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Customer Acquisition vs Customer Retention

Which one should you choose? Customer acquisition or customer retention?

Many stores, roughly 44%, focus more on attracting new customers than on retaining current ones.  Which is costly, since bringing in new customers can cost up to 25X times what it costs to bring in a current customer.  Reaching a new base of customers means spending a significant amount of money on an advertising budget, marketing materials, social media ads, and coordinated email marketing efforts.

That’s a lot of work!  Now that’s not to say that marketing to your existing customer base doesn’t require work but the work you put in will go a lot further.  Remember, your current customer base knows your store already.  They’ve been there before, they like your staff, and they’re familiar with your attention to quality and detail in your products.  Treat them with respect and give them the value they’re looking for, and it won’t cost you a lot to get them to try something new or add a few more items to their cart.

Even reaching out to customers that haven’t been in your store for a few months yields solid returns on your investment and effort.  According to Experian, it costs an average of $55.24 to attract a new customer via email marketing BUT it only costs $28.50 to get an old customer to return – that’s almost a 50% savings!

Now don’t think we’re telling you not to think about new customer growth – that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Every dispensary needs a healthy influx of new customers to survive – but maybe after reading this you’ll see that you don’t need as many new customers every month as you thought you did.  You’ve got a gold mine in front of you – you just need tools like the Stemless Signature Loyalty Program, Proprietary Cart Abandonment software, and SMS Outreach Platform to help you maximize your ROI.