Research done by Custora, a lifecycle marketing firm, has revealed that organic search delivers the most valuable customers for ecommerce. Their results reveal that organic search provides the most valued customers with a rate that is 54 percent more than the average customer lifetime value or CLV.
The second highest number of customers was brought in by PPC, followed by email at third place. CLV determines the total estimated profit earned by any company by way of its relationship with that customer over a period of time. This particular research by Custora calculated the CLV based on a two-year period.
Custora’s report will help new-age marketers to know how each channel delivers customers to their ecommerce website as well as the value provided by each customer based on different geographies, platforms, and channels. Even though social media is considered in most conversion paths as the last or only click in conversion funnels, Custora’s results prove that customers coming in from other channels have a far higher CLV as compared to those arriving through social networks.
For instance, the report reveals that the average CLV of customers arriving via Twitter was 23 percent lower than the average CLV while Facebook was only 1 percent more than the average CLV. Email marketing continues to rise as an important marketing and acquisition channel. The report reveals that email has registered a quadruple rise in customer acquisition since the last 4 years.
Organic search still remains king in customer acquisition as per the report. Custora’s research included data sourced from 86 retailers in the USA that were spread across 14 industries and included 72 million customers. The “utm_medium” tag from Google Analytics was used to obtain acquisition channels.