What Is Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)?
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is a metric that shows how much it costs you to gain a new customer. It includes everything you spend to turn a stranger into a buyer—ads, tools, marketing time, and sometimes even sales calls.
The basic formula:
CAC = Total Marketing & Sales Costs / Number of New Customers
Example: If you spent $2,000 on ads, software, and outreach in a month, and gained 20 new customers, your CAC is:
$2,000 / 20 = $100
That means you spent $100 to acquire each customer.
Why CAC Matters
Knowing your CAC helps you:
- Understand how profitable your marketing efforts really are
- Make informed decisions about scaling or cutting back
- Compare performance across different acquisition channels
- Identify when you're overspending to get low-value customers
If you don’t track CAC, you’re flying blind. High CAC can kill profitability—even if your revenue looks healthy.
What’s a “Good” CAC for a WordPress Website?
It depends on your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)The total revenue you expect to earn from a customer over the entire span of their relationship with your business.. A good rule of thumb is:
CLV should be at least 3x your CAC
For example:
- If a customer is worth $600 to you over time, you can afford to spend up to $200 to acquire them.
- If you’re selling a $50 one-time product, spending $100 per customer is unsustainable.
For WordPress sites—whether ecommerce stores, membership platforms, or service businesses—this ratio helps guide sustainable growth.
CAC and WordPress: How It Connects
CAC becomes meaningful when your WordPress site is doing its job—attracting, engaging, and converting visitors. Whether you're using:
- WooCommerce for ecommerce
- MemberPress or LearnDash for subscriptions
- Gravity Forms or WS Form for lead capture
...you’re creating entry points for new customers. But each of those has a cost. Tracking those costs alongside your conversion data helps you calculate CAC.
How Conversion Bridge Helps You Track CAC
Conversion Bridge helps by:
- Tracking form submissions, purchases, and other conversions across 61 plugins
- Sending those events to 19 analytics platforms and 8 ad platforms
- Providing source attributionThe process of determining which channels, campaigns, or actions contributed to a conversion, helping you understand what influenced a visitor’s decision to take action., conversion values, and behavior events that help measure what’s working
When your data is flowing cleanly into your analytics tools, you can see how many customers came from each campaign—and compare that to what you spent—giving you accurate CAC data.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ideally, yes. If you or your team spend time writing emails, running social campaigns, or optimizing funnels, that effort has a cost. Include labor or time estimates when calculating total CAC.
Improving your targeting, conversion rateImproves website performance by increasing the percentage of visitors who complete desired actions, such as purchases, sign-ups, or form submissions., and retention are key. If you convert more leads or keep customers longer, your cost per acquisition usually drops.
It depends on your business model. If your strategy is to acquire free users and convert them later (like in SaaS or freemium models), you may want to track CAC for both stages.
Customer Acquisition Cost is a powerful metric for agencies, store owners, and service providers. It helps you spend smarter and grow sustainably. When combined with Customer Lifetime Value, it becomes a strategic tool—not just a number.
Conversion Bridge helps make sure the right data gets where it needs to go, so you can calculate CAC using trusted insights from your analytics and ad platforms.