The reorder marketing glossary: every term in plain English

Every term you’ll meet in reorder marketing and direct mail, defined the way we’d explain it across a table. Words in links go deeper.

Attribution

Deciding which marketing touch gets credit for an order. Honest versions match the same customer and product within a bounded window; the gold standard is measuring incremental lift with a holdout.

Attribution window

The time limit on claiming credit — e.g., an order counts only if it lands within 45 days of the reminder. Without a window, every future order gets claimed forever.

AOV (average order value)

Total revenue divided by order count. The denominator in every direct mail breakeven calculation.

Bleed

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

Cadence

A customer’s natural repurchase rhythm — "every 34 days" — learned from the gaps between their own orders.

Campaign

A one-time send to a chosen segment, at a moment you pick. Contrast with automation; see campaigns vs. automation.

Capped amount

The ceiling on an app’s usage charges that a merchant approves up front — Shopify refuses charges beyond it. How app billing works.

Cart permalink

A URL that opens a Shopify cart pre-loaded with specific items and quantities on the store’s own domain — the "one tap from scan to checkout" mechanism.

Churn (quiet churn)

Customers drifting away without an event — for consumables, usually a run-out nobody caught rather than a decision anyone made.

Consent (marketing consent)

A customer’s recorded permission to receive marketing email. Required for email, not for postal mail. The rules per channel.

DPI (dots per inch)

Print resolution. 300 DPI is crisp; below ~180 prints visibly soft. For a 4×6 card that means 1875×1275-pixel artwork.

Holdout

A random slice of customers deliberately excluded from marketing so the treated-vs-held-out gap reveals what the marketing caused. Holdouts, explained.

Incremental lift

The extra behavior marketing created above the would-have-happened-anyway baseline. The only number that answers "did it work?" rather than "was it nearby?"

Insert card

A printed card dropped into a parcel — here, one carrying a durable reorder QR, designed to outlive the box it arrived in.

Lead time

Days between sending a reminder and the predicted run-out — margin for the customer to act and the parcel to ship.

LTV (lifetime value)

Everything a customer has spent with you (historical) or is expected to (predictive). The gate for expensive touches like postcards. LTV in plain English.

Mailer

One physical mail piece — in this app’s billing, one 4×6 postcard, printed and postage-paid, billed at the flat per-card rate.

Reorder marketing (replenishment marketing)

Reminding customers to restock the product they bought, timed to when they run out. The full guide.

Response rate

Recipients who acted divided by recipients reached. The most-lied-about number in direct mail; measure it with per-recipient QR codes, not vibes.

Run-out (predicted run-out)

The estimated date a customer’s supply is exhausted, from their own purchase intervals and quantities. How the prediction works.

Safe zone

The margin inside a print’s trim where text and logos are safe from cutting drift — plus, on a postcard back, the reserved area where USPS prints address and barcode.

Segment

A defined slice of customers — "spent $100+", "bought product X", "no order in 90 days" — the who of any campaign.

Snooze

A reminder response meaning "later, not never" — defers the next touch without opting the customer out.

Spend cap

A monthly budget the merchant sets inside an app, checked before each billable action — a self-imposed limit under Shopify’s capped amount.

Suppression list

The list of addresses a tool must never contact (unsubscribes, complaints). It outranks every campaign, automation, and good intention.

Usage charge (usage record)

A per-thing fee an app records against your Shopify subscription as it happens — how pay-per-postcard billing appears on one invoice.

Win-back

Marketing aimed at customers who’ve gone quiet, to earn the next order before the relationship fully lapses.