The Acquisition and Retention Imbalance

Acquisition spend gets reviewed every quarter. Retention infrastructure — the systems and processes that turn a first purchase into a repeat one — often goes unreviewed for years, quietly under-resourced relative to its actual contribution to growth.

Building a model of what a marginal pound spent on each actually returns, rather than defaulting to acquisition because it's the more familiar lever, tends to reveal retention was underfunded relative to its opportunity.