How do I analyse customer acquisition cost (CAC) by channel with iDBQuery?
Ask iDBQuery 'What did it cost to acquire a customer through each channel last quarter?' It divides marketing and sales spend by new customers per channel, returns CAC as a ranked chart, and cites each figure back to the spend and signup rows that produced it.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is how much you spend, in marketing and sales, to win one new customer. Tracking it by channel shows where growth is efficient and where it is not. iDBQuery calculates it across systems that normally do not talk to each other.
- You'd ask iDBQuery: 'Show CAC by acquisition channel last quarter: total spend divided by new customers acquired, ranked lowest to highest.'
- It joins your ad-spend and sales-cost data to new-customer counts by channel, computes CAC, and returns a ranked chart plus a table.
- Every figure is cited to its source rows, so 'paid search CAC = £310' is auditable against the spend and signup records behind it.
CAC is most useful next to value, so you can chain it: 'Now show CAC and LTV side by side by channel, with the LTV:CAC ratio and payback months.' iDBQuery keeps the thread and pulls revenue from a separate source into the same one live model. Because the inputs live in ad platforms, a CRM, and a billing database, joining them by hand is exactly the tedious work iDBQuery removes. Pin the result to a live dashboard for weekly review, and let the Analyst agent flag channels whose CAC is rising faster than their returns.
Updated 2026-06-22