Customer retention is the practice of keeping existing customers active and purchasing over time, usually measured as the share of customers who remain across a given period.
Category
Marketing Automation, Metrics
Also known as
retention
It is the counterpart to acquisition, and typically cheaper: reducing churn among current customers often returns more than winning new ones.
In practice
Retention is won in the weeks before a customer would have lapsed, not after. Define what at-risk looks like in your data, such as days since last order or a drop in engagement, and trigger on it early; a win-back sent after someone has already gone is a harder, costlier message.
Discuss this term
A question, a bug, or outdated info? Tell us — it goes straight to the team, and we keep the glossary current.