Marsello glossary

This glossary explains the core terms, metrics, and calculations you'll see across Marsello. Use it to understand what each term means and how it's used across analytics.

📝Note: For a full breakdown of each analytics dashboard, check out our guides.

Core terms

Customers (previously members)

Anyone in your Marsello database with an email address or mobile number. Customers are known individuals for whom you’ve begun collecting contact details, demographic and purchase data.

Orders

A completed purchase synced from a connected POS or eCommerce platform. Orders' date timestamps are currently being calculated based on the UTC timezone.

Sales (previously revenue)

The total monetary value of orders synced from your Point-of-Sale and eCommerce platforms. Sales figures include tax, are shown post-discount, and do not exclude cancelled or voided orders. Currency is displayed in your local currency with '$' displayed as the monetary symbol.

What sales figures include, by sales platform

Tax	All platforms' sales include tax
Shipping	Shopify excludes shipping WooCommerce includes shipping BigCommerce includes shipping tax, excludes shipping base cost POS platforms have no associated shipping cost
Discounts	All platforms' sales are post-discount
Refunds/returns	Shopify excludes refunds All other platforms do not exclude refunds
Cancelled/void:	All platforms do not exclude cancelled/void orders

Attached and Unattached Customers

An order may or may not have a customer linked to it. An order is attached to a customer when it's linked to a customer's profile. If no customer is linked, the order is unattached (this is also called a guest checkout).

Sales platform (also known as integration)

The connected POS or eCommerce platform (Shopify, Lightspeed X Series, etc.)

Site

The name of the POS or eCommerce location (Willis Street, Online store, etc.)

Touchpoints & influence

These terms describe how Marsello connects an order back to the marketing or loyalty activity that influenced it.

Touchpoint

Any loyalty or marketing interaction that can influence a customer’s engagement or order. Marsello touchpoints include: automation emails, email campaigns, SMS campaigns, loyalty rewards or referral codes used at checkout, and social media posts.

📝Note: Marsello only includes discount codes created by Marsello in influence reporting. Discount codes manually created in your POS or eCommerce platform are not included.

Touchpoint recency

How recent a touchpoint was relative to the purchase. A recency of 1 means it was the last touchpoint before the order, 2 means the second-most-recent, and so on.

Influenced sales / Influenced orders (previously Attributed sales/Attributed orders)

Sales or orders where a customer engaged with a marketing touchpoint within 10 days before purchasing, or used its discount at checkout.

Email campaign influence

An order is influenced by an email campaign when:

- The order is made within 10 days of the customer opening or clicking the email campaign.
- The order includes a discount code sent through the email campaign.

Automation influence

An order is influenced by an automation when:

- The order is made within 10 days of the customer opening or clicking the automated email.
- The order includes a discount code sent through the automated email.

Loyalty program influence

An order is influenced by loyalty in two ways:

- Loyalty reward: Any order that includes a loyalty reward discount code.
- Referral program: Any order made by a successfully referred customer.

SMS campaign influence

An order is influenced by an SMS campaign when it is made within 10 days of the customer receiving the SMS message.

Last-influenced sales / Last-influenced orders (previously Last-touch sales/Last-touch orders)

Sales or orders where the touchpoint being measured was the last one a customer engaged with, within 10 days before purchasing, or its discount was used at checkout. If a customer engaged with more than one touchpoint, the order is credited to the most recent one.

Total last-influenced sales (previously total revenue generated with Marsello)

Sales directly influenced by Marsello touchpoints. The total sales where a Marsello touchpoint (email, SMS, automation, social, loyalty, or referral) was the last one the customer engaged with, within 10 days before purchasing.

📝 Note: Multiple Marsello touchpoints can influence a single order. This is called influence. The last-influence model credits the final touchpoint that occurred before the sale. Marsello influence looks at orders where the customer has opened or clicked a campaign within 10 days of purchase.

For example, if a customer receives an SMS, opens an email, and then makes a purchase. The SMS campaign influences the order and will show in the total 'influenced sales' for that touchpoint. However, the email campaign will be considered the last-influenced touchpoint, as it was the final interaction before the purchase.

More ways to know your customer

You'll see some similar terms across the Customer Dashboard, Business Performance, and Multi-site Performance analytics. Below is a quick guide to what each means:

Order value per customer vs. Order value

The typical value of an order.

Order value per customer (Customer Dashboard) works out the average order value per customer first, then averages those figures across customers, so every customer counts equally.
Order value (Business Performance) is the average value of all orders, so every order counts equally.

💡 Tip: Use Order value per customer to understand how your typical customer shops, useful for setting reward thresholds or minimum-spend promotions. Use Order value to track how your average order size is trending across the whole business.

Customers vs. Customers added

Anyone in the Marsello database with an email address or mobile number.

Customers (Customer Dashboard) is the total number of customers in your database.
Customers added (Business Performance) is the number of customers added to Marsello during the selected date range, including imports and store syncs. This measures when a customer was added to Marsello, not when they first signed up with your store.

Returning customer vs. Repeat customer

Customers who have bought more than once.

A returning customer made their first purchase before the selected date range and purchased again during it (Customer Dashboard).
A repeat customer placed more than one order within the selected date range itself (Business Performance and Multi-site Performance).

📝 Note: A customer can be one without being the other. When looking at this month's performance, someone who bought last year and once this month is returning but not repeat. Someone who placed their first-ever order and then a second, both this month, is repeat but not returning.

Returning customer rate vs. Repeat order rate

The percentage of customers who’ve bought more than once.

Returning customer rate (Customer Dashboard) excludes unattached customers.

Calculation: (Number of customers who ordered in the date range AND had also ordered before the date range ÷ Number of customers who ordered in the date range) × 100.

Repeat order rate (Business Performance and Multi-site Performance) includes unattached customers.

Calculation: (Number of customers who made two or more orders during the selected date range ÷ Number of customers who ordered in the date range) x 100.

💡 Tip: Use Returning customer rate on your Customer Dashboard to understand long-term loyalty health. Are customers coming back, no matter when they first bought? Use Repeat order rate to measure how a specific period or promotion performed at turning first-time buyers into repeat ones on Business Performance or Multi-site Performance.

Spend per customer vs. Estimated spend per customer

How much a customer spends in total during the selected date range.

Spend per customer (Customer Dashboard) uses customers' actual spend, calculated by totaling what each customer actually spent ÷ purchasing customers.
Estimated spend per customer (Business Performance) is an estimate, calculated by the average orders per customer × the average order value. Includes unattached (guest) customers.

💡 Tip: Use Spend per customer for an accurate read on what customers have actually spent. Use Estimated spend per customer as a forward-looking estimate, useful for forecasting sales from your average customer.