Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) #

LTV is the total revenue a customer generates over their entire relationship with your business. It is one of the most important metrics for understanding the long-term value of your customer base.

What is LTV? #

LTV = Average Revenue Per Customer x Average Customer Lifespan

DMSI Analytics calculates LTV in two ways:

Historical LTV: Based on actual total revenue from existing customers divided by cohort size.

Predicted LTV: A forward-looking estimate using regression analysis on customer spend patterns. See LTV Forecasting for details.

LTV Dashboard Widget #

The LTV widget shows:
– Average LTV across all customers
– LTV trend (is the average going up or down?)
– Top 10 customers by LTV (in the LTV detail view)

LTV by Product #

On the Customer Analytics page, you can break down LTV by product to understand which products attract the highest-value customers.

How LTV is Calculated #

1. The LTV_Calculator runs nightly as part of the daily metric cron
2. For each customer, it sums all historical revenue from DDLS orders
3. It groups results into portfolio averages and stores them in analytics_metrics
4. The per-customer predicted LTV is stored separately via LTV_Predictor

LTV vs MRR #

A common rule of thumb: LTV should be at least 3x Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).