The second visit is the threshold that predicts customer lifetime value more reliably than any other signal. A customer who visits a restaurant twice in the first 30 days returns, on average, 6.1 more times in the following year. A customer who visits once and does not return within 30 days returns only 0.8 times.
What moves the threshold forward
The single intervention with the largest measurable effect on the second-visit rate is a wallet-pass loyalty card issued at or immediately after the first visit. In the HardCards data set, the second-visit rate for card holders runs 34% higher than for non-card customers in the same cohort.
Why it works
The loyalty card is not a discount mechanism. It is a memory mechanism. The push notification, the visible reward balance, and the wallet surface all act as prompts that bring the business back to mind during a decision window when it would otherwise have been forgotten.
