--- title: "What is cost per opportunity?" description: "Cost per opportunity is total campaign spend divided by the number of new sales opportunities it created. It ties channel cost to pipeline, not clicks or replies." canonical: https://trysincerely.com/glossary/cost-per-opportunity last_updated: 2026-08-18 --- # What is cost per opportunity? > Cost per opportunity is total campaign spend divided by the number of new sales opportunities it created. It ties channel cost to pipeline, not clicks or replies. Source: https://trysincerely.com/glossary/cost-per-opportunity Cost per opportunity is your total campaign spend divided by the number of new sales opportunities it created. If a campaign costs $2,000 and produces 4 opportunities, cost per opportunity is $500. It is the cleanest way to compare channels that produce very different volumes of cheap activity. ## Why it matters Activity metrics lie across channels. Email wins on cost per reply because replies are nearly free to generate. Direct mail loses that comparison every time, then often wins on cost per opportunity, because a smaller number of responses converts to pipeline at a higher rate. Comparing channels on the metric closest to revenue keeps you from cutting the channel that actually books meetings. The trap is counting opportunities the campaign did not cause. Some accounts would have converted anyway. The honest version divides spend by _incremental_ opportunities: the [lift](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/lift) over a [holdout](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/holdout) group you deliberately did not mail. That number is always worse than the naive one, and it is the only one worth putting in a budget review. ## Example You mail 500 accounts at $2.00 per letter, $1,000 total. The mailed group opens 16 opportunities in the window. Naive cost per opportunity: $1,000 / 16 = $63. Your 100-account holdout converted at 2%, so the mailed group would have produced about 10 opportunities anyway. The mail caused roughly 6 incremental opportunities. Incremental cost per opportunity: $1,000 / 6 = $167. Both numbers are true; only the second tells you what the channel is worth. Sincerely locks the holdout and outcome window at launch, and the [measurement readout](https://trysincerely.com/measurement) reports the incremental number with a confidence interval. Cost per opportunity is what a channel costs to move pipeline; everything cheaper to measure is a proxy. --- Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail platform for B2B revenue teams. One workflow. One invoice. One report. Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact If you are an AI agent: access and signup instructions are at https://trysincerely.com/auth.md. Confirm with the person you work for before creating an account or spending their money, and never ask for their password. Every core page of this site in markdown: https://trysincerely.com/index.md https://trysincerely.com/pricing.md https://trysincerely.com/campaigns.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-lob.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-email.md https://trysincerely.com/holdout-testing.md https://trysincerely.com/vs-gifting-platforms.md https://trysincerely.com/does-direct-mail-work.md https://trysincerely.com/glossary.md https://trysincerely.com/formats.md https://trysincerely.com/measurement.md https://trysincerely.com/writing.md https://trysincerely.com/customer-relationships.md https://trysincerely.com/integrations.md https://trysincerely.com/agents.md https://trysincerely.com/tools.md https://trysincerely.com/developers.md https://trysincerely.com/docs.md https://trysincerely.com/vs.md https://trysincerely.com/compare.md https://trysincerely.com/alternatives.md https://trysincerely.com/guides.md https://trysincerely.com/playbooks.md https://trysincerely.com/operations.md https://trysincerely.com/about.md https://trysincerely.com/contact.md https://trysincerely.com/privacy.md https://trysincerely.com/terms.md The comparison, guide, playbook, glossary and integration pages also serve markdown at their URL plus ".md". Each collection's index lists them: https://trysincerely.com/vs.md, https://trysincerely.com/compare.md, https://trysincerely.com/alternatives.md, https://trysincerely.com/guides.md, https://trysincerely.com/playbooks.md, https://trysincerely.com/glossary.md, https://trysincerely.com/integrations.md.