Customer Retention

Retention should be managed from recorded customer outcomes, not generic benchmarks or a promised return on discount spend. The current seller toolkit is marketplace loyalty, marketplace gift cards, seller-owned distribution links, accurate fulfilment, and order-linked service.

Current toolkit

Tool	Current seller role	Important boundary
Marketplace loyalty	Understand how eligible orders can earn buyer points and how eligible loyalty coupons are funded at checkout.	The buyer wallet and current reward catalogue are marketplace-owned; sellers do not configure reward tiers.
Gift cards	Fulfil product orders that a buyer pays for partly or fully with marketplace gift-card balance.	Gift cards are marketplace-wide, not seller-branded campaigns.
Distribution links	Share tracked links to approved products or your seller context and inspect attributed records.	Attribution is not proof of incremental demand or customer retention.
Orders, Messages, returns, and ratings	Resolve concrete product, fulfilment, and service problems.	Use the actual order-linked workflow; do not infer customer intent from an aggregate alone.

Coupon, campaign, customer-analytics, and RFM targeting workbenches are deferred. See Coupon Offers and Feature Availability.

A source-backed operating loop

1. Keep product descriptions, stock, shipping promises, and tracking accurate.
2. Clear order and message actions promptly.
3. Review return, dispute, and private-feedback records for repeated, supportable problems.
4. Correct the product, packaging, fulfilment, or communication issue that the records support.
5. Share an approved product through a Distribution link only when the full order economics still work.
6. Reconcile attributed sales and fees in Financial Records. Treat them as observed marketplace activity, not a causal lift claim.

What not to infer

The current product does not establish that:

• acquiring a customer costs a fixed multiple of retaining one;
• loyalty or gift cards increase conversion, order value, or repeat purchase by a stated amount;
• an attributed link caused a sale that would not otherwise have happened; or
• a coupon campaign returns a fixed number of dollars per dollar discounted.

Use your own accounting and customer records to test those questions for your business. Keep the date range, eligible population, costs, refunds, and comparison method with any conclusion.

Monthly performance review

• Reconcile orders, refunds, fees, and gift-card or loyalty funding shown in the available records.
• Group repeated return or message reasons and fix the highest-confidence cause.
• Check that promoted listings remain approved, in stock, and deliverable.
• Compare Distribution-link activity with your own channel costs without treating attribution as causation.
• Record unavailable data as unavailable rather than zero.

Related: Reading the Current Seller Workbench and Ratings and Customer Feedback.