• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, December 6, 2003

Customer Retention Metrics Overlooked

InternetRetailer reports on a study by WebTrends/Net IQ Corp. and Drilling Down that a surprising 52% of marketers recently surveyed don't currently measure customer retention. Only 28% look at repeat visit and purchase rates, only 16% segment customers based on the retention-specific metrics of frequency and latency, and only 3% do detailed cross-channel marketing analysis, according to the survey of more than 500 respondents.

Some 31% of those surveyed don't measure the results of search marketing campaigns, while only 41% even measure click-through and general traffic. Only 16% measure web activity through to conversion, while only 11% have competed a detailed ROI analysis of campaigns including lifetime value of phrase by revenue.

Drilling Down consultant Jim Novo says "Most companies are just excited to be acquiring customers and doing it profitably. But that doesn't mean they're allocating marketing money in the right place, because a lot of those customers might buy just one time."

Much of the science of customer retention comes from what's been learned in the catalog industry, noted Novo. "The good news," he says, "is that what works for catalogs works even better online because (the) electronic information needed to implement these retention programs is always available."

You can find out more here.