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Customer Lifetime Value Model

What you put in... What you get out...
  • Observed churn rates
  • Customer acquisition cost
  • Number of customers/segments
  • Gross margins by segment
  • Customer transition probabilities across segments
  • Value of current customer base
  • Time required to recoup customer investments
  • ROI on customer/segment investments
  • Size and profitability of customer segments over time; sensitivity to marketing investment plan

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a metric of a customer's value to the organization over the entire history of the relationship. Short-term sales are a factor, but so are overall customer satisfaction, the churn rate in the segment, and the costs to acquire a new customer and retain an existing customer.

customer lifetime value

The model uses the following input:

Segment Description

  • Number of Customers per segment. As of today, how many customers does the company have in each segment?
  • Gross Margins are the average margins that can be expected from a customer over each period (e.g., a year, a quarter), based on which segment this customer belongs to at the beginning of this period.
  • Marketing Costs quantifies how much money the company spends per customer and per period, depending on which segment this customer belongs. Typically, active customers are followed more closely, receive more attention (e.g., direct marketing solicitations or sales representatives visits), and cost more to the firm.

Transition Matrix

  • The Transition Matrix summarizes the likelihood a customer will switch segments at each period. This matrix should be read horizontally, and each line sums up to 100% (since all customers need to go somewhere). In the above example, an "active customer" has a 75% likelihood of still being in the same segment next period, and 25% chance of switching to the "warm customer" segment.

Associated Videos

The following video(s) are archived recordings of previous webinars discussing the Customer Lifetime Value model. These videos are intended for instructor viewing only as many times they discuss actual business case solutions.

Videos are only available for Registered Instructors

Technical Note - Customer Lifetime Value Model

There is currently not a technical note for the Customer Lifetime Value model.

To view other technical notes, please visit our Technical Notes page.

Business Cases - Customer Lifetime Value Model

The following business cases are available to demonstrate the Customer Lifetime Value Model using Marketing Engineering for Excel software:

  1. Syphone Case - Using the Customer Lifetime Value model, students must determine how many of the current customers Syphone will have in five years.
  2. Northern Aero - Using the Customer Lifetime Value model, students must determine what is the lifetime value of a typical customer in each segment.