Marketing / Demand Generation
Cost Per Lead CPL (aka "cost per inquiry", CPI in some B2B shops)
The average cost to generate one lead, a contact who raised a hand.
The fork, why two teams get different numbers
The disagreement is over what counts as "a lead." The media-buying team reports RAW CPL: total spend over every form fill, gated-content download, or list contact, the gross count the campaign produced.
In the Metric Library
- The full fork, both definitions worked all the way through
- The trap that makes the number lie, on a real export
- Every formula variant, spelled out
- The reconciliation anchor, what to tie it to and when to refuse
Reference: SiriusDecisions/Forrester Demand Waterfall (framework reference)