E-commerce Insights: Multichannel Planning Is a Complex Endeavor

Acquisition vs. Retention

Catalogers traditionally have partitioned their marketing efforts into acquisition and retention programs. Many firms ran their acquisition efforts to breakeven or below, satisfied to bring new buyers onto the file without profit for the lifetime value of the customers and for the top-line benefit. When marketing to their active buyer file, catalog firms would only mail their books to fresh, highly profitable segments, as the resulting orders had to cover not only the cost of marketing to active buyers, but also of marketing to prospects, covering overhead and generating overall profit.