How is Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Calculated?
To calculate Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for a given time period, you need two pieces of information:
- Total Customer Acquisition Spend – You can determine your total customer acquisition spend in a given time period by adding up all of your sales/marketing spend for that time period.
- Number of Customers Acquired – Include any new customers that your business acquired during the specified time period.
The formula for determining your customer acquisition cost (CAC) for a given time period is:
CAC = (Total Customer Acquisition Spend)(# of Customers Gained)
Example 1: Simple CAC Calculation
You are the RevOps manager at a B2B SaaS company and you want to calculate your company’s CAC for Q1 of the fiscal year.
You review your company’s financial records and marketing reports, determining that the company spent a total of $107,500 on sales and marketing activities during the specified time period. Then, you look at your company CRM and discover sales data showing that the business gained 17 new customers during the specified time period.
You can calculate your CAC as:
CAC = ($107,000)17 =$6,294.12
Tackling the CAC Attribution Problem
One of the problems you may encounter when working with the CAC metric is the CAC attribution problem. Here’s how it works:
Imagine you’re the RevOps manager in a B2B SaaS company where the average sales cycle length is 3 months.
If you wanted to calculate CAC for the most recent month, you would realize that much of the customer growth during the month was generated by sales/marketing activity in the months before. You would also realize that much of your sales/marketing activity (and spending) during the month won’t generate new customers until two or three months down the road.
All of this means that using the simple CAC formula will incorrectly associate last month’s sales/marketing spend with last month’s new customer growth. To deal with the CAC attribution problem, we can use an alternate formula for CAC:
CAC = (Total Customer Acquisition Spend in Previous Period)(# of Customers Gained)
Example 2: Sales Cycle CAC
You are the RevOps manager at a B2B SaaS company and you want to calculate CAC for Q2 of the fiscal year.
You know that your company’s average sales cycle length is 3 months, so you reason that your company’s customer growth in Q2 can be attributed to its sales/marketing spending in Q1. You add up your company’s Q1 customer acquisition spending and find that you spend $131,600. You then look at CRM and find that your company gained 11 customers in Q2.
You can calculate your CAC as:
CAC = ($131,000)11 =$11,909.09