Average customer metrics are mostly useless. The Customers tab gives you the segmented, cohorted view you need to actually understand who's buying and whether your store is a compounding asset.
RFM segmentation
RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, Monetary. Each customer gets a score on each dimension. We group them into 10 actionable segments:
- Champions — bought recently, buy often, spend a lot.
- Loyal — regular buyers, high lifetime value.
- Potential loyalists — bought recently, 1-2 orders.
- New — first order within the last N days.
- Promising — one order, early signs of loyalty.
- At risk — used to buy often, hasn't in a while.
- Can't lose them — high-value customers who haven't bought in a while.
- Hibernating — low frequency, low recent activity.
- About to sleep — declining activity.
- Lost — haven't bought in a very long time.
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Cohort analysis
The full cohort matrix lives under Reports → Cohort analysis. It groups customers by the month of their first order and tracks their spend over the months that follow — answering “are the customers I acquired in January still buying in August?” You can switch the metric (LTV, retention, orders, AOV), accumulate or view period-over-period, and split by order type. See Reports.
For a compounding brand, you want later cohorts to spend as much or more than earlier ones, sustained over time. If early cohorts show a long flat tail and later ones drop off fast, your customer quality is declining — usually a sign of aggressive ad-driven acquisition.
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Lifetime Value (LTV)
Computed as the average total_spent across all customers. Compare to your CAC (customer acquisition cost) to know whether you have a sustainable business:
- LTV < CAC — you're burning money on every customer. Fix immediately.
- LTV ≈ CAC — break-even. OK short-term, not scalable.
- LTV > 3× CAC — healthy for most DTC.
- LTV > 5× CAC — excellent, ready to scale ad spend.
Repeat-buyer rate (Returning %)
Percentage of customers who've placed 2+ orders. For most commodity DTC, this is 15-25%. For subscription-adjacent or refill-heavy brands, should be 40%+. Use it to benchmark your retention against the category.
Subscription detection
For stores using Recharge, Skio, Loop, or native Shopify Subscriptions, Ecom Forward auto-detects subscription orders by inspecting order tags and line-item properties. No configuration needed — if the tags are there, we detect.
For stores marked as subscription or hybrid (set on the Stores page), the Performance page also shows a subscription revenue strip: “Subscription revenue: €X (Y% of orders)”.
Top customers list
A ranked list of your highest-lifetime-spend customers. Useful for:
- Identifying VIPs who deserve personal outreach.
- Finding “whales” that distort average-based metrics.
- Exporting for CRM imports (email, shipment bundles, thank-you notes).
Multi-store view
The “All stores” selector aggregates customers across stores. If a customer exists on multiple stores (same email), they're deduplicated for LTV calculations — their lifetime spend sums across stores.