Calculate your true Customer Acquisition Cost — blended across all channels and broken down by channel. See which channels deliver the lowest CAC, your LTV:CAC ratio and how long until each customer pays back.
Enter monthly spend and customers acquired per channel:
CAC is the single most important marketing metric for evaluating channel performance and business model viability. But most businesses calculate it incorrectly — either by excluding salaries and agency fees from the cost, or by not comparing it against Customer Lifetime Value. A £150 CAC is excellent if LTV is £900 (6:1 ratio) and terrible if LTV is £200 (1.3:1 ratio).
All paid advertising spend (Google, Meta, LinkedIn, display), agency and consultant fees, marketing software (HubSpot, Mailchimp, analytics tools), content creation costs, marketing staff salaries (time allocated to acquisition activities), events and sponsorships.
Sales team salaries and commissions, CRM tools and sales software, sales collateral and materials, travel for sales meetings. For inbound businesses this is minimal; for enterprise B2B the sales cost often exceeds the marketing cost and dominates CAC.
A good CAC depends entirely on your Customer Lifetime Value. The standard benchmark is LTV:CAC of 3:1 or higher — meaning each customer returns at least 3× their acquisition cost. CAC payback period of under 12 months is considered good for most SaaS businesses; under 6 months for e-commerce. Absolute CAC varies enormously: £5 (email list subscriber) to £500+ (enterprise SaaS trial).
Four main levers: (1) Improve conversion rates at each funnel stage — same traffic, more customers; (2) Shift budget to lower-CAC channels; (3) Improve lead quality to reduce sales effort per customer; (4) Invest in retention and referral — referred customers typically have 40–70% lower CAC than cold acquisition. Referral programs are one of the most underused and highest-ROI CAC reduction strategies.
Monthly for most businesses, with a 90-day rolling average to smooth volatility. Calculate at the channel level, not just blended — blended CAC hides huge differences between channels. Also calculate separately for new vs existing customer types if you have meaningful differences. Review CAC trends quarterly alongside LTV trends to catch unit economics deterioration early.