You know the regulars by name. You know what they smoke, when they usually come in, maybe even what they drink. But there’s a difference between knowing your customers and understanding your customer base. TORO tracks every transaction, every visit, every dollar spent — and it can turn all of that into a picture of who’s keeping your business alive and who’s quietly slipping away.
The Numbers That Actually Matter #
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the big one. It’s the total amount a customer has spent with you over their entire relationship. Here’s the thing most shop owners already feel but haven’t quantified: your top 20% of customers probably drive about 80% of your revenue. CLV puts a dollar amount on that gut feeling. When you know that a particular customer has spent $14,000 over three years, you treat them differently than someone who’s bought one stick.
Purchase Frequency tells you how often people come back. Some customers are in every week. Some drop in once a month. Some bought a sampler pack eighteen months ago and you haven’t seen them since. Each group needs something different from you.
Average Transaction Value is straightforward — what’s the typical spend per visit? More importantly, is it trending up or down? If your average ticket is shrinking, maybe your regulars are trading down, or maybe you’re attracting more casual buyers. Neither is necessarily bad, but you want to know.
Churn is the one nobody likes to talk about. These are customers who used to buy from you but stopped. TORO can tell you exactly when someone last visited. If a regular who came in weekly hasn’t been around in two months, something happened. Maybe they moved. Maybe they found another shop. Maybe they just need a nudge.
New vs Returning shows the ratio of fresh faces to repeat customers. A healthy shop has both. All new customers and no repeats means you’re not retaining anyone. All repeats and no new customers means you’re not growing. You want a steady stream of both.
RFM Segmentation #
This sounds technical but it’s actually simple. TORO scores every customer on three things:
- Recency — when did they last buy something?
- Frequency — how often do they buy?
- Monetary — how much do they spend?
Combine those three scores and your customers fall into natural groups. Champions are your best — they buy often, spend a lot, and were in recently. Loyal Customers are consistent buyers who may not spend as much per visit but never miss a week. At-Risk customers used to be great but haven’t been around lately. Lost customers haven’t walked through your door in months.
The magic is that each segment tells you what to do next. Champions get VIP treatment — early access to new arrivals, private event invitations, the premium experience. At-risk customers get a win-back text, maybe a personalized offer. Lost customers might get one last Hail Mary message before you stop spending energy on them. You’re not guessing anymore — you’re making decisions based on real behavior.
Where to Find All of This #
Everything lives in the Advanced Reporting Module:
- ARM > Customer Lifetime Value — total spend per customer, ranked
- ARM > Purchase Frequency — visit patterns and buying cadence
- ARM > Churn Analysis — who’s stopped coming in and when
- ARM > Customer Acquisition — new customer growth over time
- ARM > RFM Segmentation — the full segment breakdown
- ARM > Customer Demographics — profile data across your base
- ARM > Customer Trend Comparison — side-by-side customer behavior over time
Individual Customer Insights #
The reports above show you the big picture across your entire customer base. But sometimes you need to zoom in on one person. Open any customer’s account and click View Favorites to see their personal buying patterns — their most-purchased items and brands, average spend, and visit frequency.
For cigar customers, TORO goes further with a Cigar Profile that automatically analyzes their recent purchases to surface their preferred strength, size range, price range, and favorite country of origin. And from that profile, you can launch the TORO Cigar Finder — a discovery tool that uses the customer’s preferences as a starting point to recommend similar cigars they haven’t tried yet. It’s the difference between guessing what someone might like and knowing what they will.
Turning Data Into Action #
Knowing the numbers is step one. Here’s what to actually do with them:
Send win-back campaigns to at-risk customers. A simple “We miss you” text with a small incentive can bring people back. TORO’s SMS module makes this easy — filter by last visit date and send a targeted message.
Give your champions the VIP treatment. These people are keeping your lights on. They should feel it. First access to limited releases, invitations to events, a personal thank-you now and then. It doesn’t have to cost much — recognition goes a long way.
Track new customer acquisition monthly. Are you growing? If you added 30 new accounts last month and only 15 this month, figure out why. Did a marketing effort end? Did a competitor open nearby?
Watch your churn rate like a hawk. If more customers are leaving than joining, something is wrong. Maybe it’s pricing, maybe it’s selection, maybe it’s the experience. The data won’t tell you why they left, but it’ll tell you that they left — and how many.
Compare CLV across account levels. If you have a membership or loyalty program, are those members actually spending more than non-members? If not, the program might need rethinking. If they are, you’ve got proof that the program works and a reason to push enrollment harder.
The customers who spend the most, visit the most often, and stay the longest — those are the people you build your business around. TORO gives you the tools to find them and keep them.
