The first step in any customer acquisition campaign is to figure out who you’re going to target, with what message, via what channel. The more niche and micro these target audiences are, the better targeted the message can become.  And this is where your current customers are worth their weight in gold. 

Being able to segment your current customer base to understand different buying patterns, demographics (gender, age, income, etc.), location, and purchase behaviour allows you to test different messages and products to learn how they respond. Having this information at your disposal is critical as it helps you build look-a-like audiences and customise campaigns to suit their needs. 

1. Segments and Audiences: Data-driven customer personas can help create precise acquisition campaigns. Customer personas bring together information about your customer base’s demographics, interests, and behaviours. By segmenting your audience into unique groups based on their persona, you can strengthen your acquisition campaigns by personalising messages, positioning, and offers. Smaller audiences and campaigns also mean less wastage. While they are more time consuming to manage, the personalisation level you can get to at this detail can have significant impact on ROI. 
2. Timing: Understanding customer behaviour can provide valuable insights into campaign strategy. It’s beneficial to analyse your customer interactions such as time of day or month, what type of content generates engagement, and which products or services have high engagement. Do you have customers who like to plan well in advance of a season? A segment who responds better under time pressure (we’ve all got friends who have Christmas shopping done in November and those who hit the shops in the last week of December...). You’ve also probably got a group who are more responsive to discounts – which should be wielded wisely.  You can use these insights to create campaigns timed towards peak customer engagement times and refine ad placements to drive the most engagement – all of which can be better targeted through insights from your current customer behaviour. 
3. Product mix: Reviewing purchase history can help target customers with more personalised offers. By analysing purchasing trends, you can understand what products customers frequently buy, how often they purchase, and at what price points. This data can be put to use by creating campaigns offering related products, upselling recovery campaigns, and using personalised offers to increase the overall success of a campaign. Life stage, house type and affordability/affluence can all have huge impacts on the success of a campaign, the question is how... this is where your current customers can give you the clues.

Understanding your current customer base is an often untapped insight resource in the process of developing successful customer acquisition campaigns. Are you utilising your data effectively to identify and target your audience? What tests could you be running to your current customers to drive the insight you need to support acquisition success?