What's more important? Acquiring new customers or increasing retention from existing customers?

Question

The customer retention law is mind-blowing if you think about it: It costs between 4 and 10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.

This means a 5 percent increase in retention yields profit increases of 25% to 95%! (Bain and Company, 1990)

I cannot think of a more compelling growth strategy than this.

Uma Venugopal · Accepted Answer

I suppose initially it's acquiring to get the word out as organically as possible and post that retaining these users.

Farokh Shahabi · Answer

@uma_venugopal Of course, I wouldn't say the business is even started at that stage!

Getting those first customers by all means necessary, even going to their offices personally, is the very first thing founders should do, even before their initial release.