CVMBoK

Customer acquisition (CA) teams are responsible for bringing new customers into the organization through sales and marketing campaigns. This collaboration is critical for ensuring that acquired customers align with CVM goals and contribute to sustainable revenue growth.

The CA teams provide a steady stream of new customers, which drives CVM initiatives. Without alignment, however, acquisition efforts can result in challenges such as:

• Attracting fraudulent or fake customers
• Bringing in customers who do not align with the value proposition (e.g., low-price customers who churn quickly)
• Cannibalizing existing customers or products (e.g., offering discounts that prompt existing customers to cancel and resubscribe at lower prices)
• Overpromising value, leading to customer dissatisfaction and complaints

To minimize these risks, CVM teams must ensure that acquisition offers are designed to align with retention and revenue goals.

CVM teams work closely with CA teams to mitigate risks and ensure effective onboarding, retention, and upsell strategies. Key areas of collaboration include:

• Designing acquisition offers that avoid cannibalization of existing revenue
• Running the onboarding process for new customers to ensure a seamless transition
• Implementing retention initiatives that keep acquired customers engaged
• Launching upsell and cross-sell campaigns to increase customer value over time

For example, if acquisition campaigns target specific customer segments, CVM teams can use onboarding tools and retention programs tailored to these groups, increasing the likelihood of long-term engagement.

CVM teams provide critical insights that inform acquisition strategies. These insights include:

• Onboarding, retention, and revenue KPIs for new customers
• The impact of acquisition campaigns on the existing customer base
• Data on customer demographics, channels, and regions that perform better than average

By sharing this information, CVM teams help the CA teams refine targeting and improve campaign outcomes. For example, CVM teams can identify high-performing acquisition channels or customer segments that generate higher retention rates, enabling CA teams to prioritize these areas.

Close alignment between CVM and CA teams is essential for success. Key areas of collaboration include:

• Pricing strategies: To balance acquisition efforts with retention goals and prevent cannibalization
• Segment targeting: To ensure that acquisition campaigns attract the right customer profiles
• Shared KPIs: To align acquisition and retention metrics, such as ARPU and churn rates
• Data integration: To combine acquisition and existing customer data for deeper insights
• Investment tracking: To analyze marketing ROI and improve future campaign efficiency

Regular communication and shared objectives ensure that both teams are aligned in their efforts.

The quality of collaboration between CVM and CA teams directly affects CVM’s ability to execute impactful initiatives. Misalignment can lead to disruptions in data availability, inaccuracies in reporting, and inefficiencies in campaign execution. Clear communication, mutual understanding, and alignment on shared goals ensure that both teams contribute effectively to business growth.

Poor alignment with the CA team can have severe consequences for CVM. Missteps in pricing or targeting can lead to higher churn, lower ARPU, and reduced customer satisfaction. Strong communication, shared KPIs, and collaboration on strategy design are critical to achieving mutually beneficial outcomes. From the very beginning we have, let’s say, an awareness stage. Then we have a stage of conversion. Conversion mostly happens in a certain funnel. Then after conversion, you have onboarding. Onboarding means you have to get the customer into a state where they will start to use the product flawlessly. For example, let’s say you convert into a user of Tinder. If you don’t upload your photo, provide a decent bio, or list your interests, most likely you won’t get matches. If you don’t get matches, even if you allow location tracking, your probability to get a match will decrease sharply. In this case, you will fail during activation, which is defined as a certain period dedicated to creating a habit of app usage. A habit can be defined as the customer reaching a certain frequency of product usage during a set time period.

Mantas Ratomskis

Head of Marketing at Scandagra Lithuania

By marrying the data with specific indicators or attributes you build ad hoc based on the use case, you might not get the best model in terms of minimum error, but you will get a model that addresses the business needs and is easy to understand by those who use it.

Silvia Gomez Dominguez

Senior Director, Customer Solutions

In many telecoms, these [data systems] are not fully integrated, creating manual interfaces and making automation difficult. This lack of integration slows down the ability to deliver quick and impactful results in CVM.

Marek Wiktor Grabowski

B2C Customer Value Management Director at Orange Poland