What is churn risk?
Churn risk is the likelihood that a customer will stop purchasing from your brand. It's a predictive measure that helps you identify which customers are at risk of becoming inactive before they actually leave. When you understand why customers churn, you can take proactive steps to re-engage them.
Churn risk involves more than identifying customers who haven't purchased recently. It's about recognizing patterns in customer behavior that signal disengagement. A B2C CRM with a built-in customer data platform (CDP) can analyze factors like purchase frequency, recency, and engagement levels to calculate churn risk scores, giving you the insight you need to intervene with the right message at the right moment.
Why churn risk matters for B2C brands
Identifying churn risk early gives you a chance to support customer relationships before they fade. Here are several ways this insight can help your team:
- Prioritized focus: Your team can quickly see which customers may need extra attention, helping you allocate time and resources more thoughtfully.
- More relevant outreach: When you understand a customer’s history and signals, you can send messages and offers that feel more timely and useful.
- Customer experience continuity: Recognizing early signs of disengagement lets you step in with guidance or value, reducing friction in the journey.
- Planning confidence: Visibility into churn patterns helps teams create more realistic schedules, campaign plans, and coordination across channels.
How to calculate churn risk
Churn risk scores are based on behavioral patterns that indicate a customer is drifting away from your brand. A CDP analyzes multiple data points to estimate the probability that someone will stop purchasing. Here are a few of the factors a churn risk prediction model may consider:
- Purchase recency: The time since someone's last order directly influences risk level. The longer the gap, the higher the risk.
- Purchase frequency: A customer's typical buying cadence provides important context. Someone who usually orders monthly but hasn't purchased in 3 months shows elevated risk.
- Engagement levels: Marketing opens, link clicks, and site visits can signal interest. Declining engagement often precedes churn.
- Average order value: Changes in spending patterns can indicate shifting priorities or budget constraints that affect future purchases.
Your CDP continuously updates these scores as new behavioral data comes in, so you're always working with current information about who's at risk.
Churn risk vs. customer lifecycle stages
Churn risk is different from standard customer lifecycle stages. Lifecycle stages tell you where someone is in their journey with your brand: new customer, repeat buyer, VIP. Churn risk tells you whether they're about to leave that journey entirely.
You can have a VIP customer with high churn risk, or a one-time buyer with low churn risk. The combination of lifecycle stage and churn risk gives you a more complete picture of customer health and helps you prioritize your retention efforts.
How to use churn risk data
Once you identify customers at risk of churning, you can take action to re-engage them. Here are some practical approaches:
- Create targeted segments: Group customers by churn risk level so you can tailor your marketing approach accordingly. High-risk customers might respond to stronger incentives, while medium-risk customers might just need a gentle reminder.
- Trigger automated flows: Set up flows that send automatically when someone's churn risk increases. These win-back automations could include exclusive offers, product recommendations based on past purchases, or reminders about your brand's mission.
- Test retention strategies: Use your churn risk segments to test different approaches and see which ones resonate most with different groups of people.
Klaviyo Data Platform automatically calculates churn risk for every customer profile, giving you real-time visibility into who may be at risk of leaving. You can segment by churn risk, trigger automated retention flows, and personalize your approach based on each customer's behavior.
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