Consumer acquisition and retention in an online context is very unique. The medium itself provides companies with options that are unavailable in traditional offline marketing communications, without incurring tremendous additional expenses.

1. Goals of acquisition:

   Customer acquisition can be defined as the use of website to acquire new customers for a company as qualified leads that can hopefully be converted into sales. Various goals of customer acquisition include:

• Form relationships with new customers. Online communications can be used to acquire new visitors or build traffic.
• Minimizing acquisition costs.
• Targeting high value customers by developing marketing communication strategies.
• Encouraging existing customers to migrate to online for purchase or service.
• Optimizing service quality and use of right channels.

1. Goals of retention:

   Customer retention refers to the marketing activities taken by an organization to keep its existing customers. Various goals of customer retention include:

2. To retain customers of organization (repeat customers).
3. To keep customers using online channels (repeat visits).
4. Maximize service quality.
5. Use of right channels.

Hence, the main goal for the marketing effort is to use both offline and online marketing communications that provide the greatest results at the most cost effective level, both for acquisition and retention efforts. Establishing affective strategies will provide cost effective targeting of new customers, provide customization capacities for communication messages, lower costs in acquisition and retention, increase consumer relationships and provide focus for maximizing customer lifetime value.