What Is Lifetime Value (LTV)?
What is lifetime value? It is the predicted total revenue a business will generate from a single customer over the duration of the relationship. Knowing it tells you how much you can afford to spend acquiring a customer while remaining profitable.
Calculate LTV by customer segment or acquisition channel from your order or subscription export
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Upload your spreadsheet.xlsx .xls .csv — free to try, no accountWhat this export contains
| Customer ID |
| Signup Date |
| Last Purchase |
| Total Orders |
| Total Revenue |
| Plan |
| Churn Date |
| Segment |
| Channel |
| Country |
What usually goes wrong with it
LTV calculations require historical order data across the full customer lifespan
Calculating actual LTV requires knowing total revenue per customer from first purchase to churn. For active customers, this is a projection, not an observed value — and conflating the two produces an inflated number.
DataMimi Datamimi calculates both observed LTV (total revenue for churned customers) and projected LTV (ARPU ÷ churn rate for active customers), labeling which method applies to each row.
LTV varies significantly by acquisition channel and segment
A blended LTV of $800 conceals that email-acquired customers have an LTV of $1,200 while paid social customers average $400. Using the blended number to set a CAC target means overspending on low-LTV channels and underspending on high-LTV ones.
DataMimi It segments LTV by Channel and Plan column, returning the average and median LTV for each segment so the high-value acquisition channels become visible.
The simple LTV formula breaks for subscription businesses with expansion revenue
LTV = ARPU ÷ Churn Rate assumes flat revenue per customer. Customers who expand their plan over time have a higher actual LTV than this formula predicts — and the difference matters for pricing and retention investment decisions.
DataMimi Datamimi applies an expansion-adjusted LTV formula when the export contains expansion MRR data, using (ARPU + average expansion per period) ÷ churn rate for a more accurate projection.
Common questions
What is lifetime value as a formula?
Simple LTV = Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) ÷ Monthly Churn Rate. If ARPU is $100/month and churn is 5%/month, LTV = $2,000. For subscription businesses, a more precise version uses gross margin: LTV = (ARPU × Gross Margin %) ÷ Churn Rate.
What is a good LTV to CAC ratio?
A 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio is the commonly cited healthy benchmark for SaaS. Below 1:1 means you're spending more to acquire a customer than they're worth. Above 5:1 often signals that you're under-investing in growth.
What is the difference between LTV and CLV?
LTV (lifetime value) and CLV (customer lifetime value) mean the same thing. Both refer to the total revenue or profit a business expects from a customer over the entire relationship. Some sources use CLV to emphasize the customer-centric view; LTV is the more common shorthand.
What does Datamimi cost?
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Try it with your own file
DataMimi reads the file you actually have — merged cells, headers below row one, totals pasted at the bottom — and shows which rows and columns every number came from.
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