Customer acquisition management in E-commerce

In an online context, ‘customer acquisition’ can have two meanings. First, it may mean the use of the web site to acquire new customers for a company as qualified leads that can hope­fully be converted into sales. Second, it may mean encouraging existing customers to migrate to using online for purchase or service. Many organizations concentrate on the former, but where acquisition is well managed, campaigns will be used to achieve online conversion. For example, American Express developed a ‘Go Paperless’ campaign to persuade customers to receive and review their statements online rather than by post. Phone bank First Direct used call centre representatives to persuade customers of the benefits of bypassing them by review­ing their statements online. They also encourage ‘e-advocacy’ amongst employees, i.e. encourage them to use the online services so they can better empathize with customer needs.

Before an organization can acquire customers through the content on its site, it must, of course, develop marketing communications strategies to attract visitors to the web site.

E-commerce managers constantly strive to deliver the most effective mix of communi­cations to drive traffic to their e-commerce sites. The different techniques can be characterized as traditional offline marketing communications or rapidly evolving online marketing communications which are today referred to by those working in online mar­keting as digital media channels. From an e-commerce context, the objective of employing these techniques is often to acquire new visitors or ‘build traffic’ using the techniques sum­marized in Figure 9.6. In Figure 9.6 the diversity of marketing communications that can be used to encourage site visitors is highlighted. Some additional techniques to promote repeat visits are considered separately in the section on Customer retention management.

Source: Dave Chaffey (2010), E-Business and E-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, Prentice Hall (4th Edition).

One thought on “Customer acquisition management in E-commerce

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