Do our Existing Customers Hate our Customer Acquisition Methods?
No matter who we are, we've been a customer more than once in our lifetimes. We know how customers want to be treated. We understand that customer experience is in our hands. We strive to create that experience.
Our existing customers are the lifeblood of our business. It costs a lot more to get a new customer than it does to keep the ones we have. Losing an existing customer to gain a new one is not the way we want to go. But customer satisfaction is more than a seamless checkout and speedy delivery. It's about that UX (User experience) from start to finish. It's everything in between and here and there. This includes something that some may consider completely unrelated -- our customer acquisition efforts. But maybe we should rethink that.
The impact of retention on acquisition
This relationship is a bit easier to understand, so let's recap this one first. Acquisition is impacted by retention. According to Research conducted by Gartner Group and published in Forbes Magazine , 80% of your future sales are generated by 20% of your existing customers.
Existing customers also save us money on acquisition by:
Reducing our acquisition costs. If you have a great reputation, it is so much easier to bring someone new into the fold.
Decreasing customer research budget. If you're paying attention to existing customer feedback and analytics, there's less cost to the company due to trial and error practices or working of bad hypotheticals produced from analytics. This means more effective targeting and content creation. They save you time and money while making you more.
Decreasing the need for spending so much time and money on acquisition because you have a steady revenue stream.
Doing the promotion for us. Every promoter that we can create is an "marketing genius" that we don't have to pay -- except in continuing to provide exceptional customer care.
But does it work the other way around? Of course, it does. Everything we do is connected.