Are brands sacrificing customer loyalty in pursuit of ‘over-acquisition’?
Can a focus on customer retention only take a business so far, or do companies that ignore existing relationships run the risk of damaging their brand?
Does acquisition trump retention, or is valuing customer loyalty the best way to grow a sustainable business?
For the third consecutive year, Marketing Week’s exclusive Language of Effectiveness survey finds brands are far more interested in attracting new customers than measuring the impact of retention. The survey of more than 1,200 marketers finds new customer acquisition is a key effectiveness metric for 33% of brands, compared to 26.2% which measure customer lifetime value and 25.1% which analyse customer retention rates.
“Hopefully marketers are catching up with the science,” says Jenni Romaniuk, research professor at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. “The science tells us that acquisition is how you grow and that you can’t grow by retention alone. If you grow, you will get a bit more loyalty and a lot more acquisition.”
