Retention

Keeping the people you have already earned. Cheaper than winning new ones, and a truer measure of whether the work was any good.

Retention is the audit of the promise. Acquisition measures how persuasive the story was; retention measures whether it was true. People stay when the second and tenth experiences confirm the first, which makes retention a product and service verdict long before it is a marketing one.

Practically, the levers live in unfashionable places: onboarding that keeps the promise's tone, support that resolves rather than deflects, updates that respect the reasons people came. Loyalty programmes bribe the symptom. The cause is whether the thing stayed worth choosing.