Lifetime Value: Acquisition Costs Across Different Media

Offer vs. Media

The medium is the messenger; the offer is the message. When you find a medium is not performing, either on the front end or back end, change the offer and re-test.

Most of the efforts with new media that fail do so because the offer was very different than successful offers used elsewhere, not because of the media. For example, a cataloger with an average order of over $100 ran ads in Sunday supplements for an under-$10 item. Back-end sales were miserable, as could be expected. However, by changing the offer repeatedly and continuing to test, a new offer is working very well on both the front and back ends.