Glossary
What is lapsed customer?
A lapsed customer is someone who used to visit regularly but has not returned within an expected window, commonly 45 days for a café (the Loonine default, adjustable from 1 to 365 days in the app), or two visit cycles for an appointment business.
Lapsed customers are the highest-return target in any loyalty programme, because they have already demonstrated they like the business. The practical difficulty is spotting them: without a system, a business notices a regular has vanished only months later, if at all. Loyalty platforms flag them automatically and let you reach exactly that group.
When is a customer lapsed?
A customer is lapsed once they have been absent for about three times their own normal gap between visits, which means lapse is defined per customer rather than as a fixed number of days for everyone.
| Normal pattern | Normal gap | Treat as lapsed after |
|---|---|---|
| Daily commuter | 1-2 days | ~7 days |
| Twice weekly | 3-4 days | ~14 days |
| Weekly | 7 days | ~21 days |
| Monthly | 30 days | ~90 days |
A single 45-day rule applied to everyone chases daily regulars six weeks too late and pesters monthly customers while their behaviour is still perfectly normal.
What should you do with the list?
Contact each person once, with a reason to return this week, and then stop. A second and third reminder converts almost nobody and generates opt-outs that remove those customers from every future campaign permanently.
The strongest message is usually a reminder of the progress they already have rather than a discount: it costs nothing and reactivates a goal the customer had already adopted.
See also
- Churn: Churn is the rate at which customers stop returning, and in a local business it is usually silent: customers rarely announce they have left, they simply stop appearing.
- Win-back campaign: A win-back campaign is a message sent specifically to customers who have stopped visiting, with the aim of restarting the habit before it is fully broken.
- Customer retention: Customer retention is the share of customers who return to a business over a given period, and it is usually far cheaper to improve than customer acquisition.
Further reading
How to measure repeat customer rate (and what to do with it)
The formula for repeat customer rate, the window to measure it over, what a good figure looks like by industry, and the two numbers that are more useful.
How to win back customers who stopped coming
A practical playbook for identifying lapsed customers, choosing the right moment to reach them, and writing a message that brings them back.