Customer acquisition means gaining new customers, right? Of course, but for success in e-marketing we need to look at separate strategies for gaining new online customers. This means strategies for acquiring prospects and converting these leads to customers, but also strategies for migrating existing customers to online customers. Figure 4.1 shows that the first stage is using different online and offline promotion campaigns to attract first-time visitors to the web site. We look at success factors for some of these techniques, such as search engine registration, e-mail to rented lists and advertising or direct mail using traditional media later in this chapter. All touchpoints between company employees and potential or new customers should also be used to encourage them to visit the web site and capture e-mail addresses. Such touchpoints include the salesperson, point of sale and support enquiry.

Figure 4.1: Two routes to customer e-mail acquisition

Once the first-time visitor is on the web site we ideally need to convert the visitor to action or, at least, to create a favourable impression. If we fail to achieve either of these, then the first-time visitor will never be seen again. For a new potential customer we want to start a dialogue by capturing an e-mail address and profile. For an existing customer, we also want to acquire an e- mail address, if we do not already have it. We may already have some profile information that could be linked to a customer reference or account number.