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PerformanceTerm

CAC

Customer Acquisition Cost · customer acquisition cost

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) - the total cost of attracting one client: advertising budget, team, tools ÷ number of clients.

CAC - Customer Acquisition Cost, the cost of attracting one customer. Unlike CPL/CPA, which only counts advertising costs, CAC includes everything: advertising budget, marketing team salaries, tool subscriptions, creative production.

I calculate CAC like this: (advertising budget + marketing payroll + tools + production) ÷ number of paying clients for the period.

CAC is a “fair” picture of unit economics. Often the CPL looks good (for example, 500 ₽), but if you add payroll and production, the real CAC can be 3000 ₽, which changes the entire economy.

In my projects, I calculate CAC quarterly and look at the dynamics. Healthy growth - CAC drops 5-10% per quarter due to campaign optimization. Alarm signal - CAC is growing faster than LTV. This means that either the market is saturated (we need to look for new segments) or the team is losing focus.

LTV/CAC calculator →

Frequently asked questions about CAC

What is CAC?+
CAC - Customer Acquisition Cost, the cost of attracting one paying customer. It is calculated: all marketing and sales expenses for the period ÷ the number of new paying customers. Unlike CPA, it takes into account not only performance, but also salaries and the sales team.
How is a CAC different from a CPA?+
CAC is the total cost of attracting a buyer (including sales, operating system, performance). CPA is the cost of one targeted action in advertising (enquiry, registration). CAC is usually 1.5-4 times higher than CPA.
How to calculate CAC if there is organic matter?+
Net CAC: all expenses ÷ all new customers. Marketing CAC: paid expenses only ÷ paid clients only. For the unit economy, brutto CAC (including organics) is more correct; for assessing the performance channel, marketing is more correct.
What is normal CAC for SaaS?+
Depends on LTV. Rule: payback should be shorter than 12 months for investment growth, shorter than 6 months for bootstrap. With an LTV of RUB 192,000, CAC up to RUB 60,000 is normal for most SaaS.

Related terms

LTVCPLCPAROAS

Where is it understood in practice?

Failure case: −20% for the quarter. What did I do wrong in the segmentation hypothesis?

7 min reading

Need to set this up on your project?

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