to compare it with how long this brand's buyers actually take. The delay was never wrong on purpose. It just never met the data.

How Sticky Digital sets second-purchase timing

This is the sequence we run on a retention account, and it is the core of our email and SMS services.

• Pull the account's first-to-second purchase curve by cohort month in Hiro before changing any delay.
• Rank first products by repurchase rate and LTV, then map cross-sell paths from the strongest products into the weakest first purchases.
• Set the first replenishment or cross-sell trigger at 30 to 60 days, earlier where a product has a known use-up date.
• Start win-back at the account's average days to a second order, with suppression so it never overlaps replenishment.
• Change one delay at a time, and read the result against the curve before changing the next.

FAQ

How long does it take to get a second purchase?

In three Sticky Digital accounts, the average time to a second order ran from 99 to 135 days. Between 49% and 64% of the customers who reordered within a year had done so by day 90, so the typical buyer comes back sooner than the average suggests.

When should replenishment emails be sent?

Sticky Digital recommends sending the first replenishment or cross-sell email 30 to 60 days after the first order. For products with a known use-up date, set the trigger before that date so the reminder arrives while the customer still has product left.

When should a win-back flow start?

Start win-back after a customer passes your account's average days to a second order. In the three accounts Sticky Digital reviewed, that was 99, 120, and 135 days. Suppress customers who are still inside the replenishment window.

Does the repeat purchase rate depend on the category?

Yes. Across the three accounts, the 12-month repeat rate was 14.5% for wellness, 33.9% for skincare, and 10.8% for kids. Set targets from your own category and your own cohorts, because a single benchmark will mislead you in either direction.

Brands that want their own reorder curve read against these timings can request an audit here.

Article By: Mariel Kilroy, Co-Founder, Sticky Digital

Mariel Kilroy is the Co-Founder of Sticky Digital, a retention marketing agency specializing in email, SMS, loyalty, and subscription growth for DTC brands.