The 45-day rule: when a repeat customer counts as at-risk

A customer who churns doesn't send a notice. The only signal available from order history is silence: no new order where one used to show up regularly. The question is how long that silence has to run before it's worth acting on.

Why 45 days specifically

45 days is a reasonable default because it's long enough to rule out a normal reorder gap for most retail categories, but short enough that a win-back email or a discount still has a real chance of landing before the customer has fully moved on to a competitor. Waiting for 90 days of silence before reaching out usually means reaching out too late.

It's a starting point, not a rule

The right threshold depends on how often your customers naturally reorder. A coffee subscription and a furniture store don't share a reorder cycle, so the same 45-day cutoff won't mean the same thing for both. Reasonable practice is to start with a default, then adjust it once actual order-gap data from your own store makes the natural cycle clear.

What to do with the list

An at-risk list is only useful if something happens because of it. Common next steps are a personal check-in email, a small loyalty discount, or simply making sure the customer isn't accidentally excluded from marketing lists due to an old preference setting. The list's value comes from being small and current, not from being comprehensive.