Calculate cost per new customer
Divide the acquisition spend you include by verified new customers acquired during the matching campaign period.
- Result
- $25.00
How this estimate works: Use your own store data before making a commercial decision. All monetary amounts are USD.
Choose the customer denominator carefully
CAC equals included acquisition costs divided by acquired new customers. A customer making three orders is still one acquired customer, while an existing customer using a creator code is not a new acquisition. Use a consistent first-purchase definition and exclude test accounts. This calculator cannot verify customer identity or merge duplicate records; the reliability of the result depends on the count you provide.
Match the customer cohort to the spend. If you count customers whose first order arrived after the campaign ended, explain why those purchases belong to the campaign and use the same rule in future reviews. Keep customer-level acquisition reporting separate from order-level affiliate accounting. An existing customer can legitimately earn a creator commission under your terms while remaining outside the new-customer denominator.
Decide which acquisition costs are included
A direct-cost CAC may include creator fees, commissions, product gifting at cost, and campaign-specific production. A more fully loaded view may also allocate agency support or staff time. Either can help if labeled clearly, but comparing one channel’s direct costs with another channel’s fully loaded costs is misleading. Keep a short breakdown next to the total spend you enter here.
If the campaign also generates repeat-customer orders or reusable content, avoid quietly excluding its expenses while counting all new customers. Choose an allocation method you can defend, or report the total campaign cost per new customer with an explicit note about the other outcomes. Reconcile commission accruals and later adjustments so that the cost estimate does not exclude amounts already earned but not yet paid.
Interpret CAC through first-order contribution
Compare CAC with the contribution available from a new customer’s first order after product and order-level costs. Revenue is not the budget available to acquire that customer. If first-order contribution is below CAC, the difference must be recovered through later contribution or another stated objective. Do not assume repeat purchases will occur simply because a lifetime-value estimate makes the campaign look attractive.
Use observed cohort repeat behavior when assessing payback, and keep the observation window visible. A young cohort has had less time to return than an older one. For a small pilot, inspect the individual acquisition records and cost breakdown before treating a shift in CAC as a trend. The worksheet provides arithmetic, not a benchmark for what your store should be willing to spend.
Worked example · illustrative scenario
Worked example: orders versus customers
An illustrative campaign costs 900 and generates 45 orders. If only 30 buyers are verified new customers, CAC is 30, not the 20 cost per order. If first-order contribution is 24 per new customer, the campaign has a 6 acquisition gap per new customer before any later contribution. This does not assume those customers will repurchase.
Frequently asked questions
Should returning customers count in affiliate CAC?
No, not in a new-customer acquisition metric. Report their orders and contribution separately; they may still be relevant to campaign performance and payable commissions.
What if no new customers were acquired?
CAC is undefined when the denominator is zero. Report the spend and zero new customers directly rather than displaying a zero acquisition cost.
Can I compare this with paid advertising CAC?
Yes, if both use the same new-customer definition, attribution window, and cost scope. Otherwise the comparison may reflect measurement differences instead of channel efficiency.
Put your Shopify affiliate plan into practice
Use Afivio to organize your affiliate campaigns, partners and commission records. Review the integration guide and current app listing before choosing your setup.