It’s in the between purchase period that most businesses lose customers. Someone buys, has a great experience and then…nothing. Weeks go by, months maybe and when they next need your product or service, they can’t even remember that first great experience. The business that is top of mind during that lull in activity is the one that stands a chance of capturing that lost repeat business.
It’s not about hammering people with constant sales messages. It’s about establishing a presence that does not feel needy or annoying, it feels organic and helpful. The businesses that do this well understand the almost sacred connecting between purchases that helps build this familiarity with their brand.
Why the Between Purchase Period Is Actually Important
Let’s be real about something – acquiring customers is expensive. Really expensive. It costs anywhere between five to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Yet marketing budgets are often focused on acquiring new customers and ignoring those that have already opened their wallets.
The between purchase period differs from one business to another. For a coffee shop it might be a day, for a furniture store it might be several years. Regardless of how long it is, this period is either a wasted opportunity or one that can be used to build an even stronger relationship.
Formats People Use To Keep Business Top Of Mind
Email was the original solution to solve this problem and it worked well for decades. Now it’s losing some of its effectiveness. Email fatigue is real. People’s inboxes are overflowing and open rates continue to decline. People have gotten really good at skimming subject lines and deleting messages that look like they might take too long to read.
There are new formats that many businesses are adopting that achieve the same purpose. Push notification ad networks are on the rise, connecting businesses through ads that are pushed directly onto customers without them opening an app. Notifications appear on their screens at times when they’re already using their device, so they see messages even if they’re not actively looking for them.
Using any of these formats comes down to the relevance of the message. A notification about sales on winter coats in July isn’t going to connect anyone with your brand, but a timely notification about something they need goes a long way to building familiarity with your brand.
Content That Connects Not Sells
The new-age businesses that are excelling at this aren’t just sending people messages filled with promotions to encourage them to spend money again. They’re sending people content that helps them get more use out of what they’ve already bought.
A software business might send information on how customers can get even more use out of its software. A gardening business might send tips on what to plant in the current season and how to use the products they purchased from the business.
It works, because it reframes the business-customer relationship. It’s not a message that says “we want your money again,” but rather “we want you to succeed with what you bought from us.”
Timing Is Everything
Building a relationship between purchases is not just about sending messages filled with useful information and content. It’s about the timing of these messages. Send too many and people will see you as annoying. Send too few and they’ll forget about you completely.
Finding the sweet spot isn’t always a guessing game. Many businesses rely on suggested timeframes, often based on a formula that tracks the purchase cycles of their customers. If a business knows that customers usually return to purchase more every 60 days, it makes sense to send them information around day 45 or 50 after their last purchase.
Some businesses, however, work on instinct rather than formulas. They look for patterns in the behavior of their customers instead of relying on math. Someone who clicked on the content sent to them in the last three messages they received from you is more likely to expect (and appreciate) regular content than someone who ignored your last message.
The best businesses don’t just use trial-and-error to determine how often and through which channel they send messages. They give their customers the power to decide by establishing parameters that build trust in the process.
A customer may love hearing from you every week but may consider hearing from you every day an imposition they’re not willing to tolerate. Keeping this in mind when connecting with them between purchases prevent your business from looking overbearing.
The Right Kind of Personalization
A healthy dose of personalization goes a long way in showing customers that you appreciate their business and value the relationship they have with your business, but there’s a fine line between personalization and invasion.
A friendly “hey don’t forget about us?” is a lot more welcome than a business sharing with its customer how many minutes they spent looking at an item, and at what time, on what day of the week.
The best businesses frame this by building messages around the behavior and purchasing patterns of other customers, rather than focusing solely on an individual customer.
“Other customers who bought this also purchased this” is not only less scary than saying “we noticed you spent 17 minutes looking at this item on Tuesday during work hours from 9am to 5pm,” it’s also more digestible and easier to respond to.
Building Systems That Scale
The small business might rely on building a relationship between customers through smiling faces and personal relationships, but once that small business scales, that’s not a sustainable model any longer.
Marketing automation programs pick up most of the work here, allowing the business to scale the number of people receiving their messages while still attempting to keep their connections personal.
It takes careful planning though. Automation shouldn’t be the goal, connection should be. Businesses need smart implementation in the picking and using of these software programs.
There’s no shortage of templates and triggers in these applications, but businesses should be careful to regularly review and update these templates, so they stay relevant, rather than relying on these too heavily.
Make Connecting Part of the Plan From Day One
The businesses that do this build it into their processes, from budgeting for it, to selecting platforms they will use, developing content calendars and measuring whether their efforts are creating dividends or merely adding noise to their customer’s lives.
That dividend comes in the form of repeat purchases at a fraction of the cost it takes to acquire new customers who might not come back after their first interaction with your brand. The value of these efforts may be measured in customer lifetime value.
Time spent connecting with customers does have measurable outcomes; customers feeling connected to your brand return to you repeatedly, spending more when they do and they refer you to others who bring you business as well.
© Copyright 2026 Antonia, All rights Reserved. Written For: Tidylife
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