A Return to Health

Customer acquisition has been a focal point for Zucker in his brief time at Vitacost. He's implemented a simple process to determine how much he can afford to spend on acquiring a customer: Identify the lifetime value of a customer, then figure out how much of that value Vitacost captures in the first year. That number is what Zucker is willing to pay for a customer. Vitacost is willing to spend more in certain channels (e.g., refer-a-friend, affiliate marketing) to acquire a customer because those channels have traditionally produced customers with a very high lifetime value to the brand.