[ Acquisition ]

Customer Acquisition & Development

The New Customer Acquisition Crisis

Regardless of the marketing channels you use to sell, your customers either are repeat customers or are new customers. Your repeat customers typically generate the majority of profit, but you need new customers for your business to grow. Achieving a balance between investing in new customer acquisition and profits is a delicate maneuver.

Focusing on repeat customers while not investing in new customer acquisition is a formula for going out of business. You can generate cash and earnings, but you will spiral downward in sales every year until you can no longer survive. We all know companies that focused on repeat buyers for so long that their customers aged out of the target market for their products. They only temporarily delayed the inevitable, but how can an e-tailer acquire customers and stay profitable in the process?

CLI works with many multi-channel merchants who list new customer acquisition among their greatest concerns. The traditional sources of acquisition simply do not respond as they once did. We see dramatic changes in the list industry, and even list consolidators and coops fell on hard times. But the resourceful are surviving.

The Family of Solutions

No one offers a simple solution to keeping customer files fresh, but we can employan array of incremental initiatives that help achieve the goal. Here are some to help you start.

• A great SEO program and wise investment in paid search is a good start, but don't expect to land every visitor who nibbles. Make sure the hooks are in place to catch email addresses for as many new visitors as possible. Providing an opportunity for email sign-up on every page is good, providing a pop-up for email sign-up is excellent, offering a purchase incentive on the pop-up is outstanding. But---make sure you don't annoy customers with the pop-up appearing too often.
• Methods to collect email sign-ups are important, but turning new subscribers into buyers is more important!. An automated email program to turn new subscribers into buyers is a must.
• An old adage holds that first time buyers are trial buyers. Once they buy the second time, they become customers. Don't settle for trial buyers. Develop an automated email program to turn first time buyers into multi-buyers without delay.
• When you don’t hear from customers for 24+ months, they are no longer customers, so treat them like first time buyers. And don't wait until they are about to drop off your list of people to whom you actively market! Start your retention programs early so fewer of your customers reach inactive status.
• Don't give up too early on those inactive former customers. Did they return to your site but not purchase? They may return to your site occasionally, and we can help you track site visits and help with reactivations.

Get Started

CLI can help you with these initiatives and many more. Solving problems that are critical to multi-channel marketers sits at the heart of CLI. We commit to helping you flourish in the face of great challenges and not just survive. Contact us to learn more.