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Customer Acquisition Management Strategies

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Customer Relationship
Management Strategies in
the Digital Era

Süphan Nasır
Istanbul University, Turkey

A volume in the Advances in Marketing, Customer

Relationship Management, and E-Services
(AMCRMES) Book Series
Managing Director: Lindsay Johnston
Managing Editor: Austin DeMarco
Director of Intellectual Property & Contracts: Jan Travers
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Cover Design: Jason Mull

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CIP Data
Nasir, Suphan, 1978-
Customer relationship management strategies in the digital era / by Suphan Nasir.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “This book blends the literature from the fields of marketing and information technology in an effort to exam-
ine the effect that technological advances have on the interaction between companies and their customers”-- Provided by
publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4666-8231-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4666-8232-0 (ebook) 1. Customer relations--Manage-
ment. 2. Information technology--Management. I. Title.

HF5415.5.N247 2015
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This book is published in the IGI Global book series Advances in Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, and E-
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 219

Chapter 8
Customer Acquisition
Management Strategies

ABSTRACT
Achieving customer retention and loyalty is vital for the success of the company; however, acquiring new
customers has to be considered equally significant to the customer retention process. Since the company’s
ability to grow its customer base determines the long-term success of the company, companies need to
consider customer acquisition as an ongoing process. Customer acquisition management process involves
identifying, attracting, and retaining potentially profitable customers. This chapter starts with examining
the phases of the lead management process. Understanding customers is seen as important for effective
lead management. After explaining the lead generation and lead nurturing within the context of lead
management, this chapter ends up with underlining the importance of lead management automation for
customer acquisition.

INTRODUCTION be considered as an ongoing process and equally

The ultimate purpose of CRM strategy is to
maintain customer retention and loyalty in order
to survive in an ever-changing landscape. Com-
panies’ executives prioritize customer acquisition,
expanding wallet share of existing customers and
customer loyalty as their top customer business
objectives through 2015 (LaValle, 2013). How-
ever, in the absence of a well-developed, focused
and successful customer acquisition management,
companies cannot achieve their ultimate purpose
of customer retention and development (Ang &
Buttle, 2006). Loyal customers are the lifeblood
of companies and acquiring new customers has to
significant as customer retention process. A suc-
cessful business strategy needs to focus on both
growing the customer base by acquiring new
customers and providing excellent customers
experience to them in order to generate more
revenue from keeping customers loyal. Since
the company’s ability to grow its customer base
determines the long term success of the company,
companies must actively seek new customers
(Merrill Lynch, 2013).
Customer acquisition management is the set
of methodologies, systems, and practices to man-
age prospects and inquiries, which are generated
by a variety of marketing techniques such as

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8231-3.ch008

Copyright © 2015, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

marketing campaigns or event triggers, in order
to help companies generate new potential busi-
nesses. Customer acquisition is the process of
identifying, attracting and retaining potentially
profitable customers. While managing customer
acquisition, companies require to consider which
potential customers to target, how to communicate
with them and what to offer them (Buttle, 2004).
Identifying an ideal customer portfolio, exceed-
ing customer expectations, becoming a trusted
partner, establishing consistent communication
with customers to find out unmet needs, opportu-
nities, and deliver customized offers, addressing
customer satisfaction issues, and implementing
CRM technologies can be considered as essential
tools for acquiring new customers. According to
the Bank of America Merrill Lynch white paper,
the analysis of the current customer base provides
guidance for developing a customer acquisition
strategy. It is important to attract right customers
to the company to ensure long-term profitability
and harvest the benefits of relationships with loyal
customers. With the analysis of existing customer
base, company can predict expected annual profit-
ability and lifetime value of its customers, rank
customers based on their profitability, identify
customers who are critical for the company’s
success and estimate the customer acquisition
costs and time. The analysis of current customer
base reveals the company’s ideal customer pro-
file; so that company can spend its efforts to
acquire customers who are within the scope of
this ideal customer profile. While identifying the
ideal customer profile, company can consider its
customers’ revenue generation capacity, growth
potential, and potential to bring customer referrals
(Merrill Lynch, 2013). The process of converting
potential buyers into customers can be handled
by using CRM technologies. Implementation of
CRM technologies allows the company to access
360-degree view of the customer that will help the
company identify and target prospective customers
and generate customer insight that can be used to
create effective marketing campaigns.
220

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
Customer insight that is provided by CRM
technologies also enables the company to deliver
outstanding services. Delivering outstanding cus-
tomer service and experience allows the company
to retain customers as well as acquire new cus-
tomers. Customers, who are satisfied with the
company’s exceptional services, are often willing
to recommend the company’s services to their
friends. Delivering excellent customer experience
generates customer retention and referrals. Since
satisfied loyal customers are excellent referral
source, leveraging loyal customer relationships
is a cost-effective customer acquisition strategy
for reaching out to new prospects. Therefore,
companies can transform retention into a pow-
erful acquisition tool by delivering outstanding
customer experience (Merrill Lynch, 2013).
Worrell (2012) indicates seven critical stages
in securing new customer acquisition:
• Know
• Like
• Trust
• Try
• Buy
• Repeat
• Refer
Customer acquisition management process
starts with creating awareness about the company’s
products and services. In order to turn a prospect
into customer, prospect must know about the
company. Creating awareness can be achieved
by variety of ways such as advertising, public
relations, trade shows, direct mail, newsletters,
social media, cold-calling, word of mouth, and
other marketing activities. Since customers seek
relationships that are pleasant and want to do
business with companies that they like, companies
should focus on establishing pleasant and enter-
taining interactions with prospects. For instance,
companies can develop entertaining interactions
with prospects through social networks or deliver
pleasant experience by inviting prospects an event

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
or a party. Trust is another essential factor in
securing new customer acquisition. In convert-
ing prospects into customers, companies need to
establish trust. Prospects have to be sure that the
company will keep its promises and they will get
a fair deal. Thus, companies require to keep their
promises, do what they say, respond questions of
prospects quickly and professionally, and fairly
deal with them. Companies can enhance trust by
making presentations at webinars or trade shows,
sharing expert opinion through white papers, and
answering questions of prospects at face to face
meetings. All of these trust building activities
make the company to be seen as an expert in the
industry and prospects and customer begin to trust
the company more over a period of time. Try is
also significant for attracting new customers. Sales
promotions and special offers and trial can encour-
age prospects to try the product or service of the
company before they become regular customers. If
they are satisfied with the product or service that
they try, this will accelerate the process of convert-
ing prospects into customers. At the next stage of
customer acquisition management, prospects buy
the product or service. Company needs to fulfil its
promises, be responsive and professional in the
delivery of the product or service, and establish
constant communication with the new customer
in order to maintain customer retention.
At the next stages of customer acquisition
management, it is important to convert new cus-
tomers into repeat purchaser through identifying
cross, up and deep selling opportunities. To ensure
long term relationship with the new customer,
company should deliver more value to the new
customer. Making customer surveys, listening
the voice of these new customers and taking
feedback from them allow the company to iden-
tify potential problems, improve its products and
services, deliver excellent customer experience,
and exceed expectations of them. Rewarding new
customers for their repeat purchase through loyalty
programs is essential for maintaining long term
relationships and encouraging repeat purchase of
new customers. Most importantly, acquiring new
customers is not sufficient for the company’s suc-
cess. Through retention management strategies,
company has to move customers to the top of the
customer loyalty pyramid. Company should also
encourage new customers to refer the company
to their friends and other people. Word of mouth
communication can be promoted through build-
ing online communities and giving incentives for
customers to write reviews. In conclusion, it is also
essential to convert these newly acquired custom-
ers into devoted customers who refer business
to the company (see Figure 1). To generate high
quality leads and convert them into customers,
company requires to have high quality customer
data and lists, find unique ways to attract prospec-
tive customers, focus on generating leads across
multiple channels, create awareness through public
relations and buzz, communicate with relevant
content, and consistently nurture leads.
PHASES OF LEAD
MANAGEMENT PROCESS
Lead management is one of the relationship mar-
keting practices that is crucial for the company
to convert prospects into customers. Lead man-
agement deals with the overall process in which
potential buyers are identified, educated, engaged
with, qualified, and passed to sales. Prospect be-
comes a customer after a complex process of lead
management. In ownership phase of the purchase
cycle, customer begins to use the product and
services that are provided by the company. At
this stage of the purchase cycle, company tries
to keep its customers and make them loyal to the
brand by applying retention marketing practices.
Customer retention management practices focus
on moving customers to the top of the customer
loyalty pyramid and aim to create devoted custom-
ers. Lead management is an important process that
takes place before a prospect becomes a customer
and enters the CRM system (see Figure 2).
221
 
Customer Acquisition Management Strategies

Figure 1. Conversion of new customers into devoted customers

Figure 2. Customer acquisition management funnel

222

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
Lead management is the antecedent of sales
management and CRM. Its primary focus is to
manage relationships with prospects. Lead man-
agement software deals with the acquisition of
customers, while CRM addresses the ongoing cus-
tomer experience (Saylor, 2004). Having an orga-
nized and effective lead management process and
improving the lead generation efforts contribute to
more sales. To create and implement a successful
and efficient lead management process, company
needs to start with identifying and understanding
its leads and continue with generating, scoring,
and nurturing its leads. At the last step, marketing
department of the company passes the generated
qualified leads to sales department (Sahota, 2011).
Company should develop different interactions
and provide different offerings depending on the
customer’s position at the buying cycle. Under-
standing the customer’s position at the buying
cycle allows the company to develop effective
marketing strategies. Buying cycle composes of
three main stages: awareness, consideration, and
purchase (Skok, 2012). Customers’ position at
the buying cycle can vary and some of them may
be early at the awareness stage; while others may
be at the consideration stage or end of the buying
cycle. Awareness stage starts with the arising need
of the customer and customer becomes aware of
the brand or product in order to fulfil the need.
At the consideration stage, customer begins to
evaluate alternatives to fulfil his need and later
makes purchase among alternatives. Depending
on where customers are at the buying cycle, cus-
tomers’ expectations of how the company should
treat are different. If the customer is at the early
stage in the cycle, he wants to be get educated. If
he is at the later stage in the cycle, he may want
highly responsive help to complete the purchase.
Thus, company requires to approach customers by
considering their position at the buying cycle in
order to convert more leads into customers. Us-
ing a wrong sales approach can cause customer
loss. As indicated in Figure 3, company needs to
develop different strategies at each stage of the
buying cycle in order to move customers towards
purchase stage. Potential buyers, who are at the
beginning of the buying cycle, are not likely to
make purchase immediately at the first contact
with the company. Therefore, company needs
to keep in touch with them in order to turn them
into buyers in the future. Lead nurturing is con-
sidered as an effective way to stay in touch with
potential buyers, who are not ready to buy but
consider to buy in the future. With the help of
lead nurturing communication, company tries to
penetrate consideration as well as shopping list of
the potential buyers. At the later stages, company
can provide lead nurturing campaigns to trigger
the customer’s buying.
The lead management process includes a
number of phases such as lead generation, lead
qualification, lead nurturing, lead allocation, lead
harvesting and lead tracking. Company needs to
manage these phases effectively and efficiently in
order to convert more prospects into customers.
In lead generation, company proactively focuses
on creating, nurturing, and discovering interest
among prospective customers and engage with
prospective customers in order to convert them
into customers. During the lead generation, com-
pany determines the sales readiness of prospects
and identifies qualified prospects who have intent
and ability to make a purchase decision within a
reasonable timeframe. If prospects are ready to
buy in the buying process, company communicates
with them and provides highly relevant informa-
tion to them in order to build product and brand
awareness, preference, and penetrate to shopping
list of prospective customers. Lead allocation
processes ensure that leads are routed to the right
salesperson. With the lead harvesting, company
designs promotions and incentives to encourage
prospective customers to make purchase. Lead
tracking traces the conversion process of prospects
into customers.
Lead management is a very complex process
and crucial for the company to turn its prospects
into customers. Companies that want to increase
223

Figure 3. Sales approach based on the customer’s position at the buying cycle
the conversion rates and lead management suc-
cess, require to focus on profiling & targeting,
lead scoring, content, and nurturing early stage
buyers (Forrester, 2009). It is essential to gather
customer insight. Thus, company needs to focus
on customer profiling, which allows the company
to understand its best customers, what motivates
them to buy and how they buy from the company.
Company requires to select scoring criteria and
assign values to each score criteria in order to
determine the lead quality. Content of the commu-
nication is also significant for the lead management
success; because different prospective customers
need different type of information based on their
position at the decision making. Relevant content
accelerates customer engagement. Consistently
nurturing earl stage buyers also helps the company
increase the lead management success.
Figure 4 illustrates the lead management
process of a company. First of all, lead manage-
ment process of a company should start with
identification of the potential customers. Through
insight researches and surveys, companies can
224

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
define and segment their prospects. Data mining
and data base management are the tools that help
companies to identify their target customer seg-
ment and reach their potential customers. With
the help of the mosaic-profiling, companies can
make segmentation and divide potential customer
segment into sub segments. They can profile their
potential customers according to their geographic,
demographic, behavioral, and/or psychographic
characteristics. As a result of mosaic profiling a
prospect list emerges. After dividing potential
customer segment into sub segments, companies
begin to lead prospects by making them different
tactical offers according to the characteristics and
needs of these sub segments. Companies need to
follow trends and according to the trends they
should change or make additions to their offerings.
After the identification of the target prospect
segment, company focuses on penetrating the
shopping list of target segment by creating aware-
ness. Mass communication, mass advertising,
and event trigger are among the important com-
munication tools for creating awareness. At this

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
Figure 4. Lead management process
Source: Nasir, S. (2002). Relationship marketing as a new concept: A case study of an automobile company. Master’s thesis,
Işık University, Istanbul.
stage company injects the brand into the minds of
customers and tries to explain its brand. When the
company as a brand penetrates the shopping list
of the prospects it begins to communicate with
the prospects in order to enter their consideration
list. Salespersons play key role in turning pros-
pects into customers. Persuasion of the prospects
depends the ability of the salespeople. At this
point importance of managing relationships in
internal markets becomes important. Therefore,
companies need to give importance to the selec-
tion and training of employees.
Identifying and understanding leads are cru-
cial for the effective lead management process.
First of all, company needs to determine who the
company’s potential buyers are. Thus, marketing
department of the company should identify its
buyer types and their personas, which help the
company portray ideal prospective customers for
its products and services. Company should identify
demographics (e.g., Where do they live?, What
are their needs?), behavior (e.g., how do they give
buying decision? what are the factors that affect
their buying decision?, how do they shop?), and
lead source (e.g., How do the company’s best
leads typically find the company?) of its ideal
prospective customers (Sahota, 2011).
To effectively develop lead management
strategies, company should start with creating
customer database based on the customer activ-
ity. Company can develop CRM strategies as well
as lead management strategies by analysing the
customer database. Analysis of customer database
allows the company to select its target customers,
identify the tools for targeting the customers, and
decide how to build relationships with the targeted
customers (Winer, 2001). Company should also
maintain a centralized and seamlessly integrated
view of the people whom they sell to, plan care-
fully and target series of communications based
on customers’ preferences thoughtfully, and learn
continuously and enrich customer profiles. They
have to avoid listening to the wrong customers
who are not in target market of the company
225

and incorrectly identifying customer priorities.
Understanding the customers and identifying the
target market is important in lead management.
Companies that want to successfully grow their
leads and turn prospects into loyal customers need
to understand their customers. Companies should
know about what motivates their customers?,
what matters to them?, and what do they value?.
It is also essential for the company to identify the
effective marketing channels to communicate its
offerings and select the right channels to reach its
leads, prospects and loyal customers and make an
offer that they cannot refuse. Establishing control
over sales cycle conversion processes is essential
in order to successfully convert more prospects
into customers. Company requires to control and
measure the length of its average sales cycle and
the conversion ratios. Companies also need to
understand what determines the conversion and
which marketing channels are most effective in
converting leads in to customers? Therefore lead
management process has to start with understand-
ing customers.
Understanding Customers
Getting your customers’ attention is much easier
if you can leverage information that you know
about them. This provides a more rich and per-
sonal interaction. Consumers have been changing.
Their lifestyles, buying power, and habits have
been continuously changing. It is important to
understand customers and how customers give
their buying decision. Companies can achieve
customer-centricity through understanding their
customers. Tools that provide a 360-degree view
of customer profile information, preferences and
behaviors help the company achieve customer-
centricity. Harnessing the power of customer
insight enables the company to distinguish itself
from the competition. Utilization of technologies
allows the company to drive predictive modeling
and next-best-action decision making; so that com-
pany can anticipate the customer’s needs or actions
226

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
in order to customize its communication messages
as well as its offers. Furthermore, companies need
to consistently check their current performance
in meeting customer needs and wants. To delight
customers, employees need to get the right infor-
mation at the right time. Assessing the business
performance in delivering the intended customer
experience can help the company improve its
products and services (Robinson & Brown, 2012).
Companies have to understand their customers
as long as they try to become their lovemark. The
concept of lovemark is put forward by Roberts
(2005) and indicates that lovemark is a brand that
creates loyalty beyond reason. Lovemarks estab-
lish an emotional bond with customers through the
use of mystery, sensuality and intimacy in order
to gain the heart share as well as the mindshare
of their customers. Roberts (2005) defines the
concept of products, fad, brand and lovemark
based on the respect and love axis. Customers feel
neither love nor respect towards mere products.
Although, fads attract the love of customers for
a short period of time, customers do not respect
them and without respect this love is just like
a flash in the pan. Brands attract the respect of
customers but they lack the emotional sense that
attracts customers to love them. On the other
hand, lovemarks create loyalty beyond reason
by ensuring high level of both love and respect
(Roberts, 2005). Companies have to focus on be-
ing a lovemark of their customers and lovemark
can be created through understanding customers.
Companies require to utilize customer insights
to deliver experiences that their target customers
desire in order to create competitive differentia-
tion. Utilization of the customer insight enables
the company to successfully implement CRM
strategies. According to the Merkle (2013) report,
customer insight (33%) is among the top-three
value generators. Getting the customers’ attention
is much easier if the company can leverage infor-
mation about the customers because customer in-
sight provides more rich and personal interaction.

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
Companies require to build their strategies
by determining current trends and the needs of
customers. With the help of customer insight and
analysing trends, company can form its relation-
ship marketing strategies and also make tactic
offers to its customers. Success of CRM imple-
mentations depends on the company’s ability of
using customer information to identify, engage,
sell to, serve and retain customers. Companies
require to manage a comprehensive view of their
prospects and customers. Therefore, companies
have to focus on understanding, identifying and
managing customers based upon their value. This
allows the company to allocate its resources to
optimize long-term customer value, customize and
personalize customer interactions, and respond to
changes in customer, competitor or marketplace
conditions faster than their competitors (Merkle,
2013).
Detailed customer information is the most im-
portant factor in developing acquisition strategy.
While developing customer acquisition strategy,
company requires to have information about
customers’ demographics, behavior or usage and
lifetime value. Customer demographic and usage
information can be gathered during the interac-
tion of the customer with the company. Customer
behavior of usage information includes customer’s
purchase history information. CRM analytics and
data mining help companies get customer profiles,
which allow company to target right group of
customers and choose channels and techniques
that are effective in reaching target customers
(Vindicia, 2012).
Creating a customer database is a necessary
for all CRM activities. Customer database should
contain information about transactions (purchase
history), customer contacts (customer or company
initiated interaction information that is gathered
from all touch points), descriptive information
(descriptive information about customers is es-
sential for profiling and segmenting customers),
and response to marketing stimuli (information
about how the customer responds to a marketing
initiative is necessary for evaluating marketing
campaign effectiveness and improving success
of next marketing campaigns) (Winer, 2001).
Customer database should be updated consistently
over time.
Augmenting leads with the relevant, insightful
customer and marketing information that is avail-
able in-house and from external sources helps the
company complete prospecting processes quickly
and efficiently as well as improve lead conversion
rates and pursue compelling deal opportunity.
Along with lead qualification and prioritizing,
providing leads with sales, channel, and cus-
tomer context (e.g., details on customer profiles,
product interests and lead origins) enable the
company to produce ideal leads, which in return
helps the company increase lead conversion and
sales. Thus, quality of information in terms of its
breadth and detail is important for the success of
conversion rate. Company requires to assess the
value of information that is used to augment the
lead, and remove information that is not useful. To
improve the lead conversion rate, company needs
to augment (Desisto & Collins, 2007):
• Contact details (e.g., name, title, address,
phone number, and e-mail address of the
lead),
• Customer information (e.g., customer’s
segment information, customer’s current
and potential value information),
• Relationship history (e.g., a complete view
of interaction history of the lead),
• Product information (e.g., a list of prod-
ucts in which the prospective customer
indicates interest or already uses from the
company),
• Marketing information (e.g., information
about interests of the prospect that is ex-
pressed through various marketing interac-
tions such as past marketing campaigns or
potential to churn or propensity scores for
various products and services),
227

• Content (e.g., providing context informa-
tion based on lead type, customer, custom-
er segment, sales or channel), and
• Service records (e.g., information about
customer’s issues such as customer
complaints).
Customer databases analysis allows the com-
pany to profile customer segments. Profiling
improves lead scoring and customer targeting. To
do customer profiling effectively, company needs
to research customer issues instead of product
features and focus on what customers do instead
of what they say (Forrester, 2009). A variety of
multivariate statistical methods can be used to
segment customers. Market segmentation is the
process that companies use to divide large hetero-
geneous markets into small homogenous markets
whose needs, buying behavior and preferences
show similarity. Segmentation enables the com-
pany to reach target customers more efficiently
and effectively with products and services that
match their unique needs. To be successful in
segmenting markets, market segments must be
measurable, accessible, substantial, differentiable,
and actionable (Kotler & Armstrong, 2013). Seg-
mentation identifies the different customer profiles
and facilitates the development of differentiated
marketing strategies to serve customers better. A
successful segmentation differentiates the seg-
ments by identifying unique characteristics and
needs of each segment. Identification and analysis
of unique characteristics of customer segments en-
able the company to manage and target customers
more effectively, offer customized products and
targeted campaigns, and design effective market-
ing actions for the revealed segments. Segmenta-
tion in marketing allow the company to (Tsiptsis
& Chorianopoulos, 2009):
• Understand customers better in order to
find out new marketing opportunities,
228

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
• Offer products and services that are cus-
tomized to each segment’s needs and
preferences,
• Provide customized rewards and incentives
based on the each segment’s value,
• Select the right advertising, communica-
tion, sales, service channel to reach the tar-
get segment(s),
• Determine the brand image and the key
product benefits to be communicated based
on the specific characteristics of each
segment,
• Provide differentiated services considering
each segment’s importance,
• Allocate resources according to the expect-
ed return from each segment,
• Prioritize the customer retention marketing
initiatives considering the each segment’s
importance and value, and
• Target most profitable prospects.
Development and analysis of the customer
database are essential to identify which custom-
ers to target. Segments can be chosen as target
market depending upon factors. For instance,
customer-based profitability or customer lifetime
value can be used to determine on which cus-
tomers to focus. Company requires to evaluate
and understand each customer’s “lifetime value”
(LTV) in determining profitable customers and
considering the each segment’s importance and
value. Customer lifetime value is a measure of a
customer’s, or customer segment’s profit genera-
tion capacity for a company and can be estimated
at the level of individual customer or customer
segment (Buttle, 2009). Lifetime value includes
customer’s present value and potential value.
While evaluating lifetime value of a customer,
company analyses customer database in terms of
current and future profitability of the customer
or customer segment to the company. Based on
the customer or customer segment profitability,

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
company can decide which customers or customer
segments to target. To calculate lifetime customer
value, company requires to make assumptions
about future purchasing, product and marketing
costs, as well as how long the customer can be
expected to remain with the company. Lifetime
customer value calculation also includes addi-
tional profits that a company can gain from the
customer through increasing cross, up, and deep-
selling opportunities as well as decreasing the
customer acquisition costs (Winer, 2001). Thus,
the company takes into account the customer’s
expected lifetime and potential value from new
purchases in order to estimate the future value of
the customer. To put it together, companies that
want to estimate the lifetime value of a customer
or a customer segment for a period of time need
to know (Buttle, 2009):
• The probability that the customer will buy
products and services from the company,
• The gross margins on those purchases,
• The cost of serving that customer,
• The cost of acquiring customer,
• The rate of discount that may be applied to
future net margins, and
• Word of mouth influence of that custom-
ers (satisfied customers influence others
to buy; therefore customer referrals de-
crease the customer acquisition costs of the
company).
Profitability analysis of customers allow the
company to choose customers who are profitable
or expected to be profitable in the future. Customer
profitability analysis help the company target cus-
tomers who will provide the most long-term profits
and avoid customers who are too costly to serve.
Therefore, understanding customer profitability is
important in selecting which customers to target.
While selecting customer segments in order
to target, company needs to consider (Kotler &
Armstrong, 2013):
• Segment size and growth,
• Segment structural attractiveness (e.g. in-
tense of competition), and
• Company objectives and resources.
Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of creating sales
opportunities that may come from various sources
and activities such as advertisements, social me-
dia, marketing campaigns, events, and customer
referrals with the hope of converting them into
a sale for a company. In lead generation, it is
important to figure out contact points where
the company can make initial communication
with the potential buyers. The key to generating
lead is to share content offers through channels
such as internet, email marketing, social media,
whitepapers, and so on. An important part of lead
generation is creating forms and landing pages to
collect lead information. Company can decide on
what information is the most critical to collect
and ask the needed information with the help of
the forms (Hanington, 2013). Company can place
premium content offers such as whitepapers and
webinars and company can ask potential buyers
to fill a form in order to access these whitepapers
and webinars. By this way company can generate
leads and gather critical prospective customer
information, which can be used during the lead
management process. Company can also share
content through social media or email marketing
by adding a tracking system, which enables the
company to analyse leads’ behavior and interac-
tion with the shared content. With the purpose
of generating lead, company can use marketing
analytics that allows the company to determine
229

how people are coming to the company’s website
or blog, what they are clicking, what type of con-
tent they are looking for, and what their interests,
needs, and wants are?. Capturing answers of these
questions help the company understand its leads
and this information can be used during the lead
nurturing in order to convert more potential buyers
into customers (Sahota, 2011).
Finding and qualifying the sales lead is the most
important step in lead management. The quality
of a lead is usually determined by the readiness
and probability of the prospective customer to
take the next action towards a purchase. Once the
company identifies its ideal customer profile, it
becomes easier to determine effective acquisition
channels to reach its ideal prospective customers.
A company can use a wide variety of customer
acquisition channels from broadcast and print
advertisements to search engine marketing, social
media, and email marketing. To achieve success-
ful conversion rates, company needs to consider
characteristics of its ideal customer profile while
it selects acquisition channels. Mass marketing
communication tools such as television, radio,
outdoor or print advertising can be used for gen-
erating awareness, reaching potential customers
and communicating with targeted customers.
However, with advancements in information
communication technologies and widespread
use of social networks, companies can use more
targeted and one to one marketing communication
approaches rather than conventional approaches
for communicating with selected customers. Since
targeted, personalized, and one to one marketing
communication enables the company to build
intimate relationships with customers, in today’s
conditions, it is more effective to communicate
with customers through targeted and one to one
approaches rather than talking to customers with
conventional mass marketing approaches (Winer,
2001).
Customers have been increasing coming to-
gether at online platforms to share their product or
service reviews. They can easily access richer and
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Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
more information at online platforms. As custom-
ers trust advice from online sites, user-generated
commentary, and expert strangers more than sup-
plier sponsored mass media communication, lead
generation becomes more challenging. Therefore,
company requires to use emerging sales 2.0 tools,
which may let them track prospect online activ-
ity and mine social networks for lead generation
(Forrester, 2009).
As illustrated in Figure 5, free trials, campaigns
and promotions, affiliate networks, display ad-
vertising, email marketing, social media, search
advertising, and customer referrals are among
the most used customer acquisition channels by
online merchants (Vindicia, 2012). Campaigns and
promotions in the form of free trials, discounts,
community events, additional content, and bundles
can be used as customer acquisition tools. The most
effective campaigns and promotions are the ones
that offer prospective customers the most value
in return for their time, effort and money. Since
free trial allows the prospective customers to try
the product with having no financial burden, free
trials can be used to attract prospective customers.
To have access to free trial, prospective customer
gives its contact information such as email or phone
number, which can be used by the company for
lead nurturing purposes. Companies can attempt
to reach new customers with activities. Hosting
community events not only enhance relation-
ships with current customers, but can attract new
customers. Creating additional content makes the
company a valuable partner in the customers’
decision making process. Offering unique goods
or additional benefits enable the company to at-
tract new customers. Bundles is another form of
customer acquisition promotion that offers access
to multiple products for a lower and combined fee
(Vindicia, 2012).
Affiliate networks which are partners that drive
traffic to the company’s website can be also used
to as customer acquisition channel. Company may
use display advertisements that are displayed at
various complementary websites in order to drive

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
Figure 5. Lead generation channels
acquisition. Size, placement, overall site traffic
and the creative content of the display advertise-
ments are the factors that increase acquisition.
Email marketing can be implemented to attract
prospective customer. Company sends emails to
in house generated or purchased lists to encour-
age receivers to sign up. Message content and list
quality influence the success of conversion rates.
However, success of email marketing is low in
acquiring prospective customers (Vindicia, 2012).
Social networks and micro-blogging services
can be also used for attracting prospective cus-
tomers. Social media is a critical tool for busi-
nesses because it allows companies build direct
relationship with their customers. The interactive
nature of Facebook and Twitter gives businesses
the opportunity to attract new customers. For
instance, social media contests can be used to
attract prospective customers. These acquisition
channels are highly targeted and the conversation
in these social channels are mostly initiated by the
prospective customer. Social media acquisition has
higher conversion and lower costs. Search advertis-
ing in the form of paid search sponsorship based
on certain keywords and natural search results are
used as customer acquisition channels. Company
can increase the effectiveness of natural search
in acquisition through high quality, constantly
updated content and working on search engine
optimization. On the other hand, the effectiveness
of paid search in acquisition can be maintained
through working to optimize keyword choice and
messaging. In the case of a problem in key word
optimization, search advertising becomes a costly
channel with low conversion rates. Company
can encourage customer referrals by rewarding
its customers and it can be used as acquisition
channel that delivers high quality traffic for the
lowest overall cost (Vindicia, 2012).
Skok (2012) argues that different lead sources
produce potential buyers who are at different
stage of the buying cycle. For instance, potential
buyers who are at the later stages of the buying
cycle are most likely to use Google and review
sites to search for brands and products. Leads
that come from these sources are highly valued
because purchase intention of them is very high
and they are almost ready to buy. They are at the
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Customer Acquisition Management Strategies

consideration or purchase stages of the buying
cycle. On the other hand, potential buyers, who
come from social referrals, Twitter, Facebook ads,
banner ads, and so on, are at the beginning of the
buying customer buying cycle and they usually
just become aware of the product (Skok, 2012).
In lead generation, B to B companies mostly
rely on white papers, social media, email, search
optimization, webinars, and inside sales channels
to make the content more engaging (see Box 1).
Social media such as Twitter posts and blogs,
and email are considered as among the channels
that they demand management engine (Forrester,
2009). A comprehensive poll is conducted with
the 40,000 B2B marketers on LinkedIn in order
to learn marketers’ focus for 2014. Companies
indicate that their biggest marketing spend will
be on demand generation in 2014. The findings
of the poll reveals that tele-prospecting (39%),
email (26%), web (12%), social media (12%),
and events (12%) are considered as primary lead
generation tools respectively.
Scoring leads is essential for qualifying leads
and effective lead management process. Lead
scoring determines the prospective customer’s
potential interest in the company’s product and
service. Lead scoring information is important
and useful to the efficiency of passing qualified
leads to sales department. When a lead gets higher
score, the chance of converting this lead to sale is
more likely. If the lead gets lower score, this means
that this lead is unqualified or cold lead, and it
can send for lead nurturing. The salesforce of the
company can prioritize their contact with potential
buyers based on their lead scores. Companies need
to work on to figure out factors that are important
for their business and develop lead scoring process
based on these factors (Sahota, 2011).
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing can be used as lead management
strategy to convert prospects into customers.
Without lead qualification and lead nurturing
programs, it is not easy to convert prospective
customers into customers. Lead nurturing is the
process of engaging with qualified prospective
customers, regardless of their purchase timing,
with the aim of earning their business when they
are ready to buy (Forrester, 2009). Most of the

Box 1. Social selling: Success of First Business Financial Services and PayPal

First Business Financial Services began operation in 1990 and listed on the NASDAQ. First Business Financial Services focuses
exclusively on the specific needs of businesses, key executives, and high net worth individuals seeking a higher level of financial
service and expertise. Since living in the age of social media, leveraging professional networks like LinkedIn to generate sales leads
are becoming increasingly important, First Business decides to leverage social selling in order to get new, high-quality lead sources
to increase pipeline and shorten a lengthy sales cycle. The company begins to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which is the prospecting
tool that is powered by social selling. Utilizing social selling enables companies to find and connect with potential sales leads, who are
already on those social platforms, engaging with others and content. With access to over 300 million members on the world’s largest
professional network, LinkedIn creates sales lead generation success by enabling sales professionals to easily find the right prospects.
Utilization of this lead generation solution allows First Business Financial Services to access targeted accounts, shorten the sales process
and increase the likelihood of getting in the door. When leveraging teammates’ connections to set up a meeting, the average success rate
is at least 80% higher than without LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
PayPal Australia also achieves 3000% ROI with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. PayPal digital wallet enables consumers to purchase with
security, flexibility and convenience. 5.5 million Australian consumers uses PayPal when shopping online. The company tries to make
PayPal to be a payment option for consumers. The company looks for a solution in order to provide its sales team with more accurate
leads and reduce the sales cycle. Previously, PayPal purchased rich data, which was stale and not accurate, from several sources. PayPal
also spent a lots of time and money to clean the data. However, with the use of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, PayPal makes it easy for the
sales team to find the right contacts. By this way, it reduces sales cycles by 25% and generates more opportunities.
Source: LinkedIn (2013). Sales navigator shortens sales cycle & opens doors to new leads. Retrieved January 8, 2014, from http://
business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/sales-solutions/global/en_US/site/pdf/cs/linkedin-first-business-bank-case-study-en-us.pdf
LinkedIn (2014). PayPal Australia achieves 3000% ROI with LinkedIn sales navigator. Retrieved June 12, 2014, from http://business.
linkedin.com/content/dam/business/sales-solutions/global/en_US/site/pdf/cs/paypal-case-study-en-us.pdf

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Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
time, potential buyers are not ready to buy with
the first interaction and they need to be nurtured
over time. If the company fails to follow up leads
in a timely manner, they can become cold very
quickly. Most of the time, companies are short term
revenue oriented and only focus on leads, which
are most likely to close in the short run. Focusing
on merely mature leads causes the company miss
leads who can be converted to sales; but in the short
time, they are not ready to make purchase and the
company requires a longer time to convert them
to sales. Therefore it is important to nurture leads
over time until they become mature in order not to
lose these opportunities. To successfully manage
lead nurturing, company engages with potential
buyers early in the sales cycle and automates the
engagement based on the potential buyers’ inter-
est. Potential buyers get the information from the
company until they are ready to make a buying
decision. When they become mature leads, they
are forwarded to sales (Gleanster, 2010). Compa-
nies require to develop nurture communications
and campaigns in order to move potential buyers
end to the sales funnel until they become ready
to purchase from the company. Prospects within
the company’s target market fall into one of the
above four categories (Hollander, 2012):
• Ready Buyers: They are at the very
top pyramid of prospects and meet all
BANT criteria (Budget, Authority, Need,
Timeframe). They are ready to buy in a
short timeframe.
• Buying Soon: Just below the ready to buy
prospects and they also meet all BANT cri-
teria but are on a little bit longer timeframe
to purchase from the company
• Buying Sometime: They are prospects
who will be buying someday, just not in the
immediate future.
• Never Buying: They are at the bottom of
the pyramid of prospects who will never
buy what the company offers for various
different reasons.
As it can be seen from the categories of pros-
pects, there are some leads that present real op-
portunities for converting to sales but they aren’t
ready to buy and it requires a longer process for
converting them to sales. These opportunities have
to be nurtured until they become ready to buy. The
aim of lead nurturing is to build relationships with
potential customers even if they are not ready to
buy a product or service.
Based on the information that is gathered from
the lead identification and profiling, lead genera-
tion and lead scoring stages, company can deter-
mine the lead’s level of interest to the company’s
product and services as well as the lead’s degree
of readiness in the sales cycle. Some of leads are
more qualified and close to the end of the sales
funnel; so that they may be easily converted to
sales through simply offering them free trial or
promotions. However, some of leads are not quite
ready to be sent to sales and they are more close to
top of the sales funnel. These unqualified or cold
leads can be taken into a suitable lead nurturing
campaign. Company requires to educate leads,
who are in the research or awareness phase and
considering whether the company’s products or
services will meet their needs. Company can
move these leads at the end of the sales funnel
by convincing these leads that the company’s
products and services will meet their needs, and
offer them more relevant content and promotional
offers. Therefore, company should design relevant
and specific content based on the potential buyer’s
position at the sales funnel. While delivering the
content to potential buyers, company should build
personal and relevant email and social media
communications. Moreover, company requires to
offer targeted content and continue communicat-
ing from first contact until the lead is ready to be
passed to sales (Sahota, 2011).
Detailed information about potential buyers al-
lows the company to easily qualify leads and close
the sales. Thus, company should gather and record
detailed and relevant information from potential
buyers at each interaction. For instance, company
233

needs to know why the product is important for
the potential buyer. By knowing this information,
company can design its lead nurturing communi-
cation and campaigns.
Lead has to be routed to sales department in a
timely fashion, passed to right person, and most
importantly lead has to be ready to engage with a
salesperson. To achieve better sales effectiveness,
the company needs more well-defined directions
and definitions of when a lead should be forwarded
to sales. When the lead is ready and qualified, it
can be forwarded to the sales. Company should be
sure that the lead is qualified and needs no further
nurturing. Lead scoring allows the company to
give decision of whether the lead is qualified to
be passed to sales. While marketing department
is sending the qualified lead to sales, it has to
provide information about the lead’s activity and
background that is gathered at the lead generation
and nurturing stages. To ensure that qualified
leads are followed up by the sales force, company
requires to provide incentives to the salesforce.
Lead management process can be more effective
and generate better business results if the company
tracks and measure the performance of entire sales
cycle (Sahota, 2011).
There are two main tactics for nurturing leads:
drip campaigns and trigger marketing campaigns.
The phrase drip marketing comes from the com-
mon phrase used in agriculture and gardening
called drip irrigation. This is the process of water-
ing plants or crops using small amounts of water
over long periods of time (Lake, 2014). Successful
drip marketing involves a carefully planned and
thoughtfully targeted series of communications
that will get the company’s message across to
customers and keep the company’s name in their
minds. Drip marketing helps potential customers
become the company’s actual customers. Drip
marketing is ideal for high-value products with a
long sell cycle, especially which are purchased at
infrequent intervals. Building awareness is one of
the most important advantages of drip marketing.
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Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
It fixes the company’s name and message in the
potential customer’s mind. Drip marketing can also
inform prospects about the company’s products.
Company can map the customer buying cycle
stages and identify potential buyers’ information
need for each stage. According to the potential
buyer’s position at the buying cycle, company
can design its communication content in order
to provide the needed information and nurture
leads over time to convert them into sales. Drip
marketing as a communication series can be used
to establish trust for the company in the eyes of
prospect customers. It should not be used for
selling purpose. Company can deliver automated
and relevant information such as educational
materials or industry specific best practices about
its brand with the purpose of establishing trust.
When prospect customers begin to actively engage
in drip marketing emails, they become mature
and best leads are passed to sales or added to
a trigger marketing campaign in order to move
them towards purchase stage of the buying cycle
(Gleanster, 2011).
Relevant content accelerates customer engage-
ment. To develop effective communication with
the prospective customers, company must provide
relevant information instead of huge volumes of
information. In order not to waste prospective
customers’ time, content of communication has to
be relevant. Company requires to understand what
information prospective customers want. Using
a conversational style and personal direct tone
in content creation enable the company to easily
capture prospective customer’s attention. Making
the content lively, provocative, and interesting
make the communication more effective (For-
rester, 2009). Moreover, it is important to note that
company should respond quickly when a potential
buyer contacts with the company for the purpose
of requesting information. Responding quickly to
prospects’ inquiries increases probability of the
sales closing rates.

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
Trigger event can be used as lead nurturing
campaign in order to cause a potential buyer to
feel a clear need of the product or service and
create a sense of urgency in their buying process.
Trigger event has to be designed by considering
characteristics of target prospects who are really
ready to buy. For creating effective trigger event,
company needs to determine triggers that typically
get potential buyers and customers into buying
mode (Skok, 2012). Drip marketing campaigns,
which are automated email communication series,
are delivered based on pre-determined time inter-
vals. However trigger marketing campaigns are
initiated based on prospect behavior; for instance,
a click-through on an email, a webpage visit, or
filling a form on a landing page (Gleanster, 2011).
Automated and triggered email campaigns can
be used to reach out and keep in touch with potential
buyers as well as customers throughout the buying
cycle. Trigger marketing helps the company sell
when the time is right and prospect is ready to pur-
chase. Triggered emails increase the performance
and conversion rates of email marketing; because
triggered email is automatically sent in response
to action taken by a prospect or customer. Cus-
tomer lifecycle triggers, welcome messages, post
purchase triggers, thank you emails, transactional
behavioral triggers, order confirmations, expira-
tion triggers, birthday wishes, online behavioral
triggers, and follow ups to abandoned shopping
carts / reminders are among the examples of trig-
gered emails (Spyglass Intelligence LLC, 2012;
Newslever, 2013). Gleanster (2011) indicates that
using the combination of email campaigns and
landing pages is the best way to utilize trigger mark-
ing campaigns. Companies can also use trigger
campaigns for prospect customer segmentation.
If the company is not sure about what products
that it should offer to new prospect customers, it
can send an email campaign with a few different
offerings from its product portfolio and link each
offer in the email to a unique landing page which
provides additional information on one product.
Then it can develop a series of trigger campaigns
for each landing page link. When the prospect
clicks and completes the landing page, the trig-
ger campaign automatically routes new prospects
to the most relevant triggered communications
(Gleanster, 2011).
Since triggered emails secure higher open
rates and engagement, triggered messaging has
been rising. Utilization of triggered messaging
was up 73% compared to previous year in 2012.
Triggered emails also yield 70.5% higher open
rates and 101.8% higher click rates compared to
business as usual (BAU) messages in the fourth
quarter of 2012 (O’Malley, 2013). According to the
MarketingSherpa (2013) survey results, the most
commonly used triggered emails are respectively
welcome (50%), thank you (48%), transactional
(e.g., order confirmations and bills) (40%), activa-
tion (26%), post purchase (e.g., thank you coupon,
product review request, and customer survey)
(25%), cross and up-sell promotions (e.g., prod-
uct recommendation) (25%), date triggered (e.g.,
birthday and renewals) (24%), event countdown
(18%), triggered based on website behavior (e.g.,
website visits) (18%), win back & reengagement
(15%), and shopping cart abandonment (9%).
Company can send welcome messages when
the potential buyer visits the company’s website
and fills the form which is on the company’s
website. Website visiting and filling the form
indicate the purchase intention of the prospect
customer as well as his interest in the company’s
products and services. Through filling the form,
prospect customer gives his contact informa-
tion for further communication. To convert this
opportunity into sales, it is essential to stay in
touch with the potential buyer and nurture him
over time in order to penetrate the shopping and
consideration list of the prospect buyer. Thus, the
company can send the potential buyer, who visits
the company’s website and indicates his interest,
235

welcome message that may include information
about the company’s social media portals where
the prospect customer can find rich information
about the company or special offer. After the po-
tential buyer is welcomed and express his interest,
company can start to send follow up emails based
on the specific interest of the prospect. So that
potential buyer can get the necessary information
to make a purchase decision. Company can also
send trigger emails to motivate potential buyer to
move purchase stage of the buying cycle. Wake
up is one of the other trigger communication pur-
poses. After the initial website visit of prospect
customers, some of them may become inactive.
The company can send them trigger emails in
order to wake and push them towards company.
Trigger email can be also sent after purchase in
order to follow up and evaluate the satisfaction of
the newly acquired customers. Company needs to
continue communication after the sale in order to
establish ongoing relationship with new custom-
ers and make them loyal. Ongoing surveys or
asking whether they need any help can be used
as trigger communication with the purpose of
establishing long term customer relationships as
well as these communications help the company
improve its products and services. In the context
of post purchase trigger emails, company can also
send thank you coupon in order to trigger cross
and up-sell opportunities. It is important to keep
in mind that up-sell or cross-sell triggered email
that is sent as a post purchase trigger has to involve
relevant offers based on the receiver’s wants and
needs. Asking for product review request or refer
a friend messages can be used to trigger new ac-
quired customer to become an advocate customer
(Spyglass Intelligence LLC, 2012). Abandoned
cart campaign can be designed as trigger email
strategy in order to activate customers who place
a product in the shopping cart at the website but
leave the website without purchasing the product.
The company knows the contact information of
these prospects because they log in in order to place
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Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
a product in shopping cart. So that company can
send a triggered email to them after abandoning
the shopping cart and this email can contain the
link of the abandoned shopping cart.
To increase the effectiveness of triggered
emails, it is important to personalize triggered
emails. Research which is conducted by Mar-
ketingCharts (2013) indicates that personalized
triggered emails deliver stronger open and click
rates than their non-personalized ones. Personal-
ized triggered emails have an average open rate
of 29.2%, about 25% higher than the rate for non-
personalized triggered emails. Personalized trig-
gered emails’ unique click rates also outperform
compared to non-personalized triggered emails
(6.7% vs. 4.4%). The findings of the study reveal
the fact that personalization provides a significant
rise in transaction rates and revenue per email. For
personalized triggered mailings transaction rates
are 2.5 times higher; while revenue per email is
63% higher than non-personalized triggered emails
(MarketingCharts, 2013).
Controlling the email frequency of triggered
based campaigns is important in order to not to
annoy customers with too many emails. Company
needs to establish rules and set limits on the number
of the emails that are going to be sent to a customer.
While sending trigger email, company should not
violate the can-spam act as well as should not
send emails to people who have already opted out
of the database. For the success of trigger email,
company should provide a value or an attractive
offer to the customer. Company needs to include
a premium content, discount, coupon, or some
other special opportunity to the trigger email in
order to increase the sales conversion rate. Com-
pany can try to deliver different offers and assess
the results of the campaigns to see what works
and what does not. Through testing and learning,
company can develop and improve trigger based
campaigns that can help the company generate
revenue. Lastly, company has to avoid sending the
trigger email that is irrelevant, broadly targeted,

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
and impersonal. Success of trigger campaigns
depends on the company’s ability to profile its
customer segments and send trigger email based
on the wants and needs of each customer segment.
LEAD MANAGEMENT AUTOMATION
Companies have been increasingly automating
their lead management process with the purpose
of generating revenue streams from new custom-
ers, increasing the sales conversion rate, targeting
profitable customers, and identifying cross and
up-sell opportunities from new customers. Ang
and Buttle (2006) conduct a research with the
732 Australian companies in order to identify
and explore attributes that enable companies to
outperform at customer acquisition. They look at
the presence of a range of customer acquisition
management practices, objectives and tactics.
The findings of the research indicate that stat-
ing revenue streams from new customers (84%),
numbers of new customers to be acquired (65%),
specific named customers to be acquired (57%),
and margins to be earned from new customers
(53%) are among the most common customer
acquisition objectives (Ang & Buttle, 2006).
CRM technologies can provide tools that assist
companies in customer acquisition. Once a com-
Figure 6. Automation of lead management process
pany tries to approach a target market to acquire
new customers, customers in the market look at
the company’s product with suspicion. They do not
know the company, and its products and services;
so they may have questions in their minds. The
company requires to engage with suspects and
through lead nurturing communications company
tries to provide answers to those questions and
focuses on converting suspects into prospects
(see Figure 6). After being convinced, then sus-
pects become prospects. At this stage, company
needs to qualify prospects through lead scoring
before sending them to sales. Finally, a qualified
prospect becomes a customer when he makes the
purchase. Lead management automation helps the
company automate the lead management process
and transforms the data into actionable insights;
so that company can predict what customers want
and discover the most effective ways to improve
customer acquisition. For achieving sales effec-
tiveness, company need to provide its employees
tools that capture information about each and
every interaction with prospects and customers.
Effective lead management automation inte-
grates and aligns marketing and sales to improve
sales conversion ratios; while increasing the qual-
ity and quantity of qualified prospects who are
delivered to sales department. Lead management
solutions help the company improve customer
237

acquisition through segmentation and clustering
techniques, reduce costs by targeting prospects
that are most likely to respond the company’s
marketing efforts, and allocate budget to the
best performing programs. Lead management
software also allows the company to customize
its interactions (Buttle, 2009). Companies have
been increasingly implementing lead management
automation to effectively and consistently qualify
leads, prioritize the best leads to pursue, develop
systematic measurable approaches to score the
leads, make marketing more proficient, automatic
and efficient, create a consistent flow of leads
pumping through the pipeline, nurture prospective
customers, keep prospective customers from fall-
ing through the cracks of the pipeline, and improve
data quality, reporting, marketing efficiency and
targeting (Forrester, 2009).
Lead management automation reduces cus-
tomer acquisition costs by better targeting pro-
spective customers. It segments and identifies
prospective customers, who meet the company’s
business objective, through using market research
and surveys, psychographic profiles, and analytics
tools. Since segmenting and profiling prospective
customers allow the company to deliver the best
offer and develop more targeted and relevant com-
munication, company can improve its acquisition
ability and reduce its acquisition costs with the
implementation of lead management automation.
Lead management automation also helps the com-
pany automate the lead nurturing process. With
these technologies, company can send direct and
most relevant nurturing messages to prospective
customers based on their position at the buying
cycle and segment profile. Targeted and relevant
nurturing messages increase the probability of
reading the message (Skok, 2012). Moreover,
lead management software also provides risk
modelling tools that help the company evaluate
prospect profitability as well as evaluate and score
the prospect’s creditworthiness and risk through
screening business reports, public records, credit
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Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
information, and other related information. Risk
assessment helps the company acquire profitable
customers while minimizing risk.
Lead management automation allows the
company to track and measure lead management
efforts of the company. With the help of the lead
management automation, company can see how
many prospects are converted to opportunities
or closed deals. Measuring the lead management
performance gives the company great insight into
what it is doing well, while also helping to identify
points of improvement (Hanington, 2013). Sales
management tools of lead management automa-
tion software automate reports on new leads, lead
sources, conversion rates, and opportunity move-
ment. It also monitors sales team and individual
sales representatives’ activities. Through sales
and automation tools, lead management process,
which is composed of selecting qualified leads,
making the sales pitch, closing the sale, and retain-
ing the new customer for repurchases, becomes
standardized.
CONCLUSION
Since customer acquisition is the first stage
of the customer buying cycle and essential for
maintaining customer retention, companies need
to effectively manage their customer acquisition
process. While managing customer acquisition
process, companies require to consider which
potential customers to target, how to engage with
them and what to offer them. Lead management is
one of the relationship marketing practices that is
crucial for the company to convert prospects into
customers. During the lead management process,
company identifies its potential buyers, educates
them, and engages with them, and when the leads
are considered qualified, leads are passed from
marketing to sales. The lead management pro-
cess of a company includes a number of phases
such as lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead

Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
qualification. Company needs to manage these
phases effectively and efficiently in order to
convert more prospects into customers, and then
into loyal customers.
It is essential for companies to find and engage
with potential buyers at the earlier stages of the
customer buying cycle and build relationship
with them over time in order penetrate into their
shopping and consideration list and move them
forward in the buying cycle towards purchasing
stage. Lead management process starts with un-
derstanding the buyers’ profile. Existing custom-
ers are the starting point in identifying potential
buyers. Company needs to know and understand
its existing customer base, and define key attri-
butes of them. Once the company figures out its
buyers’ profile, it will be easy to set and weigh
criteria that can be used to score and grade leads
in order to evaluate the lead’s appropriateness
overall company’s customer profile. Profile of the
best customers can be used to define and acquire
new prospects better.
Getting your customers’ attention is much
easier if the company can leverage information
that the company knows about them. This helps
the company provide rich and personal interac-
tion. Company can develop its CRM strategies
by analyzing its customer database. Analysis of
customer database allows the company to select
its target customers, identify the tools for targeting
the customers, and decide how to build relation-
ships with the targeted customers. In the age of
the customer, the ability to leverage customer
insight better helps the company implement CRM
strategies successfully and gain competitive ad-
vantage. Company requires to consider customer
profitability, customer lifetime value, customer’s
possible growth in purchasing, and customer’s
potential or strategic importance in determining
which customers to be selected as target market.
Lead generation is the process of creating sales
opportunities that may come from various sources
and activities such as advertisements, social me-
dia, marketing campaigns, events, and customer
referrals with the hope of converting them into a
sale for a company. Once the company identifies
its ideal customer profile, it becomes easier to
determine effective acquisition channels to reach
its ideal prospective customers. A company can
use a wide variety of customer acquisition chan-
nels from broadcast and print advertisements to
search engine marketing, social media, and email
marketing. To achieve successful conversion rates,
company needs to consider characteristics of its
ideal customer profile while it selects acquisition
channels. Finding and qualifying the sales lead is
the most important step in lead management. The
quality of a lead is usually determined by the readi-
ness and probability of the prospective customer
to make a purchase. Company needs to track the
source of the lead and focus on understanding
what actually causes these leads to be aware of
the company and its products. Tracking the source
of lead allows the company to determine what
works and what does not work in lead generation.
Since some potential buyers do not ready
to purchase at the buying cycle, they need to
be nurtured until they become qualified to pass
sales. To effectively manage lead nurturing pro-
cess, companies need to identify what triggers
potential buyers to make a purchase and based on
this insight they can develop their lead nurturing
content. Lead nurturing is intended to raise the
company’s profile in the prospects’ eyes, thus
making it more likely that the prospect will con-
sider the company’s product or service when it is
time to buy. Lead nurturing focuses on educating
qualified sales leads who are not ready to buy
yet. Lead nurturing is the process of providing
highly relevant educational content that helps
build brand and product preference long before
prospects are ready to buy. The key to successful
lead nurturing is to deliver content that’s valuable
enough to keep the company’s audience engaged.
If the companies do it right, lead nurturing can
help them build a strong brand preference in the
company’s prospects long before they’re actively
engaged in a buying process.
239

There are two main tactics for nurturing leads:
drip campaigns and trigger marketing Successful
drip marketing involves a carefully planned and
thoughtfully targeted series of communications
that will get the company’s message across to
customers and keep the company’s name in their
minds. Drip marketing helps potential customers
become the company’s actual customers. Drip
marketing as a communication series can be used
to establish trust for the company in the eyes of
prospect customers. Since relevant content accel-
erates customer engagement, to develop effective
communication with the prospective customers,
company must provide relevant information
instead of huge volumes of information. Trigger
marketing can also be used as lead nurturing.
Automated and triggered email campaigns can be
used to reach out and keep in touch with potential
buyers as well as customers throughout the buying
cycle. Triggered emails increase the performance
and conversion rates of email marketing; because
triggered email is automatically sent in response
to action taken by a prospect or customer. Com-
pany needs to measure the effectiveness of its
nurturing campaigns by determining their return
on investment and focus on the communications
and campaigns that will increase its sales pipeline
effectiveness.
Companies have been increasingly using
lead management automation with the purpose
of qualifying leads, prioritizing the best leads to
pursue, developing systematic measurable ap-
proaches to score the leads, making marketing
more efficient, creating a consistent flow of leads,
nurturing prospective customers, preventing pro-
spective customers to escape from the pipeline,
and improving data quality, reporting, marketing
efficiency and targeting.
Lead management automation allows the com-
pany to increase lead quality and opportunity of
converting prospective customer into customers.
Lead management automation improves the suc-
cess of customer acquisition strategies through
targeted customer segmentation. Analytical tools
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Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
enable the company to identify prospective cus-
tomers, who are profitable and within the scope
of company’s target market and have potential to
buy. Therefore, company develops more targeted
and relevant offers. Highly targeted marketing
lists help company achieve better response rates
on offers to new customers. Briefly, lead man-
agement automation improves the company’s
ability to acquire new customers. With the lead
management automation, companies gain control
over lead management processes and marketing
programs, get better customer insight, and increase
efficiency in marketing activities.
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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
Customer Lifetime Value: Customer lifetime
value is a measure of a customer’s, or customer
segment’s profit generation capacity for a com-
pany. Lifetime value includes customer’s present
value and potential value. To calculate lifetime
customer value, company requires to make as-
sumptions about future purchasing, product and
marketing costs, as well as how long the customer
can be expected to remain with the company.
Lifetime customer value calculation also includes
additional profits that a company can gain from
the customer through increasing cross, up, and
deep-selling opportunities as well as decreasing
the customer acquisition costs.
Drip Marketing: Drip marketing is used
within the context lead nurturing. Drip marketing
campaigns, which are automated email commu-
nication series, are delivered based on pre-deter-
mined time intervals. Successful drip marketing
involves a carefully planned and thoughtfully
targeted series of communications that will get the
company’s message across to customers and keep
the company’s name in their minds. According to
the potential buyer’s position at the buying cycle,
company can design its communication content
in order to provide the needed information and
nurture leads over time to convert them into sales.
Lead Generation: Lead generation is the
process of creating sales opportunities that may
come from various sources and activities such
as advertisements, social media, marketing cam-
 
Customer Acquisition Management Strategies
paigns, events, and customer referrals with the
hope of converting them into a sale for a company.
.During the lead generation, company determines
the sales readiness of prospects and identifies
qualified prospects who have intent and ability
to make a purchase decision within a reasonable
timeframe.
Lead Management: Lead management is
one of the relationship marketing practices that
is crucial for the company to convert prospects
into customers. Lead management is an important
process that takes place before a prospect becomes
a customer and its primary focus is to manage
relationships with prospects. Lead management
software deals with the acquisition of customers.
Lead management deals with the overall process
in which potential buyers are identified, educated,
engaged with, qualified, and passed to sales. The
lead management process includes a number of
phases such as lead generation, lead qualification,
lead nurturing, lead allocation, lead harvesting
and lead tracking.
Lead Nurturing: Lead nurturing can be used
as lead management strategy to convert prospects
into customers. Lead nurturing is the process of
engaging with qualified prospective customers,
regardless of their purchase timing, with the aim
of earning their business when they are ready to
buy. With the help of lead nurturing communica-
tion, company tries to penetrate consideration as
well as shopping list of the potential buyers. Lead
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management automation also helps the company
automate the lead nurturing process. With these
technologies, company can send direct and most
relevant nurturing messages to prospective cus-
tomers based on their position at the buying cycle
and segment profile.
Lead Scoring: Lead scoring determines the
prospective customer’s potential interest in the
company’s product and service. Lead scoring in-
formation is important and useful to the efficiency
of passing qualified leads to sales department.
When a lead gets higher score, the chance of
converting this lead to sale is more likely. If the
lead gets lower score, this means that this lead is
unqualified or cold lead, and it can send for lead
nurturing.
Trigger Email: Trigger marketing campaigns
are initiated based on prospect behavior; for in-
stance, when prospect customers begin to actively
engage in drip marketing emails, company can
send trigger emails in order to motivate and move
them towards purchase stage of the buying cycle.
Company needs to include a premium content, dis-
count, coupon, or some other special opportunity
to the trigger email in order to increase the sales
conversion rate. Automated and triggered email
campaigns can be used to reach out and keep in
touch with potential buyers as well as customers
throughout the buying cycle. Trigger marketing
helps the company sell when the time is right and
prospect is ready to purchase.
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