Customers grouped by lifetime spend bucket. Underpins lookalike + VIP campaigns.
At a glance
Customer base segmented by lifetime-spend tier (typically VIP, Mid, Low, Lapsed). The strategic-marketing view: who are your customers by spend tier, and what share of revenue do they drive?
| What it counts | Customers grouped by lifetime spend bucket using Customer.amountSpent. Default tiers: VIP (top 10% by lifetime spend), Mid (next 30%), Low (next 40%), Lapsed (no order in 2× personal cadence). |
| API endpoint | Admin GraphQL. Customer.amountSpent, Customer.numberOfOrders, Customer.lastOrderId. Computed in OpenSearch from indexed customer + order data. |
| VAT / tax treatment | Customer.amountSpent is presented in store currency, post-tax for tax-inclusive stores (UK / EU), pre-tax for tax-exclusive stores (US). The card uses Shopify’s value as-is. |
| Shipping | Included (Shopify’s amountSpent includes shipping). |
| Discounts | Already deducted (post-discount). |
| Refunds | Shopify does NOT deduct refunds from amountSpent; a customer who refunded heavily appears in their pre-refund tier. Refund-adjusted variant on roadmap. |
| Cancelled / voided orders | Excluded by Shopify; cancellations don’t contribute to amountSpent. |
| Currency | Shopify reports amountSpent in store currency. Multi-currency stores see customer-spend in mixed presentment currencies; filter to a single currency for clean reads. |
| Channels / sources | Lifetime spend across all channels for each customer record. POS-account customers contribute. POS-guest customers do not exist in this card (no record). |
| Tier definition | Configurable per workspace; defaults match merchant industry conventions. Custom segments (Subscriber, Wholesale, First-purchase-only) can be added via the segment-rules manifest. |
| Time window | 90D snapshot date; tier definitions use full-history customer data. |
| Alert trigger | None on the count; pair with Churn Risk for the lapsed-tier alert. |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
Worked example
A US multi-channel home goods brand on Shopify Plus. 28,400 customers in lifetime database. Snapshot date: 12 May 26.| Segment | Customers | Share | Avg lifetime spend | Tier revenue (lifetime) | Share of total LTV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VIP (top 10%) | 2,840 | 10.0% | $1,420 | $4.03M | 52.8% |
| Mid (30%) | 8,520 | 30.0% | $310 | $2.64M | 34.6% |
| Low (40%) | 11,360 | 40.0% | $68 | $0.77M | 10.1% |
| Lapsed (20%, no purchase 2× cadence) | 5,680 | 20.0% | $32 (frozen) | $0.18M | 2.4% |
| Total | 28,400 | 100% | $269 | $7.62M | 100% |
- VIPs at 10% drive 53% of LTV. This is the classic Pareto distribution and is why segment-aware retention is the highest-ROI marketing investment for most brands. A 5% improvement in VIP retention is worth more than a 50% improvement in Low-tier retention.
- Lapsed at 20% is the win-back opportunity. 5,680 customers who used to buy and stopped. Even a 5% reactivation rate is 284 reactivated customers; if average reactivated-customer LTV recovers to Low-tier (19,300 in incremental LTV from a single quarterly campaign.
- The Mid segment is the most actionable for upgrades. 8,520 customers averaging 1,000+) is +$700 in LTV. A targeted “loyalty unlock” or VIP-membership campaign aimed at the top 1,000 of Mid is usually the single most profitable retention play of the year.
- Low-tier is high-volume, low-priority. 11,360 customers at $68 average. Cost-per-touchpoint matters here; automated email flows yes, expensive direct mail no. The risk is not under-marketing them; it is over-investing per head.
- The card hides refund-driven distortion. A customer who spent 4,500 still shows in VIP at $5,000 (Shopify’s
amountSpentis gross). Cross-reference Top Refunded for VIP customers with high refund rates; they may be tier-inflating.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Segmentation is the strategy lens. Pair with these to operationalise:| Card | Why pair it with Customer Segments | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Count | Total denominator. | Tier shares × total customers = headcount per tier. |
| Repeat Rate | Tier-level retention. | VIP retention is normally near-100%; Mid and Low retention is the real growth lever. |
| Churn Risk | Pre-lapse signal. | At-risk customers in the VIP tier are the highest-priority save list. |
| Order Frequency | How often each tier buys. | VIPs typically order 4 to 8× / year; Low tier 1 to 2×. |
| Top Customers | Within VIP, who is the very top 1%? | The “named accounts” list, often worth manual outreach. |
| Total Revenue | Tier revenue vs total. | Quantifies the Pareto distribution. |
klaviyo.klaviyo_segments | Klaviyo’s email-based segments. | Cross-reference your VIP segment in Vortex IQ with Klaviyo’s; expect ~60-80% overlap. Discrepancies point to email-engagement vs purchase-tier divergence. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Shopify Admin: Customers → Customer Segments → build segments by Total spent is greater than X. Shopify’s segments are absolute-threshold; this card uses percentile-based tiers. The top-10% percentile boundary in Vortex IQ corresponds to a specific dollar threshold today; in Shopify, you would set that threshold manually. Other Shopify Admin views that look similar:- Customers → Customer Segments → “Customers who haven’t ordered in a while”: a Lapsed-equivalent segment. Aligns roughly with this card’s Lapsed tier but uses a fixed time threshold rather than personal cadence.
- Apps like Klaviyo, LoyaltyLion: have richer segmenting based on email engagement, browse behaviour, etc. Useful complements; expect 60 to 80% overlap with this card on the VIP and Lapsed tiers.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tier definition | Big difference | Shopify uses absolute thresholds you choose; this card uses percentile-based tiers (top 10%, next 30%, etc). Re-running the card with absolute thresholds is on the configuration roadmap. |
| Lapsed cadence | Big difference | This card’s Lapsed = 2× personal cadence; Shopify’s “haven’t ordered” filter uses a fixed days threshold (e.g. 90, 180). |
| Refund treatment | Both ignore refunds | Shopify’s amountSpent ignores refunds; this card uses Shopify’s value as-is. The refund-adjusted variant is on roadmap. |
| Customer merging | Transient | Same as other customer-level metrics; pre-merge data may show duplicates, post-merge reconciles. |
| Multi-store | Per store | Each Shopify store has independent customer records; cross-store rollups require manual aggregation today. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
klaviyo.klaviyo_segments | Cross-reference for engagement-based segments | Email engagement and purchase tier are correlated but not identical; an engaged-but-low-spending customer falls into different tiers across the two systems. |
google_analytics.ga_user_engagement | Site-engagement signal | High-engagement low-tier customers are interesting upgrade candidates; low-engagement VIPs are at-risk signal. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why is my VIP segment so small? By definition, VIP is the top 10% of customers. If you have 1,000 customers, VIP is 100. The percentile-based definition keeps the segment actionable; absolute-threshold variants are on roadmap. My VIP threshold seems too low / too high. Can I change it? Yes, the segment-rules manifest supports custom thresholds per workspace. Common alternatives: top-5% absolute (richer cohort), >500 (behaviour + spend hybrid). Why does the Lapsed segment overlap with VIP? A customer who used to spend a lot but hasn’t ordered recently appears in both VIP (by lifetime spend) and Lapsed (by inactivity). The card defaults to mutual exclusivity (Lapsed takes priority for displayed tier); reach the at-risk-VIP cohort via Churn Risk for the targeted save list. Refunds aren’t deducted, isn’t that a problem? Yes, for stores with high refund rates. A customer who spent 4,500 still shows in VIP. For most apparel and homeware stores with refund rates under 10%, the distortion is minor. For categories with structurally high return rates (formalwear, luxury fashion), use the refund-adjusted variant on roadmap. Multi-store, do customers carry tier across stores? No. Each store has independent customer records and lifetime values. A customer with 500 on US store appears as Mid in both, not as VIP combined. Cross-store rollups are on roadmap. Multi-currency, how does spend get compared? Shopify reportsamountSpent in the customer’s spending currency. Multi-currency stores see customers in mixed currencies, which can produce misleading tier comparisons (a £500 customer is a higher LTV than a $500 customer). Filter to a single presentment currency before tiering for clean reads.
Shopify Plus vs basic, any difference?
Plus stores have access to Customer Segments (a native Shopify feature) which can drive automation flows. The card’s tier definition is consistent across plans, but Plus stores can sync this card’s tiers to Klaviyo / native Shopify Email automations more easily.
Refresh cadence?
Daily snapshot. The percentile boundaries recompute each ingest cycle as the customer base evolves; an individual customer’s tier is stable day-to-day unless they cross a boundary.
B2B vs DTC?
B2B customers (companies) typically dominate the VIP tier with much higher lifetime spend than DTC. A mixed B2B + DTC store should consider tiering separately: a B2B-only VIP threshold plus a DTC-only VIP threshold. The single-tier-per-store default may push all DTC customers into the Low or Mid tiers.
The card alerted (Lapsed share rising), what should I do?
- Pull the Lapsed list, sorted by historical LTV (highest first).
- For top 5% by LTV: personal email from founder or account manager.
- For next 20%: targeted win-back voucher (15-20% with 14-day expiry).
- For long tail: automated win-back flow.
- Diagnose root cause: stockout on a hero SKU, quality complaints, price increase, competitor launch. Fix the input, not just the symptom.