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You asked

Why do winback campaigns inflate retention?

Returning users make retention look better than it is.

Symptom

At 62%, the checkout abandonment rate is down eight percent.

Cause

The mechanism is attribution gap masking.

Impact

At 38% — and rising 15 percentage points — winback conversions now represent more than a third of total purchase volume.

Full diagnostic context

Returning users make retention look better than it is.

At 62%, the checkout abandonment rate is down eight percent.

The mechanism is attribution gap masking.

At 38% — and rising 15 percentage points — winback conversions now represent more than a third of total purchase volume.