The customer win-back glossary: every term in plain English

Every term you’ll meet in customer win-back and win-back mail, defined the way we’d explain it across a table. Words in links go deeper.

Attribution

Deciding whether a returned customer counts as won back. Honest rules match the same customer within a bounded window of a touch — and organic returns stay unclaimed. The full logic.

Attribution window

The time limit on claiming a return. An order months after the last touch is ordinary shopping, not your card’s trophy.

Bleed

Extra artwork past a print’s trim (0.125″ per side) so cutting drift never leaves white edges. Design specs, explained.

Cadence

A customer’s natural rhythm between orders, learned from their own history — the clock lapse detection measures against.

Cancel window

The hold between queuing a win-back postcard and printing it. A return inside the window cancels the card — unprinted, unbilled.

Capped amount

The ceiling on usage charges approved up front — Shopify refuses charges beyond it. How billing works.

Escalation ladder

The per-customer win-back sequence: email, richer email, then the postcard for high-LTV holdouts — each step standing down instantly on a return. The program shape.

Holdout

A random slice of lapsed customers deliberately left untouched, so the treated-vs-holdout gap reveals what win-back caused. Why it matters.

Incremental lift

Returns your program caused, above the customers who would have come back anyway. The honest version of "won-back revenue."

Lapse (lapsed customer)

A customer whose silence has clearly broken their own ordering rhythm — best defined as a multiple of their personal gap, not a flat number of days. Cadence beats calendar.

Lapse threshold

The patience dial: how many multiples of a customer’s typical gap pass before win-back begins.

LTV (lifetime value)

Everything a customer has spent with you. In win-back, the gate that decides who earns the $1.50 postcard.

LTV threshold (postcard bar)

The lifetime-spend line above which a lapsed customer gets the card rung. Set it with arithmetic.

Open pool

Lapsed customers currently inside an active win-back cycle — detected, being worked, not yet returned or exhausted.

Organic return

A lapsed customer who comes back with no prompting. The baseline every honest measurement subtracts.

Return (won back)

A lapsed customer placing a new order. The event the whole program exists to cause — and to count honestly.

Safe zone

The margin inside a print’s trim where content survives cutting drift — plus the reserved back area where USPS prints address and barcode.

Skip reason

The recorded explanation when a touch deliberately did not send: returned first, below the LTV bar, unsubscribed, unmailable address, spend cap reached.

Spend cap

A monthly mail budget set in the app, checked before each card — your self-imposed limit under Shopify’s capped amount.

Suppression list

Addresses the tool must never email again (unsubscribes, complaints). Outranks every ladder, forever.

Usage charge (usage record)

A per-card fee recorded against your Shopify subscription as it happens — how pay-per-postcard billing lands on one invoice.

Win-back offer

The incentive on a win-back touch — powerful, and dangerous when predictable. Offers without training churn.