How installments affect CLV
Most pay-later solutions own a piece of your customer relationship — they collect your customer’s data and market to them, sending them wherever drives the next transaction. Whether that’s back to you is not their concern.
Splitit is different. Because it’s white-label, the customer who uses installments on your site associates that experience with you.The trust and convenience of paying over time on their existing card compounds into loyalty to your brand, not a third party platform.
Splitit merchants see an average order value of over $1,000. Customers making purchases at that level, repeatedly, are your most valuable customers. Keeping that relationship yours is what makes card-linked installments a CLV tool, not just a conversion one.
Strategies to increase CLV with installments
Reinforce the experience post-purchase
The period immediately after a purchase is when brand perception is formed. A customer who just spread the cost with no friction is in a positive frame of mind. Use that moment.
A post-purchase email that confirms their payment plan, reminds them of the terms, and sets clear expectations for upcoming payments builds trust and reduces anxiety. A customer who feels confident about how their payments work is more likely to return.
Upsell during the repayment plan
A customer in an active installment plan is already receiving payment confirmation and reminder emails throughout the plan, which means you have a recurring, expected touchpoint with someone who is actively engaged with your brand and already comfortable with how installments work.
A payment email that includes a single relevant product recommendation reaches a customer at exactly the right moment. The leap to starting another plan on something they already want is a much shorter one than it would be for a cold audience.
Keep the recommendation relevant to what they bought. Someone repaying a camera is a natural audience for a lens or a bag. Someone repaying a sofa is a natural audience for a coffee table.
Make installments part of your repeat purchase communications
Customers who’ve used installments once are your warmest audience for using them again. Any repeat purchase email — seasonal campaigns, new arrivals, anniversary sends — should remind them that installments are available. A customer who bought a sofa last year doesn’t need to be sold on installments, they just need to know they can use them again for the dining table.
Reactivate lapsed customers with installments as the hook
A customer who hasn’t bought in 12 months may have something in mind that they’ve been putting off. An installment-led reactivation campaign, one that leads with the monthly price of a relevant product rather than the full price, gives them another reason to come back.
This works particularly well for high-ticket categories where the barrier to purchase is often psychological.
Other ways to increase CLV with installments
These strategies complement installments in building CLV:
- Loyalty programs — reward customers for coming back. Card-linked installments add another layer — because your customer is paying on their existing credit card, they earn their card’s rewards points on the full purchase value while spreading the cost. Combined with your own loyalty programme, they’re getting two sets of rewards on a purchase they didn’t have to pay for upfront.
- Post-purchase onboarding — particularly relevant for product categories with accessories, consumables, or upgrades. A customer who bought a coffee machine is a future customer for beans, grinders, and a better machine in two years.
- Personalized recommendations — returning customers should see products relevant to what they’ve bought before, shown with the monthly installment price. The combination of relevance and accessible pricing is a strong driver of repeat purchase.
