Discount Value
The up-front discount used to win new customers — acquisition spend hiding inside your pricing.
What is it?
Discount Value is the total discount applied specifically on the first payments of newly acquired customers — the up-front price concession used to close new business. It is acquisition spend that hides inside your pricing rather than your marketing budget.
It reframes discounting as a cost of acquisition. Every dollar discounted to land a new customer is a dollar of CAC you would never see in a marketing report, and it belongs in any honest view of what growth costs.
How to calculate?
Sum the discount applied on first payments of new customers in the period. Nine hundred dollars means nine hundred of first-payment revenue given up to acquire this cohort. Keep it to first payments so it does not blur with ongoing subscription discounts.
Weigh it against the revenue those customers go on to generate: a discount that buys a durable, expanding customer is cheap; one that buys a customer who churns when the discount ends is pure loss.