One of the marketing questions is: "Is there a pattern to how best customers are acquired, and if so, how to repeat it?" If customers' interactions are tracked prior to their first purchase, and track which ones remain good customers and which ones we never see again, then we much more informed decisions can be made about spending precious customer acquisition marketing budget. Three things we should consider are:  Firstly whether you're an online-only or a multi-channel retailer, think about how to collect pre-purchase activity data, even if the data is anonymous. Secondly, think about how you can correlate this data with your customer purchase history. Thirdly, look for repeatable acquisition patterns among your customers, and don't forget to look at timing patterns as well as the usual sources and marketing types. Read more at: 

http://marketingintelligenceblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/where-do-your-great-customers-come-from/