Basic Metrics & Tools in Customer Acquisition

When it comes to customer acquisition, there are a lot of things to track out there. And it can be tough to know which ones to start with. But, if you want to be successful in finding (and keeping) those new customers, there are some basic metrics you can’t afford to ignore. Here are the 5 most important ones to track as you kick off:

1) Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

This is probably the most important metric to track in the customer acquisition process. CPA measures how much it costs you to acquire a new customer. To calculate CPA, simply divide your total marketing and advertising costs by the number of new customers you acquired.

If your CPA is too high, it means you’re spending too much to acquire new customers. And as you can imagine, if your CPA is too low, it could mean you’re not investing enough in customer acquisition. The goal is to find the sweet spot.

2) Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV is a metric that measures the estimated value of a customer over the course of their lifetime with your business. To calculate CLV, you need to estimate the revenue a customer will generate, minus the costs to service them.

Track this because: it gives you an idea of how much you can afford to spend to acquire a new customer. If your CLV is high, you can afford to spend more to acquire a new customer because you know they’ll generate a lot of revenue over their lifetime.

3) Customer Churn Rate

Customer churn rate measures the percentage of customers who cancel or don’t renew their subscription with your business. To calculate customer churn rate, simply divide the number of customers who cancel or don’t renew by the total number of customers you have.

Track this because: it gives you an idea of how well you’re retaining your customers. If your customer churn rate is too high, it means you’re not doing a good job of keeping your customers happy.

4) Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business to their friends or family. To calculate NPS, you need to ask your customers how likely they are to recommend your business on a scale of 0 to 10.

Track this because: it gives you an idea of how satisfied your customers are with your business. If your NPS is high, which is what we want, it means your customers are happy and are likely to recommend you.

5) Acquisition Channels

Acquisition channels are the different channels you use to acquire new customers. The most common acquisition channels are paid advertising, organic search, referrals, and email marketing.

Track this because: it gives you an idea of which channels are working and which ones aren’t. If you’re not happy with the results you’re getting from one channel, you can quickly switch to another channel and see if you get better results.

Building your toolkit

You're probably doing some shopping around already. And there are a plethora of software tools available to track metrics, so it can be difficult to choose the right one for your needs. So we’ve listed a few of our top picks to help you get started.

Mixpanel is a powerful analytics tool that allows you to collect user events from different sources and create reports. These reports can be used to uncover the user journey and answer questions about your product.

Google Analytics is also a great option that gives you an in-depth look at your website and/or app performance - and it’s free. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin and is now the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet. GA provides an easy-to-use interface and reporting tools for tracking website traffic. It also offers a wide range of features, including custom reports, conversion tracking, and e-commerce reporting.

Kissmetrics is another tool that can provide you with detailed data about your users. Kissmetrics provides users with data-driven insights to help them make better decisions. The software is designed to help users track, analyse, and visualise their data so that they can see the relationships between different data points and make more informed decisions.

Woopra is a real-time analytics platform that can be helpful for tracking things like how long users are spending on your site, what pages they're visiting, and what actions they're taking. Woopra allows you to see your customer's behaviour across multiple devices and platforms, including your website, mobile app, email, live chat, and help desk. It builds comprehensive profiles for each user, based on data from multiple sources.

Hotjar is a web analytics tool that uses heatmaps and session recordings to learn how individual pages and page elements are performing. It also allows you to track conversions and see how different user groups interact with your site.

As you can imagine, each of these tools has its own strengths and weaknesses, but all of them can be useful to you in the right situations.

Building out your toolkit is a labour of love and will likely grow and change just as your business needs do. You don’t have to be overwhelmed by the choices, try some out and reach out to your wider network to see what’s worked for them. Just remember the sooner you start tracking, the sooner you will be more accurately making your vision a reality.