Metrics
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Also known as: CAC
Customer Acquisition Cost is total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by the number of new customers acquired in that period, including salaries, commissions, tooling and programme spend.
Blended CAC includes organic acquisitions and flatters performance; paid CAC isolates the cost of bought growth and is the more useful operating number.
CAC alone says nothing. Read it against lifetime value and payback period, both of which determine whether the spend is an investment or a leak.