Developing a Customer Acquisition Plan for New Movers

Your customer acquisition plan should prioritize the customers who are most valuable to your brand. The more you can personalize marketing campaigns to specific communities, the more likely you are to acquire them.

One consumer segment not to overlook is new movers. This is a lucrative audience, as new movers make many purchases as they settle into their homes. While most people think of direct mail when they think of new mover marketing campaigns, there are more effective strategies to engage this consumer community.

What is Customer Acquisition?

Customer acquisition means attracting new customers throughout the buying journey to grow your customer base and bring in new revenue streams. It is commonly measured through Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Acquisition differs from customer retention, which instead focuses on maintaining current customers and driving repeat purchases. To see the best results, brands should leverage both strategies. 

Who are New Movers?

New movers are consumers who have moved within the past six months. Most movers in America are between the ages of 25 and 34, and many have children and spouses. Americans move an average of 11.7 times during their lifetime, and these moves often coincide with other major milestones, such as getting married or having children. 

New movers spend money on a wide variety of products and services, including:

• Furniture
• Appliances
• Internet service
• Home security
• Electronics
• Remodeling

Why New Mover Marketing?

The new mover community is a highly profitable market. Your brand could acquire some of the 30 million people who move in the US every year. Most new movers are employed full-time, with an average household income of $100k or more, giving them the income to spend on your products. And spend they do; new movers spend an average of $310 billion on retail and an average of 10K on furniture, appliances, and repairs within the first year of buying a new home. 

New movers are also likely to try new brands and products since they may be purchasing items they have never needed before or buying from stores in a new area. In fact, 90% would be willing to try a new brand for items and 88% would try a new brand for a service. Thus, it’s the perfect time to make consumers aware of your company. Brands that have targeted new movers report a 41% increase in customer acquisition compared to 8% by those that did not.

Building a Customer Acquisition Plan

To attract the maximum number of customers, you need to be engaging prospects throughout the customer acquisition funnel. This process begins with lead generation, where you build brand awareness. Your brand should then nurture these leads throughout the customer journey, all the way up to closing the deal. Finally, your customer retention team will then continuously re-engage converted customers to keep them coming back.

Here are some ways to make the most of your customer acquisition plan:

Know Your Customers

It’s critical that you gather data and analyze your customer base to see who is converting and who you’re missing out on. Brands can use audience segmentation to identify the consumer communities that are most relevant to their company. For new mover marketing, consider factors such as what customers in this community buy, where they buy from, where they live, and household size.

Personalization is Key

Once you understand your customers, you can drive personalization. This could mean personalized content, more targeted ads, customized product recommendations, or exclusive offers. 

Personalized discounts that target specific identity-based consumer communities—such as new movers— are a particularly effective way to drive customer acquisition; 94% of consumers would take advantage of an exclusive offer. This pricing promotion strategy is called identity marketing, and it works because when consumers’ identities are honored, it builds positive feelings toward your brand and encourages customer loyalty.

Stay Flexible

The market is always changing, and your marketing team needs to be ready to change with it. Monitor shifting trends and the performance of your campaigns so that you can stay agile. 

Use Data Wisely

Yes, your customer acquisition strategy needs data, but if you violate consumer privacy while collecting this data, you risk damaging your brand reputation and scaring away customers. Data privacy is a top concern right now, with 70% of consumers saying they would not purchase again from a business that gave away their personal information. So, prioritize privacy-friendly forms of data collection, such as zero-party data, and demonstrate that you take consumer data concerns seriously.

How to Launch a New Mover Campaign

Your brand can improve your customer acquisition plan by reaching new movers with targeted campaigns. Here are some steps to effectively attract this consumer group:

Gather Data

You’ll want information about people who have moved or changed their address in the last six months. For example, Gen Z is 3x more likely to move compared to seniors, so pick your specific audience wisely. If you already have data about this, great! If not, consider enriching your data to see which consumers to target. As you organize your customer data, you may also find subsets that are best served with different tactics. For example, millennial movers may rely more on digital channels when researching and making move-related purchases compared to older movers.

Determine Campaign Goals and Tracking

If you’re reading this article right now, your goal is probably to acquire new customers. But you can drill down further into the objectives of your new mover campaign. How many customers do you want to acquire? Do you want to lower your Customer Acquisition Cost? What metrics are most important to track?

Once you’ve determined your goals and launched your campaign, use these parameters to monitor its success. Keep an eye on the data and be ready to adjust this campaign or future ones if you see areas ripe for improvement.

Optimize Your Messaging

Moving is consistently listed as one of the most stressful experiences people go through. Keep this in mind when crafting messaging for this community. Movers have a million tasks to juggle, so they will be looking for simple, reliable solutions from companies they feel they can trust. Being transparent with a calm, reassuring tone can help convince consumers that they are safe with your brand.

Build an Exclusive Offer

A discount is the best way to attract the new mover community. With the plethora of costs associated with purchasing a house and the many purchases required, new movers will be eager to save money wherever they can. There are many types of discounts to consider, from discounts on specific products new movers might be interested in to a sitewide percentage off to seasonal discounts (45% of moves happen in June, July, and August) to loyalty program perks. 

Since new mover offers are, by definition, only for those who have moved recently, you’ll want to clearly communicate the time-sensitive nature of the discount. A limited-time offer creates a sense of urgency and encourages customers to buy now.

To make the offer more appealing, gate it so that only new movers are eligible to redeem it. Requiring verification also protects your offer from discount abuse, which can eat into your ROI significantly.

Promote Your Offer

Once you have an exclusive new mover offer built, it’s time to spread the word! We recommend creating an offer-specific landing page for your offers to make it easy for consumers to find and share. Then, be sure to promote your offer via a variety of channels, such as social media, email, and loyalty programs.

Another effective way to promote your offer: encourage word-of-mouth sharing. New movers might know other people who are also moving, and if they think your offer is valuable, they will be happy to share. This encourages more conversions; 43% of new movers would try a new brand because of what friends and family recommend. Some brands incentivize sharing with referral discounts that give one or both parties a reduced price.

Continue Engaging Customers

Customer acquisition is only the first step. Once a customer has redeemed your new mover offer, there’s still lots of potential to earn more revenue from that customer—even after they are no longer a “new mover.” If a customer tries your brand for the first time because of a new mover promotion, they may decide that they are willing to pay full price. For brands with brick-and-mortar stores, new movers might be relocating to a new place and wanting to find regular places they can patronize, such as dentists or grocery stores. So, keep the long run in mind as you build your new mover’s campaign. After a customer converts, continue engaging them with personalized content, product recommendations, and other offers to encourage repeat purchases. 

And 47% of new movers plan to move again in the next six months. So just because a consumer has settled into a new home doesn’t mean you won’t be able to engage them with moving-related offers down the road.