The Cost of Reacquiring Existing Customers
You already paid to acquire them once. Paying again is a systems failure, not a marketing problem.
Here is an uncomfortable truth: a significant portion of your advertising spend is going to people who have already bought from you. You are paying to reacquire customers you already acquired.
This is not a media buying problem. It is a systems failure.
The Hidden Reacquisition
When a past customer sees your ad, clicks, and buys, your attribution system counts it as an acquisition. Your ROAS looks good. But you did not acquire a new customer. You paid to remind an existing one.
This happens more than most operators realize. Retargeting blends with prospecting. Lookalike audiences include past purchasers. The lines blur, and the true cost of new customer acquisition gets hidden.
The Real Cost
Every reacquisition is a failure of retention. That customer should have come back on their own, through email, through organic search, through direct navigation. Instead, you paid a platform to bring them back.
Calculate what you spend on customers who have purchased before. It is probably more than you think. And every dollar of it represents a retention system that did not work.
Building Real Retention
The alternative is retention infrastructure that brings customers back without paid media.
Email and SMS that maintain the relationship. Post-purchase experiences that build loyalty. Products and services that create genuine reasons to return.
This infrastructure requires investment, but it pays dividends forever. Unlike reacquisition through ads, the cost does not scale with the number of customers you are trying to reach.
Separating Acquisition from Retention
Start by excluding past purchasers from your prospecting campaigns. Yes, your reported ROAS might go down. But your true new customer acquisition cost will become visible.
Then measure how many past customers come back organically versus through paid. If the ratio is heavily weighted toward paid, your retention systems need work.
Finally, invest in the systems that bring customers back for free. Email. Loyalty. Product experience. These are not as exciting as ad campaigns, but they are more profitable. This is why purchase frequency deserves as much attention as acquisition.