Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Definition

The total profit you'll extract from a customer over the entire relationship, assuming they don't leave for a competitor next quarter.

Example Usage

Our CLV was $2,400, which justified a CAC up to $240 if our math was right (it wasn't).

Origin

Business metrics terminology, popularized in the 1990s

Fun Fact

CLV calculations are notoriously inaccurate because predicting human behavior is basically fortune-telling with spreadsheets.

Source: Customer Lifetime Value Standards (CLV)

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aspirational messaging

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Unsold advertising inventory filled with the publisher's own promotional content rather than leaving it blank. The digital equivalent of restaurants putting the owner's daughter's artwork on empty walls.

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channel

In marketing, any medium through which you push your message into people's consciousness, whether they asked for it or not. Email, social media, carrier pigeons—if it can transmit your brand's desperate plea for attention, it's a channel. Modern marketers obsess over being "omnichannel," which means annoying customers everywhere simultaneously.

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