Problems With Reactivated Buyers

There's a lot of nonsense out there about reactivating inactive buyers ... discounts ... promotions ... digital to print strategies ... artificial intelligence ... blah blah blah blah blah.

These are things that make vendors money. And they'll make you money, too, so I'm not saying you shouldn't use these tactics.

I am saying you need something that moves the needle in your brand ecosystem.

Look at the column featuring the New Customer Acquisition Problem. This brand had 100,000 twelve-month buyers last year, and has a new + reactivated buyer problem, resulting in a drop in the twelve-month buyer file ... from 100,000 customers to 94,000 customers.

Ok, now you're going to partner with your favorite vendor ... and your favorite vendor promises to improve reactivated buyer counts by a whopping 10% ... TEN PERCENT!! First, if the vendor is able to accomplish that, go hug your sales rep, because that's fantastic performance.

Now that you are finished with your hug - let's run the numbers for the brand with the new customer acquisition problem.

• 7,000 reactivated buyers * 10% improvement = 700 additional twelve-month buyers.

So instead of ending the year with 94,000 twelve-month buyers ... your vendor clearly performed well and you're all hugging each other ... and you end up with 94,700 twelve-month buyers.

You haven't solved your problem.

In fact, you barely moved the needle on your problem.

You're gonna be fired for this ... but your vendor got paid.

Our industry is stuck in this type of thinking. We celebrate the smallest of victories. We don't bother to focus on the bigger game, do we?

Your brand ecosystem is highly dependent upon customer acquisition. You need big numbers to move your business into the future ... you need 17,000 additional customers, not 700.

Let's get busy finding ways to find 17,000 additional customers.