How to Calculate Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value (CLTV) is one of the most important metrics to measure at any growing company.

By measuring CLTV in relation to客户收购成本(CAC), companies can measure how long it takes to recoup the investment required to earn a new customer — such as the cost of sales and marketing.

If you want your business to acquire and保留高价的客户, then it's essential that your team learns what customer lifetime value is and how to calculate it.

The metric considers a customer's revenue value and compares that number to the company's predicted customer lifespan.

Businesses use customer lifetime value to identify customer segments that are most valuable to the company. The longer a customer continues to purchase from a company, the greater their lifetime value becomes.

该指标是客户支持和成功团队可以直接影响的事情customer's journey. Customer support reps and customer success managers play critical roles in solving problems and offering recommendations that increasecustomer loyaltyand reduce churn.

为什么客户寿命价值很重要？

这是理解您的CLV至关重要的一些原因：

1.它直接影响您的收入。

The CLV identifies the specific customers that contribute the most revenue to your business. This allows you to serve these existing customers with products/services they like and make them happier, resulting in them spending more money at your company.

According to HubSpot Research, 55% of growing companies think it's "very important" to invest in customer service programs.

If we look at companies with stagnant or decreasing revenue, only 29% said this investment was "very important." Companies that are actively geared towardscustomer's successare experiencing more revenue because of increased customer satisfaction.

2. It boosts customer loyalty and retention.

当公司优化其Cbob全站appLV并始终如一地提供价值（以优秀的客户支持，产品或忠诚度计划的形式）时，它往往会提高客户忠诚度和保留率。

And with more loyal customers comes a lower churn rate, as well as an increase in referrals, positive reviews, and sales.

3. It helps you target your ideal customers.

When you know the lifetime value of a customer, you also know how much money they spend with your business over a period of time — whether it's $50, $500, or $5000. Armed with that knowledge, you can develop a customer acquisition strategy that targets customers who will spend the most at your business.

4.它降低了客户的获取成本。

获取新客户可能是一件昂贵的事情。实际上，一个articlepublished byHarvard Business Reviewfound that gaining a customer can cost anywhere between five and 25 times more than retaining an existing one.

Additionally, another学习贝恩公司（Bain＆Company）进行bob全站app的，保留率增加了5％，可能会导致利润在25％至95％之间上升。

These stats show it’s essential that your business identifies and nurtures the most valuable customers that interact with your company. By doing so, you'll have higher profit margins, increased customer lifetime values, and reduced customer acquisition costs.

Now, let’s learn how to calculate CLV in the next section.

客户寿命值=（客户价值 *平均客户寿命）

where Customer Value = Average Purchase Value * Average Number of Purchases

Customer Lifetime Value Model

现在，上面的公式简化了许多变量，您可能想知道诸如“平均购买价值”之类的指标以及如何计算它们。下面，我们通过为您提供两种模型来衡量客户寿命价值来简化事物。

In the following section, we’ll break down what metrics like Average Purchase Value are and how to calculate them, so you’ll have all the knowledge you’ll need to calculate customer lifetime value.

Historical Customer Lifetime Value

The historical model uses past data to predict the value of a customer without considering whether the existing customer will continue with the company or not. With the historical model, the average order value is used to determine the value of your customers. You’ll find this model to be especially useful if most of your customers only interact with your business over a certain period of time.

However, because most customer journeys are not identical, this model has certain drawbacks. Active customers (deemed valuable by the historical model) might become inactive and skew your data. In contrast, inactive customers might begin to buy from you again, and you might overlook them because they’ve been labeled “inactive.”

Predictive Customer Lifetime Value

与关注过去数据的历史客户寿命价值模型不同，预测CLV模型预测了现有和新客户的购买行为。

Using the predictive model for customer lifetime value helps you better identify your most valuable customers, the product or service that brings in the most sales, and how you can improve customer retention.

Read on to learn about the different metrics needed to calculate customer lifetime value and why they’re important.

客户寿命价值公式

Average Purchase Value

计算这个数字除以公司的tbob全站appotal revenue in a period (usually one year) by the number of purchases throughout that same period.

平均购买频率

Calculate this number by dividing the number of purchases by the number of unique customers who made purchases during that period.

Customer Value

通过将平均购买值乘以平均购买频率率来计算此数字。

Average Customer Lifespan

Calculate this number by averaging the number of years a customer continues purchasing from your company.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Multiply customer value by the average customer lifespan. The multiplication will give you the revenue you can reasonably expect an average customer to generate for your company throughout their relationship with you.

客户寿命价值示例

Using data from aKissmetricsreport, we can take Starbucks as an example for determining CLTV. Its report measures the weekly purchasing habits of five customers, then averages their total values together. By following the steps listed above, we can use this information to calculate the average lifetime value of a Starbucks customer.

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1.计算平均购买值。

First, we need to measure average purchase value. According to Kissmetrics, the average Starbucks customer spends about $5.90 each visit. We can calculate this by averaging the money spent by a customer in each visit during the week. For example, if I went to Starbucks three times and spent nine dollars total, my average purchase value would be three dollars.

Once we calculate the average purchase value for one customer, we can repeat the process for the other five. After that, add each average together, divide that value by the number of customers surveyed (five) to get the average purchase value.

2.计算平均购买频率。

The next step to calculating CLTV is to measure the average purchase frequency rate. In the case of Starbucks, we need to know how many visits the average customer makes to one of its locations within a week. The average observed across the five customers in the report was found to be 4.2 visits. This makes our average purchase frequency rate 4.2.

3. Calculate the average customer's value.

现在我们知道了普通客户的支出以及他们一周内访问多少次，我们可以确定他们的客户价值。为此，我们必须单独查看所有五个客户，然后将其平均购买价值乘以其平均购买频率。这使我们知道客户在一周内为星巴克来说值得多少收入。

Once we repeat this calculation for all five customers, we average their values to get the average customer's value of $24.30.

4. Calculate the average customer's lifetime span.

While it's not explicitly stated how Kissmetrics measured Starbucks' average customer lifetime span, it does list this value as 20 years. If we were to calculate Starbucks' average customer lifespan, we would have to look at the number of years each customer frequented Starbucks. Then we could average the values together to get 20 years. If you don't have 20 years to wait and verify that,单程to estimate customer lifespan is to divide 1 by your churn rate percentage.

5. Calculate your customer's lifetime value.

一旦确定了平均客户价值和平均客户寿命，我们就可以使用此数据来计算CLTV。在这种情况下，我们首先需要将平均客户价值乘以52。由于我们每周习惯测量了客户，因此我们需要将其客户价值乘以52，以反映年平均值。之后，将此数字乘以客户寿命值（20）以获取CLTV。

对于星巴克客户而言，该价值被证明为$ 25,272（52 x 24.30 x 20 = 25,272）。

Improving Customer Lifetime Value

Now that you know your customer lifetime value, how do you improve it? Here are some strategies that can help.

Optimize your onboarding process.

客户入职is one of the first interactions your audience would have with your brand after they decide to become customers. It’s also the first chance you have to impress them.

So unless you want to lose your customers in the first week, you need to optimize your onboarding process to make these customers familiar with your products and services.

When done right, onboarding motivates customers to come back to your products time and time again, thus increasing their lifetime value.

最佳实践为客户新员工培训包括:

• 使其快速直接
• 使用演练视频或教程视频

不足，但过度搬运。

You can increase your customer lifetime value by overdelivering on your brand promise. Many brands already make bold claims they can’t meet, so it comes as a welcome surprise to customers when they come across a brand that over-delivers on its promise.

Increase your average order value.

One of the smartest ways to improve your CLV is to increase your average order value.

When a customer is about to check out, you can offer relevant complementary products to those they’re about to buy. Brands like Amazon and McDonald’s are examples of companies that use the upsell and cross-sell method extremely well. Amazon will offer you related products and bundle them into a group price as depicted below.

Image Source

麦当劳（McDonald's）会在您完成订单之前就可以在那些美味的美食和甜点上向您出售。我无法告诉你我跌倒了多少次，“您想要一个苹果派吗？”诡计。

如果您是一家基于订阅的公司，则可以通过鼓励客户转到年度计费周期bob全站app来增加平均订单和客户寿命价值。

参与与客户建立关系

客户花在产品上，因为他们试图满足需求。为了提高客户的寿命价值并降低您的流失率，您需要思考客户试图满足的即时需求。

因此，您需要与客户参与并建立关系。围绕关系建设的标准实践包括：

• 社交聆听
• Regular check-ins
• Hosting local events and fairs
• 接受和实施客户反馈
• Sending rewards and gifts to boost customer loyalty and repeat purchases

Improve your customer service

90% of Americansadmit that customer service is one factor they consider when choosing companies to do business with. It, therefore, goes without saying that if you want to improve your customer lifetime value, you should pay attention to your customer service and look for ways to make it excellent.

You can改善您的客户服务by offering existing customers personalized services, omnichannel customer support, and a proper return or refund policy.

The Benefit of Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value is an incredibly useful metric. It tells you which customers spend the most at your business and which ones will remain loyal to you for the longest amount of time. Use the formulas and model provided above and start calculating CLTV for your business today.