{"id":141630,"title":"What a retailer’s customer list tells investors before the results do","publisher":"Share Talk","author":"sharetalk","published":"2026-10-08T15:25:32+00:00","modified":"2026-10-08T15:25:32+00:00","canonical_url":"https://www.share-talk.com/what-a-retailers-customer-list-tells-investors-before-the-results-do/","markdown_url":"https://www.share-talk.com/what-a-retailers-customer-list-tells-investors-before-the-results-do.md","json_url":"https://www.share-talk.com/what-a-retailers-customer-list-tells-investors-before-the-results-do.json","category":"Blogs","categories":["Blogs","e-commerce","Technology","Technology, Media & Telecoms"],"tags":["active customer","ASOS","best email marketing software","internet sales","KPI table","online retailer","SMS lists"],"featured_image":"https://i0.wp.com/www.share-talk.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Picture1.jpg?fit=600%2C338&quality=89&ssl=1","format":"news","language":"en-GB","content":"When an online retailer publishes a trading update, the headline is revenue: up, down, ahead of or behind guidance. The explanation usually sits further down, in a small table of customer numbers that’s easy to skim past on the way to the dividend line. Active customers, how often they order, how much they spend each time. Multiply the three together and you’re most of the way back to the revenue line, and each one moves for a different reason.\n\nOrder frequency is the one that tells you most about loyalty, because it measures customers who came back without the retailer having to win them again. Online retailers mostly bring them back through their own email and SMS lists, which cost far less per message than a paid click.\n\nPicking the [best email marketing software](https://www.omnisend.com/) is a decision taken in the marketing department, yet its results turn up in that frequency line a few months later, and that’s where an investor can check whether the retention story in the chairman’s statement holds up.\n\n## What is an active customer?\n\nDefinitions vary, so the first job is to find the one the company uses. ASOS, for example, counts a customer as active if they’ve shopped in the last 12 financial months. Its [interim results for the 26 weeks to 2 March 2025](https://data.fca.org.uk/artefacts/NSM/RNS/5626915.html) showed active customers falling 16% to 18.0 million, while average order frequency stayed flat at 3.41 and the average basket rose 3% to £42.38.\n\nRead together, the figures show that on average the customers who stayed ordered as often as before and spent a little more each time. The drop came from customers leaving the base, which is a different problem from loyal shoppers going quiet, and it calls for a different question on the results call.\n\n## Why a repeat order costs less than a new one\n\nA new customer usually arrives through paid search or social ads, bought click by click at auction. The first order often does little more than cover what it cost to win it. The profit comes from the second and third orders, prompted by an email about new stock or a text when a favourite item is back. The ONS series on [internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales](https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/timeseries/j4mc/drsi) stood at 27.3% for Great Britain in August 2026. As more of retail moves online, more of each marketing budget goes on the ads that win first orders. A business that can reach its existing customers directly spends less of each pound of revenue on acquiring it.\n\n![](https://www.share-talk.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Picture2-300x169.jpg)\n\n## What to look for in a trading update\n\nBefore reading the revenue paragraph of a half-year statement, scroll straight to the KPI table and ask three things.\n\nIs the active customer count rising, and is the company saying why? Is order frequency holding up while the customer base changes? And does the marketing commentary talk about spending on new customers, or about bringing existing ones back through its own channels: email, an app, a loyalty scheme?\n\nIf revenue grows while frequency slips, the growth is coming from new customers, and new customers cost marketing money to find. If frequency holds while the customer base shrinks, the regulars are still ordering and the question is why the others left.\n\nPut that question to management on the results call, and note their answer beside the figures.\n\n## Where the numbers stop helping\n\nCompanies choose their own definitions, and some don’t publish frequency at all. Comparing one retailer’s active customers with another’s can mislead when one counts twelve months and the other six. The safer comparison is the same company against itself, half-year by half-year, so keep the definition line from each statement pasted beside the figure in your notes."}