Modern Customer Acquisition

It's not much different than this, is it?

In my first few years post-Nordstrom, the average rebuy rate for twelve-month buyers was around 35%. Today it's around 30%.

Now think about this for a moment. We live in an era where every possible Loyalty tool known to marketers is available, has been vetted, and is either discarded or considered a best practice. We know more about how to retain a good customer than in the entire history of commerce.

And yet ... with all of this knowledge, we're worse at retaining customers.

Either we are really, really dumb (unlikely) ... or something is going sideways paying the keyword brigade in the image above.

Yes, something is going sideways in the image above.

Because we don't bother to analyze or even audit all the new customers we get from the mob (above), we don't know what harm we are doing to our businesses. All we know is we keep paying the crowd above for ... keywords ... not for customers, but for keywords.

The best new customer was once a home-grown prospect. Every step we take away from the home-grown prospect is a step closer to lowering future rebuy rates (and, consequently, lowering future profitability).