How To Increase Repeat Purchase Rate With Interactive Emails

Thomas Philip
ByThomas Philip

6 mins read

You landed your first customer—amazing! But don't stop there. Improving your repeat purchase rate is key to driving sustainable revenue growth for your business.

Your repeat purchase rate measures the percentage of customers who have placed more than one order with you over time. A higher rate means more customers are coming back to buy again, fueling your bottom line.

In this guide I will discuss how we have helped ecommerce brands get better repeat purchase rates using interactive emails.

What is repeat purchase rate?

Repeat purchase rate is a metric that is used by retail and ecommerce stores to measure the percentage of customers who return after a purchase to make another one within a specific time frame. It gives you an insight into the kind of customer experience you’re providing your customers with and the kind of customer loyalty you’re getting in return.

How to calculate repeat purchase rate

Before you start to calculate your repeat purchase rate, you’ll need to define these variables:

  • The time frame for analysis. (1 month, 1 week, etc.)

  • Total number of customers who have purchased from you during that time frame.

  • Total number of customers who have purchased from you more than once during that time frame.

Once you have defined these, you can calculate the repeat purchase rate for your business using the formula below:

repeat purchase rate formula.png

What’s a good purchase rate?

What can be considered as a good purchase rate varies from industry to industry. However, a repeat purchase rate of 20-30% can be considered as a decent rate.

If you can get 20-30% of customers coming back every month and making a purchase from your store, you should do pretty well.

- Alex Schultz, VP of Growth, Facebook

How to increase repeat purchase rate

You can employ several tactics to boost your repeat purchase rates, like targeted automation and personalized campaigns. But one powerful strategy that is proving to be vital is utilizing interactive emails to keep your brand top-of-mind and deliver engaging experiences.

As such, I am sharing below some proven ideas and tactics you can deploy to increase repeat purchase rates using email gamification.

Deliver interactive experiences with emails

Interactive email might sound complicated, but it simply means adding app-like experiences directly into your email campaigns. This allows subscribers to browse products, play games, view Instagram feeds, take quizzes, and more—without ever leaving the email.

Interactive email has been a game-changer for improving our repeat purchase metrics. The engaging experience keeps our products fresh in customers' minds and provides an easy path to purchase again.

- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty

Some examples of how to use interactive emails to drive repeat buys:

  • Product carousels/galleries to showcase new launches or recommend complementary items

  • Embedded Instagram feed or user-generated content gallery to increase brand affinity

  • Gamified spin-to-win with prize discounts to entice purchases

  • Quizzes to capture preference data and personalize future recommendations

  • Clickable, shoppable hotspots to let subscribers easily add to cart

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After incorporating interactive emails, we saw repeat purchase rates increase by 22% in just a few months.

The interactivity creates excitement and gives subscribers a reason to consistently engage.

- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty

Combine interactive email with your other campaigns

Of course, interactive email is just one piece of the repeat purchase puzzle, but it can supercharge the performance of your existing campaigns. Engaged subscribers who have fun, memorable experiences with your emails are far more likely to turn into repeat buyers.

Some strategies that can benefit from interactive emails are You'll want to combine it with other proven tactics like:

  • Adding interactive product catalogs or gallery carousels in upsell and cross-sell flows post-purchase to encourage add-on or complementary buys

  • Running a referral program inside the email as an incentive for your VIP customers

  • Personalized win-back campaigns for lapsed buyers, with tempting offers and games like spin-the-wheel or jackpot widgets inside emails.

Interactive emails make our campaigns feel fresh and our brand feel innovative. It pays off with customers who just can't resist coming back for more.

- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty

Level up with a multi-channel approach

While interactive email is powerful on its own, the biggest gains come from using it as part of a multi-channel retention strategy that combines email, SMS, web, and more.

The interactive data you collect from emails—quiz responses, poll results, product interests—provides a goldmine of insights to power the rest of your repeat purchase efforts. Use that data for:

Use automated nurture streams

Build automated nurture streams that adjust messaging based on responses shared by subscribers in interactive emails.

For example:

  • Subscribers who engaged with a clothing brand's "Build Your Outfit" carousel could receive an automated email flow showcasing full looks with those pieces

  • Those who took a cooking/flavor quiz from a food brand could get AI-recommended recipes and product pairings

These tailored nurture streams feel personalized and keep your brand top of mind between purchases.

Send segmented campaigns

Leverage interactive data to build hyper-targeted segments for campaigns aimed at driving repeat purchases from specific groups, such as:

  • Lapsed buyers who showed interest in a new product line by taking part in an interactive quiz

  • High-value customers who may be great candidates for member pricing

  • Subscribers in certain regions or with particular affinities to localize offers

Email deliverability quiz template by Mailmodo

Use SMS outreach

The data doesn't just strengthen your email efforts—it can also turbocharge SMS campaigns. Use SMS as a complementary channel to:

  • Send reminders to purchase wishlist or cart items

  • Share exclusive flash sales based on interests

  • Invite subscribers to take a quiz or poll for a surprise

  • Announce new interactive email launches/experiences

SMS allows us to quickly re-engage subscribers who showed interest in an email campaign but didn't purchase. That one-two punch of channels is incredibly powerful.

- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty

Leverage web personalization

Interactive email data can even inform the experiences you deliver on your website through personalization and predictive analytics. Customize web versions of quizzes, galleries, and product recommendations to specific segments.

By connecting interactive email insights across your marketing ecosystem, you create a seamless, harmonized experience that keeps customers engaged and loyal.

A bridge to better retention

At the end of the day, interactive emails provide a bridge between making one-time purchases and becoming a loyal, repeat buyer. The engaging experiences make customers feel emotionally invested in your brand.

Pair that with nurture streams, segmentation, SMS outreach, and web personalization—all powered by interactive data—and you have a comprehensive strategy for maximizing customer lifetime value.

Interactive emails were a game-changer, but integrating that data across channels was truly transformative. We're able to deliver amazing experiences no matter where customers engage with our brand.

- Felicia Torres, Email Marketing Manager, Plush Beauty

In case you are looking for an easy interactive email marketing platform, do check out Mailmodo. We would love to help scale your retention and create some amazing interactive email campaigns.
You can try Mailmodo for free here.

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FAQs

Repeate purchase rate is important for businesses because it reflects the level of customer loyalty. A high RPR typically suggests that customers are satisfied with their initial purchase and are likely to stay with your brand for longer, contributing to long-term revenue and profitability.

Repeat purchase rate can be influenced by several factors including customer service, pricing, user experience, brand reputation and quality of your products.

Businesses should track their repeat purchase rate regularly, typically monthly or on a quarterly basis. It helps them monitor the effectiveness of their efforts.

Repeat purchase rate refers to customers who purchased again while customer retention rate refers to customers retained over time. RPR is more specific as it monitors only purchases as compared to CRR that refers any kind of engagement of the customer.

What should you do next?

You made it till the end! Here's what you can do next to grow your business:

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Get smarter with email resources

Free guides, ebooks, and other resources to master email marketing.

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Do interactive email marketing with Mailmodo

Send forms, carts, calendars, games and more within your emails to boost ROI.

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Consult an email expert

30-min free email consultation with an expert to fix your email marketing.

Table of contents

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What is repeat purchase rate?
How to increase repeat purchase rate
A bridge to better retention

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