This is despite the fact that 82% of companies agree that retention is in fact cheaper than acquisition. A figure up from 70% last year, and certainly bolsters the notion that on-going profit from a customer lifetime is higher than any one single transaction.
Is your company more focused on acquisition or retention marketing?
This is one of the questions asked by our new report, the third annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report, carried out in association with Oracle Marketing Cloud, which explores how companies are orchestrating their marketing activities across a range of channels.
The research is based on a survey of nearly 1,000 digital marketers and ecommerce professionals, carried out in April and May 2014.
The report provides insight into the extent to which organisations are delivering orchestrated cross-channel marketing campaigns, what mobile solutions they deploy and their most important priorities over the next year.
Here we’ll be taking a look at the continued emphasis on acquisition over retention and which channels or disciplines are more retention/acquisition focused.
We asked our respondents the same as above: is your company more focused on acquisition or retention marketing?
Since 2013, the proportion focused on acquisition has reduced but is still the dominant proportion of respondents. In turn, the proportion of those with an equal focus on retention and acquisition has increased to 45%. Marketers are even less likely than last year to be more focused on retention.
Thinking about your organisation, are the following online channels more geared towards acquisition or retention marketing?
It’s an interesting overview on which channels are preferred for which discipline. 52% of respondents use email primarily for retention, whilst 27% use it for retention and acquisition equally. Email is a relatively inexpensive method of communication and a customer is more likely to respond positively to your emails being as they’ve already done business with you.
Paid search and display advertising are clearly only useful for acquisition, with 86% and 85% respectively using these methods for acquisition. 2% and 4% respectively for retention.
Since 2013, a lower proportion of companies are using mobile messaging towards acquisition, which supports a growth in the use of push notifications to bring customers back to an app or mobile site.
For much more insight, download the full 65 page Cross-Channel Marketing Report.
