Christmas Buyers

There probably isn't an easier time to acquire a new customer than at Christmas.

And that's the problem.

There's a price to pay when it is easy to acquire a customer.

In the case of Christmas newbies, seasonal buying trends eat up a lot of the lifetime value that would normally be generated.

When you acquire a customer in October, the customer is "recent" and ready to buy in November/December as Christmas ramps up. This maximizes lifetime value. It's common to learn that October newbies are worth 20% - 60% more than are Christmas newbies.

Where possible, acquire customers in the month or two before your biggest "season" of the year. If you are a gardening brand, you might acquire customers in February/March, just before April/May. If you are a gift brand, you might acquire customers in September/October, just before November/December. Take full advantage of the timeframes when your new customers are "most responsive".

READER COMPLAINT:  Here is what happens when I bring up this topic.

• Reader = "Kevin's idea sounds great, but he's full of you-know-what. We've tried to acquire more customers in October, but we can't find enough customers to scale that strategy. His idea sounds good on paper, but doesn't work in reality."

KEVIN'S RESPONSE:

• This is where your low-cost / no-cost customer acquisition strategy comes into play. Of course it's hard to acquire customers in "off months". You pay money, you don't get reasonable results, and you grumble. But if you had a low-cost / no-cost customer acquisition program in place, you'd be planting the seeds all year so that as you ramped-up the message in October you'd have built up enough awareness that you could generate new customers in October, and then you can harvest a second purchase in November/December.

READER COMPLAINT:

• "I don't like that response."