Article

The Value of Keeping the Right Customers

Amy Gallo · Harvard Business Review Freemium Intermediate

This is the canonical source for the claim that the customers you already have are far cheaper to keep than the ones a shiny feature might win. Gallo lays out the retention economics, including how acquiring a new customer can cost many times more than keeping an existing one. It gives you hard numbers to justify protecting reliability and promises over the exciting build.

• Winning a new customer can cost five to twenty five times retention
• Small gains in retention drive outsized gains in profit
• The cheapest growth is not losing the customers you already have