Pillar D — Tools & Calculators
Outbound ROI Calculator
for B2B SaaS
Enter your programme inputs and see projected CAC, pipeline, LTV:CAC ratio, and payback period — plus a diagnostic on where your system is strongest and weakest.
Your Programme Inputs
Adjust any field — results update instantly
Business Metrics
$/yr
%
months
How long does a customer stay on average? (Use 12-month cohort retention to estimate)
Cold Email (Instantly)
%
Benchmark: 3–5% for well-warmed infrastructure
%
What % of positive replies qualify as MQLs?
$
Include Instantly subscription + list cost + SDR time allocation
LinkedIn Outreach
%
Benchmark: 22–35% with a personalised note
%
% of accepted connections that reply to your follow-up
%
$
Include Sales Navigator + HeyReach/Dripify subscription
Meta Retargeting Ads
$
$
Benchmark: $40–$65 for matched audience retargeting, $150–$250 for cold
%
Funnel Conversion Rates
Programme Results
Calculating…
Blended CAC
—
total spend ÷ new customers
LTV:CAC Ratio
—
target: 3:1 or higher
New Customers / Month
—
across all channels
CAC Payback Period
—
months to recover CAC
Monthly New ACV
—
new contract value added/month
Total Monthly Spend
—
across all channels
Channel Performance Breakdown
Funnel Flow — MQLs → Customers
CAC Payback Timeline
Under 12 mo — excellent
12–18 mo — acceptable
18+ mo — needs attention
Diagnostic Recommendations
Want these numbers validated against your real data?
Our free Unit Economics Audit takes your actual HubSpot or Salesforce funnel data and stress-tests every assumption in this model against live performance — identifying exactly where your programme diverges from benchmark and what to fix first.
How This Calculator Works
The outbound ROI calculator models a three-channel acquisition system — cold email, LinkedIn outreach, and Meta retargeting — and runs each channel's leads through a shared conversion funnel to arrive at a blended CAC, LTV:CAC ratio, and payback period for the combined programme.
The key formulas used in the model:
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): ACV × Gross Margin% × (Customer Lifetime in months ÷ 12)
- Blended CAC: Total Monthly Programme Spend ÷ New Customers per Month
- CAC Payback Period: CAC ÷ (ACV × Gross Margin%) × 12 months
- LTV:CAC: LTV ÷ Blended CAC
- New Customers per Month: Total MQLs × MQL-to-SQL% × SQL-to-Demo% × Demo-to-Opp% × Opp-to-Close%
What's not included in this model: Customer success and onboarding costs, churn-adjusted LTV (the model uses average lifetime rather than a churn rate — if your annual churn is above 20%, multiply your lifetime input by 0.8 for a more conservative estimate), attribution for brand and word-of-mouth pipeline, and fully-loaded SDR and AE costs. For full blended CAC including people costs, add your monthly SDR salary allocation and AE commission to the programme cost inputs.
What Good Programme ROI Looks Like in 2026
For B2B SaaS companies at $1M–$15M ARR running a combined outbound system in 2026, these are the benchmarks your programme should be targeting:
- LTV:CAC ratio: 3:1 minimum to be viable; 5:1+ indicates a well-tuned system; anything below 2:1 means the programme isn't generating sufficient return on acquisition investment
- CAC payback period: Under 12 months for healthy cash flow at growth stage; 12–18 months is acceptable with strong retention; above 18 months is a red flag that limits reinvestment speed
- Cold email reply rate: 3–5% on properly warmed infrastructure with a value-first sequence; below 2% for 60+ days typically indicates a deliverability or sequence structure problem
- Blended CPL across all outbound channels: $80–$160 for a combined cold email and LinkedIn programme at scale; above $200 suggests channel mix or list quality issues
- Demo-to-opportunity rate: 40–55% for a discovery-led demo; below 35% almost always indicates a product-tour demo structure rather than discovery-first
Should I include SDR and AE salaries in my programme spend?
Yes, for the most accurate blended CAC — and especially for board or investor reporting. The standard approach is to take the percentage of each SDR and AE's time spent on outbound acquisition activities and include that allocation in your total programme spend. For a founding team where the CEO or a co-founder runs outbound personally, this still applies — even if the cost doesn't show up as a cash expense, it represents an opportunity cost that will eventually be replaced by a salary hire. The calculator defaults to cash costs only (tool subscriptions + ad spend) to give the channel-efficiency view, but the full blended CAC including people costs is what should guide your payback period analysis.
My LTV:CAC ratio looks good but my growth is slow. What's wrong?
A healthy LTV:CAC ratio with slow growth usually means one of two things: either your programme volume is too low (you're getting good unit economics on a small number of customers, but the absolute pipeline output isn't sufficient to drive ARR growth at your target rate), or your sales cycle is long and your payback period understates the cash flow lag. Check your monthly new customer output against your ARR growth targets — if you need 15 new customers per month to hit your growth goal and you're generating 4, the unit economics aren't the constraint, programme scale is.
How does Meta retargeting fit into an outbound system?
Meta retargeting works as a warming layer for the cold email and LinkedIn outbound system — not as a standalone acquisition channel. The standard approach is to upload the same contact list you're reaching via cold email as a Custom Audience in Meta, then serve them case study content and benchmark-framed ads at $300–$400/month. This means that when your cold email or LinkedIn message arrives, the prospect has likely already seen your brand 3–5 times. The CPL for matched audience retargeting ($40–$65) is lower than cold Meta traffic ($150–$250) because you're targeting people already in your acquisition funnel, not strangers.
What's the fastest lever to improve CAC in this model?
In the model above, the highest-leverage input for CAC reduction is the demo-to-opportunity rate. Because it sits near the bottom of the funnel, a 10-point improvement (e.g., from 40% to 50%) improves the output of every lead that entered the funnel above it — compounding across all three channel inputs simultaneously. In practice, the MQL response time fix (reducing from hours to minutes) is faster to implement and produces an immediate MQL-to-SQL improvement, but the demo-to-opportunity rate has the largest cumulative impact on customers per month. Run both simultaneously for the fastest blended CAC improvement.
