Insights · Acquisition
In Vietnam, what a customer costs is decided after the lead
Between a lead and money in the bank sit a chat thread, a confirmed order and a delivery that can still be refused. Each step is counted by someone different.
Short answer
In Vietnam, the cost of acquiring a customer depends less on what a lead costs than on what happens after it: many enquiries arrive as chat messages rather than form fills, many orders are paid in cash on delivery and some are refused at the door, and marketplace buyers never appear as leads at all. The figure a head office can rely on is cost per delivered order or signed contract by source — cost per lead divided by the share of that source’s leads that ends in collected revenue.
Where the chain comes apart here
Nobody is doing anything wrong. Each step is simply counted in a different place, by a different team.
Leads arrive as conversations
Many enquiries start in Messenger or Zalo rather than on a form, so they are counted by whoever answers the chat, if at all. A lead count built from forms understates the channel doing the work.
An order is not yet a sale
Where payment happens on delivery, the confirmed order and the collected revenue are separate events, and the gap between them differs by source. Cost per order flatters the source that attracts the most refusals.
Marketplace buyers skip the lead stage
Sales that complete inside Shopee, Lazada or TikTok Shop never pass through your lead or CRM figures, so a blended cost per lead averages channels with different funnels.
Four numbers that belong together
Cost per lead, chat included
Still needed for daily operation, but counted from every entry point, conversations as well as forms.
Order rate by source
By source, never as an average. An average hides the source whose leads never order.
Delivered rate by source
The share of orders that become money. On cash on delivery it moves with the source and with the depth of the promotion.
Cost per delivered order
Cost per lead divided by the share of that source’s leads that ends in collected revenue. This is the figure budget decisions — and comparisons with other markets — should use.
Common questions
Should chat conversations count as leads?
Yes, once they meet a written definition — an enquiry about a named product or a price, for example, not a greeting. Record the source at the first message; otherwise the channel that starts most conversations looks weak in reporting while it does much of the work. The definition matters more than the tool used to record it.
Who should own cost per delivered order: marketing, sales or the distributor?
The figure spans all three, so it belongs in one report owned by whoever answers to head office for Vietnam. Marketing supplies spend and source, sales or the distributor supplies what happened to each order, and finance supplies what was collected. Without one owner, each side reports its own step correctly and nobody reports the chain.
Should we use lifetime value instead?
Lifetime value is useful once repeat purchase is frequent enough and you have history to estimate from. Without that history it easily becomes a number that reassures rather than informs. Cost per delivered order is measurable this month, so start there and add lifetime value when the data supports it.
Does MWY work with the sales team?
MWY connects marketing to sales outcomes at the level of numbers: where leads came from, how many ordered, how many were delivered, and what each cost to acquire. Training a sales team or designing a sales process sits outside independent marketing oversight.
Want to know what a delivered order costs you?
Month one of Advisory & Oversight is an audit that joins advertising data to order and delivery outcomes by source. The first thirty minutes are free.