Customer Acquisition and Retention Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Marketing Managers, Customer Experience Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-M-072

Before you join: Participants should have working experience in marketing, sales, customer service, digital channels or account management.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Customer acquisition spending often rises while lead quality, conversion rates and customer retention remain unclear. Marketing, sales and customer experience teams need a shared view of which segments are worth pursuing, which channels produce profitable customers, where prospects leave the funnel, and why existing customers renew, expand or churn. Without this discipline, teams can report campaign activity without proving commercial contribution.

This course develops practical methods for acquiring and retaining customers profitably. Participants work with customer lifecycle economics, segmentation, ideal customer profiles, value propositions, channel selection, conversion-rate optimisation, CRM lifecycle communications, onboarding, churn prevention, loyalty and expansion programmes. They learn to calculate CAC, payback and customer lifetime value; use cohort and retention analysis; set campaign measures; and connect acquisition activity with service quality and customer outcomes.

Instruction combines short briefings with sector-based cases, group analysis, funnel diagnostics, campaign planning and customer-growth simulations. Participants apply the methods to a business-to-business, retail, financial services, public service or membership scenario relevant to their work. They leave with a customer acquisition and retention plan, including target segments, journey priorities, measurement definitions, channel actions, retention interventions and a 90-day implementation schedule. The five-day instructor-led course is available in classroom locations in 50+ cities or live online and includes a certificate of completion.

What you will be able to do

  • Calculate customer acquisition cost, payback period and customer lifetime value
  • Segment customers using RFM analysis, needs-based criteria and ideal customer profiles
  • Design value propositions and message hierarchies supported by customer evidence
  • Build acquisition channel plans using funnel stages, channel economics and attribution rules
  • Diagnose conversion barriers using funnel analysis, lead scoring and A/B test hypotheses
  • Specify lifecycle communication and onboarding journeys using CRM triggers and activation events
  • Measure retention, churn and expansion performance using cohort analysis and retention curves
  • Produce a 90-day customer acquisition and retention action plan

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Make defensible channel investment recommendations using CAC, payback and lifetime value
  • Identify churn risks before customer losses become visible in headline revenue
  • Create lifecycle campaigns that connect acquisition promises with onboarding and service delivery
  • Present customer-growth performance using clear funnel, cohort and retention measures
  • Build a practical 90-day plan for improving customer acquisition and retention outcomes

For your organisation

  • Improve acquisition spend decisions by comparing channel cost, conversion and customer quality
  • Reduce avoidable churn through earlier identification of risk signals and service failures
  • Increase conversion through clearer offers, better lead handling and lower customer effort
  • Coordinate marketing, sales and service teams around shared lifecycle measures and ownership
  • Create repeatable retention and expansion actions for priority customer segments

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can assess acquisition and retention priorities using customer lifecycle economics and growth measures.

  • Acquisition, retention and expansion mapped to the customer lifecycle
  • Unit economics linking CAC, gross margin, payback and customer lifetime value
  • Contribution-margin view of growth targets, channel investment and retention spending
  • North-star metric selection and supporting metric trees for growth teams
  • Growth-accounting decomposition of new, retained, resurrected and churned revenue
  • Baseline funnel and cohort data requirements for management decisions

Participants can define priority segments and ideal customer profiles from behavioural, commercial and needs-based evidence.

  • Segmentation variables combining needs, value, behaviour and service requirements
  • RFM analysis identifies recent, frequent and high-value customer groups
  • Jobs to be Done interviews distinguish functional, social and emotional progress
  • ICP criteria score account fit, buying potential and accessibility
  • Personas grounded in evidence rather than demographic assumptions
  • Segment attractiveness assessed through size, profitability, growth and strategic fit

Participants can create evidence-based value propositions, offers and messages for priority customer segments.

  • Value Proposition Canvas connects customer pains, gains and required jobs
  • Message hierarchy aligns proof points, claims and calls to action
  • Competitive positioning maps category alternatives, differentiation and reasons to believe
  • Offer architecture combines core service, onboarding, pricing and guarantees
  • Voice-of-customer evidence converts interviews, complaints and reviews into messaging
  • Message testing compares clarity, relevance, credibility and distinctiveness

Participants can select and manage acquisition channels based on segment behaviour, intent and economics.

  • Channel strategy matches segment media habits, intent and acquisition economics
  • Paid-search structure uses keyword intent, match types and negative keywords
  • Content funnel plans awareness, consideration and conversion assets by buying stage
  • Account-based marketing selects target accounts, buying groups and coordinated touchpoints
  • Partner and referral programmes define incentives, attribution and quality controls
  • Channel scorecards compare volume, conversion, CAC, payback and customer quality

Participants can diagnose conversion losses and improve the movement from prospect interest to customer acquisition.

  • Funnel diagnostics locate drop-off across landing pages, forms and sales stages
  • Conversion-rate optimisation prioritises hypotheses using impact, confidence and effort
  • A/B test design specifies control, variant, sample size and decision rules
  • Lead scoring combines fit, intent, engagement and disqualification signals
  • Sales handoff service-level agreements define ownership, timing and feedback
  • Landing-page copy applies message match, friction reduction and evidence

Participants can specify lifecycle communications and onboarding journeys that support activation and early retention.

  • Lifecycle communications coordinate email, SMS, calls and in-product prompts
  • CRM data model captures consent, source, stage, behaviour and value
  • Onboarding journeys define activation events, milestones, nudges and owner actions
  • Marketing automation triggers respond to behaviours, dates and customer attributes
  • Frequency rules prevent contact fatigue and conflicting campaign messages
  • Consent management records lawful basis, preferences and suppression requirements

Participants can identify retention drivers, prevent avoidable churn and respond effectively to customer failure points.

  • Retention drivers diagnosed through cohorts, service data and customer feedback
  • Customer journey maps expose moments of truth, effort and failure demand
  • Service recovery protocol sets acknowledgement, ownership, remedy and follow-up
  • Churn-risk indicators combine usage decline, complaints, payment and engagement signals
  • Save offers match root cause, customer value and commercial guardrails
  • NPS closed-loop process assigns follow-up, root-cause coding and action

Participants can design customer expansion, loyalty and reactivation actions that protect profitable relationships.

  • Customer lifetime value estimates margin contribution, retention probability and discount rate
  • RFM-based campaigns tailor reactivation, cross-sell and loyalty communications
  • Loyalty programme design balances member value, cost, breakage and fraud controls
  • Cross-sell propensity uses product ownership, life events and behavioural triggers
  • Account growth plans identify stakeholders, adoption barriers and expansion opportunities
  • Win-back sequences diagnose departure reasons before incentives are offered

Participants can measure acquisition and retention performance using commercially relevant customer-growth metrics.

  • Cohort analysis separates acquisition-period performance from calendar-period movements
  • Retention curves reveal survival patterns, inflection points and intervention timing
  • CAC payback calculation includes media, sales, onboarding and gross margin
  • Attribution models compare first-touch, last-touch, linear and data-driven approaches
  • Incrementality tests distinguish campaign effects from demand that would occur anyway
  • Growth dashboard design links executive measures to operational diagnostic metrics

Participants can turn analysis into a governed customer-growth plan with priorities, owners, measures and review points.

  • Retention and acquisition objectives translated into quarterly OKRs and owners
  • Test-and-learn roadmap ranks initiatives by evidence, impact, effort and dependency
  • Budget scenarios allocate spend against CAC, capacity and payback constraints
  • Marketing-sales-service governance establishes shared definitions, cadences and escalation routes
  • Customer growth plan documents segments, journeys, metrics, actions and review dates
  • 90-day application plan schedules early wins, experiments and decision checkpoints

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Customer lifecycle economics calculator
  2. Ideal customer profile scorecard
  3. Acquisition channel scorecard
  4. Lifecycle communication journey template
  5. Churn-risk and service recovery checklist
  6. 90-day customer growth action plan

Who should attend

  • Marketing Managers — need accountable acquisition and retention plans tied to commercial results
  • Customer Experience Managers — need to reduce friction, churn and service-driven attrition
  • Digital Marketing Specialists — need stronger funnel analysis, campaign measurement and lifecycle design
  • Sales Managers — need better lead quality, handoff rules and account growth coordination
  • CRM and Loyalty Managers — need structured retention, reactivation and expansion programmes
  • Product Managers — need customer evidence to improve activation, adoption and repeat use

Skills and tools covered

Customer lifecycle economicsMarket segmentationConversion optimisationLifecycle campaign designChurn reductionGrowth performance measurement

Tools and standards

RFM analysis, Jobs to be Done, Value Proposition Canvas, Net Promoter Score

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to establish methods, followed by case work, group analysis and structured simulations. Participants examine acquisition funnels, customer journeys, CRM data fields, churn scenarios and channel performance reports. Cases draw on business-to-business sales, retail, financial services, membership organisations and digital services. Group exercises test segmentation choices, message alternatives, retention interventions and measurement decisions. Each participant builds an application plan that can be adapted to their own customer base, commercial priorities and available data.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have working experience in marketing, sales, customer service, digital channels or account management. They should be familiar with basic commercial measures such as revenue, margin, conversion rate and campaign spend, and be able to interpret simple spreadsheets or dashboard reports. Experience with a CRM platform, web analytics product or marketing automation system is useful but not required. The course does not require statistical modelling, coding, advanced finance knowledge or prior responsibility for a marketing budget.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants should have practical exposure to marketing, sales, customer service, account management or digital channels. Familiarity with basic commercial measures is expected, but advanced analytics, coding and CRM administration experience are not required.

Bring a laptop if possible, plus any non-confidential funnel, campaign, CRM or retention reports you can use for reflection. Participants do not need access to live systems or customer data during the course.

It suits professionals responsible for attracting customers, converting demand, improving onboarding, reducing churn or growing existing accounts. It is particularly useful where marketing, sales and service teams need shared measures and clearer handoffs.

Digital marketing courses usually focus on campaign channels and execution, while customer service courses focus on service interactions. This course connects acquisition, conversion, onboarding, retention, loyalty and commercial measurement across the customer lifecycle.

Participants leave with templates and a 90-day customer growth plan that can be adapted to their own customer base. The plan identifies priority segments, funnel issues, retention actions, measures, owners and review dates.

The course runs from 08:30 to 16:30 each day, with approximately 6.5 contact hours daily. Time is divided across ten modules covering customer economics, segmentation, acquisition, conversion, lifecycle management, retention, analytics and implementation planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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