PlayP03 Growth · Acquisition · Editorial rank 6 of 12

Acquire customers with useful downstream value

Cheap leads or attributed conversions conceal poor activation, margin, qualification or retained value.

Decision: Which eligible demand and optimisation signal should receive the next feasible acquisition tranche?
Primary commercial metric: Net incremental cohort contribution after acquisition and additional signal/system costs.
Readiness: Basic or Connected
Agent role: None for bidding, audience rules or routine feed operation.

Fit

When to use this Play

Cohorts differ materially in downstream quality, or valuable eligible demand is missed by the current acquisition setup.

When not to use it

Customer linkage or value definitions are unreliable, service capacity is constrained, or useful demand/proposition is absent.

Why it should work

Better qualification, relevant intent and valid economic signals can align delivery with outcomes the business values.

Basic version

Cohort reporting and a human-reviewed intent or qualification adjustment.

Prepare

Required maturity

Basic for cohort diagnosis; Connected for a reliable native value feed. Ready with source-to-outcome linkage. Not ready for individual prediction without validated history.

P01 Establish decision-specific customer economics — Adequate decision-specific economics is required; the whole P01 Play is unnecessary if already satisfied.Check readiness for P03 (D02)

Inputs

Acquisition source/intent, verified new-customer records, qualification, activation, contribution, refunds, service cost and outcome delay.

Audience or customer

Prospective customers with relevant need and product/service eligibility; B2B uses accounts and sales outcomes.

Human role

Performance or Sales owns delivery; Finance owns value definitions; measurement owns comparison; Product/Service confirms capacity.

Systems required

Existing channel or CRM platform, verified outcome records and a tested native integration or manual cohort process.

Guardrails

Cash, reach, new-segment exploration, fair treatment, service capacity and no misleading attribution uplift.

How to configure a Play

Copy the Play you need and complete only the relevant parts of T1–T5. Name the people responsible, define the customer group, agree economic and customer limits, and set a review date before starting. An empty decision threshold is not permission to act. Basic, Connected and Advanced describe how the work is configured; Experimental describes its evidence. AI is optional: compare each AI step with a simpler way of doing the same work.

Do the work

Intervention

Change one intent/proposition route or a validated downstream signal in existing delivery; retain a comparator.

Workflow

Reconcile cohort quality.
Diagnose mix and demand.
Select one signal or intent change.
Check native support and timing.
Approve the test.
Deliver within limits.
Compare mature cohort economics and revise.

AI role

Optional assist Optional query or feedback classification. Prediction is separate statistical work with temporal validation, not an LLM estimate.

Automation role

Outcome joins, feed validation, native bidding/routing, exclusions and delayed-value reconciliation.

Agent role

None for bidding, audience rules or routine feed operation.

Failure modes

Optimising organic propensity
overconfident distant LTV
excluding new segments
duplicating a stronger native optimiser.

Measure and decide

Measurement

Follow eligible assigned populations and acquisition cohorts through agreed contribution and payback windows; preserve mix and lag effects.

Primary commercial metric

Net incremental cohort contribution after acquisition and additional signal/system costs.

Leading indicators

Verified lead/customer quality, activation, feed completeness, rejection rate and forecast-versus-realised error.

Experiment

A valid platform or geographic comparison of signal/coverage where feasible; otherwise staged evidence with limits, supported by P04.

Guardrails

Cash, reach, new-segment exploration, fair treatment, service capacity and no misleading attribution uplift.

Scale when

Increase only a feasible tranche whose economics remain acceptable under uncertainty and whose quality signal is stable.

Stop / reassess when

Revert on invalid values, broken joins, unacceptable volume/quality collapse or negative incremental economics.

Learn and progress

Learning

Record intent-to-value patterns, feed version, customer mix, effect scope and realised prediction error.

Practical tool

T2 cohort and marginal tranche views; T4 feed/action contract.

T2 Economics and benefits ledger T3 Decision experiment and evidence record T4 Action authority and operating contract K01 CAC and tranche comparison K02 Net intervention value

Next action

compare the downstream contribution of two material acquisition cohorts.

Open T2 Economics and benefits ledger

Curated next Play

Alternative Play

Optional depth

Advanced versionPrerequisites: see Required maturity above.

Validated contribution forecasts supplied to native optimisation; build proprietary decisioning only for an evidenced residual advantage.

Evidence for this Play3claims reviewed, with confidence ratings, limits and sources.

Claim classifications

Accepted means a principle or mechanism survived critical review, not that it guarantees a return. Accepted with conditions means prerequisites apply. Qualified means the original claim has been narrowed. Advanced needs substantial readiness. Experimental needs a capped comparison. Unresolved means the evidence cannot settle the claim. Rejected means the recommendation is excluded.

High, Medium and Low describe confidence in the stated target, not the chance of a positive ROI. For a Qualified or Rejected historical claim, confidence applies to the decision to narrow or reject it and to the supported limit—not to the original headline. Read the headline and classification together. An accounting identity or design principle is not empirical evidence of a commercial outcome. Follow the linked chapters, Plays and tools to see where each claim applies.