54. What is the average customer acquisition cost for a SaaS company? You’ll see a lot of metrics out there, especially in SaaS about CAC being <= 1st-year revenues (or Contract Lifetime Value). But the reality is the real averages of successful companies are highly dependent on churn, which in turn depends both on customer segment in general and also how sticky the application is. A rough rule of thumb is successful SaaS companies are spending about 20%-30% of the fully calculated CLTV on customer acquisition. (Unless huge VC rounds bloat it, in which case for an interim period, this % can go way up to 100% or more. But only for a while) So, in the large enterprise, of $100k+ deals -- companies are often spending 150% of first year ACV, because the customers last 5+ years, with many up- sell opportunities along the way. In high churn self-service, with few upsell opportunities, the CAC metric is often closer to 90 days of revenue. The mid-range sort of backs into the 1:1 ratio you often hear in SaaS. SAASTR.COM 50