Glossary
Plain-language definitions for replenishment, retention, and subscription terms.
AI Replenishment
AI replenishment uses a customer's purchase history and product consumption rate to predict when they'll run out, then triggers a personalized reorder offer automatically. The merchant sets the rules and the predicted dates stay editable; the AI handles the per-customer, per-SKU timing at a scale manual flows can't match.
At-Risk Customer
An at-risk customer shows signals they may not buy again — for a consumable brand, typically someone who has passed their predicted reorder date without repurchasing. Identifying at-risk customers early lets a brand intervene with a reminder or offer before they fully lapse into churn.
Average Order Value (AOV)
Average order value (AOV) is the average amount a customer spends per order, calculated as total revenue divided by number of orders. Raising AOV — often through cross-sell at the reorder moment — increases revenue without acquiring new customers.
Churn Rate
Churn rate is the percentage of customers or subscribers who stop buying over a given period. For consumable ecommerce it's the inverse of retention — a high churn rate means customers aren't reordering — and it's the metric replenishment programs are designed to reduce.
Consumption-Based Timing
Consumption-based timing schedules a reorder prompt around how fast an individual customer actually uses a product, not a one-size-fits-all interval. Someone who finishes a bag of coffee in 18 days and someone who takes 40 each get prompted on their own cycle — raising relevance and conversion while cutting message fatigue.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Customer lifetime value is the total profit a brand expects from a customer across the relationship. For consumable brands, LTV is driven mostly by reorder frequency and retention — not the first order — which is why shortening reorder cycles raises LTV faster than discounting acquisition.
Dynamic Reorder Storefront
A dynamic reorder storefront is a personalized, pre-built page showing a returning customer exactly what they bought before — product, size, quantity — ready to reorder in one click. It removes browsing, cart-building, and data re-entry, the main friction points that kill repeat-purchase conversion versus a generic product link.
Ecommerce Replenishment
Ecommerce replenishment is the practice of prompting a customer to repurchase a consumable product around the time they're about to run out. Rather than waiting for shoppers to remember, brands time a reorder offer to each customer's consumption cycle — turning one-time buyers into repeat buyers without locking them into a subscription.
Lapsed Customer
A lapsed customer is one who previously bought but hasn't repurchased within their expected window. For consumable brands, a customer who's well past their predicted reorder date is lapsed — the target of win-back efforts before they're lost for good.
Lifecycle-Stage Reorder Timing
Lifecycle-stage reorder timing recognizes that a customer's reorder gap changes as they buy more: the time from the first to second order is usually longer than from the fourth to fifth. Timing reorder prompts by lifecycle stage — not one fixed interval — matches how habits tighten over time.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
Net revenue retention measures how much revenue an existing customer base generates over a period versus the prior one, including reorders, expansion, and cross-sell, minus churn. Above 100% means existing customers grow revenue on their own.
One-Click Reorder
One-click reorder lets a returning customer repurchase a previous order in a single tap, with product, quantity, and details pre-filled. By eliminating browsing and checkout steps, it sharply lifts repeat-purchase conversion compared with sending customers to a standard product page to rebuild their order.
Post-Purchase Revenue
Post-purchase revenue is revenue earned after a customer's first order — second purchases, reorders, cross-sells, and subscriptions. It's where consumable brands earn most of their profit, since acquisition often only breaks even on order one. Replenishment programs exist to maximize it.
Predictive Commerce
Predictive commerce uses customer data to anticipate what someone will buy and when, then surfaces the offer at the predicted moment. In replenishment, it means forecasting each customer's run-out date and prompting a reorder before they go looking elsewhere.
Purchase Frequency
Purchase frequency is the average number of orders a customer places in a given period, calculated as total orders divided by unique customers. For consumable brands, increasing purchase frequency — by prompting reorders at the right time — is a primary lever on lifetime value.
Reorder Cart
A reorder cart is a pre-filled cart that recreates a customer's previous purchase so they can buy it again in one step. It removes the friction of rebuilding an order and is the conversion surface behind effective reorder reminders.
Reorder Rate
Reorder rate is the share of customers or orders that result in a repeat purchase of the same consumable product. It's the headline metric for a replenishment program: a rising reorder rate means the timing, offers, and reorder experience are matching how customers actually consume.
Reorder Reminder
A reorder reminder is an automated message nudging a customer to rebuy a consumable as they near running out. The most effective ones are timed to each customer's consumption rate rather than a fixed calendar, and link to a pre-filled one-click reorder instead of a generic product page.
Reorder Reminder vs. Abandoned-Cart Reminder
An abandoned-cart reminder recovers a purchase someone started but didn't finish in one session. A reorder reminder targets a past customer who bought, consumed the product, and is due to run out — a different moment, audience, and timing logic, focused on the replenishment cycle rather than a single stalled checkout.
Repeat Customer Rate
Repeat customer rate is the share of a brand's customers who have made more than one purchase. Closely related to repeat purchase rate, it's a core retention health metric — consumable brands with high repeat customer rates rely less on paid acquisition.
Repeat Purchase Rate
Repeat purchase rate is the percentage of customers who buy more than once in a given period. It's a primary measure of retention and product-market fit for consumable brands; small increases compound into outsized lifetime-value gains because repeat buyers cost nothing to reacquire.
Replenishment Automation
Replenishment automation is the use of software to detect when a customer is due to run out of a consumable and automatically send a timed reorder prompt. It turns a manual, easily-forgotten task into a consistent, per-customer revenue engine.
Replenishment Cross-Sell
Replenishment cross-sell recommends a complementary product at the moment a customer reorders a staple — filters with a coffee reorder, a moisturizer with a serum refill. Because it rides on an already-likely purchase, it raises average order value without needing a separate campaign or new acquisition.
Replenishment vs. Subscription
A subscription bills and ships on a fixed schedule the customer commits to upfront. Replenishment instead prompts a fresh, optional purchase timed to when the customer is actually running low — no lock-in. Subscriptions maximize predictability; replenishment maximizes flexibility and reach. Many brands run both.
RFM Segmentation
RFM segmentation groups customers by Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value to decide who to target and how. For consumable brands it's the foundation of retention timing — recency and frequency together signal when a customer is due to reorder or starting to lapse.
Subscribe & Save
Subscribe & Save is a model where customers opt into recurring deliveries of a product at a discount in exchange for commitment. It rewards loyalty with savings but, like all subscriptions, relies on a fixed schedule that may not match each customer's actual consumption.
Subscription Bridge
A subscription bridge converts a brand's most reliable repeat buyers into subscribers at the moment their loyalty is proven, rather than pushing a subscription at first checkout. It grows the subscriber base from demonstrated behavior, so replenishment and subscriptions run together instead of cannibalizing each other.
Subscription Churn
Subscription churn is the rate at which subscribers cancel over a period. In consumable DTC it's notoriously high — a large share cancel within the first three months — usually because fixed schedules over- or under-deliver versus how fast customers actually consume the product.
Subscription Fatigue
Subscription fatigue is consumers' growing reluctance to commit to recurring subscriptions, driven by too many auto-renewing charges and rigid schedules that don't match real usage. For consumable brands it shows up as high early cancellation — pushing many toward flexible reorder prompts instead of forced subscriptions.
Subscription Friction
Subscription friction is the ongoing effort of managing a recurring plan — editing, skipping, rescheduling, and worrying about the next charge. It's a leading cause of cancellations: customers often quit not because they stopped wanting the product, but because keeping the plan in sync with real usage became a hassle.
The Reorder Lifecycle
The reorder lifecycle is the sequence of moments a repeat customer moves through after a purchase — approaching their next reorder, going at-risk, lapsing, and being ripe for a complementary product or a subscription. Mapping each moment lets a brand send the right message at the right time.
Time to Second Purchase
Time to second purchase is the average gap between a customer's first and second order. It's a leading retention indicator: the longer the gap, the less likely a buyer ever returns — conversion probability drops sharply after roughly 45 days. Shortening it is the core job of a replenishment program.
Win-Back Campaign
A win-back campaign re-engages lapsed customers who stopped buying past their expected reorder window. Effective win-backs trigger on the absence of an expected repurchase rather than a fixed delay, pairing a timely reminder with a one-click path back to the exact product the customer used to buy.