Lifetime Value: Acquisition Costs Across Different Media

On a smaller scale, catalogers are treating other media in a similar fashion. They assume that customers acquired through newspaper ads or radio spots will behave like their “traditional” catalog customers do and buy from the catalog.

There is often no strategy in place to follow up with first-time buyers from different media, such as newspaper ads. This is in spite of the fact that the buyer may have responded to a very different offer than typically found in a catalog, and still hasn’t bought from the catalog, where they are expected to buy in the future.