Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
The total revenue a business can expect from one customer over the whole period they remain a customer.
Customer lifetime value estimates what a customer is worth over the relationship, not per visit. A simple version multiplies average order value by purchase frequency by the number of periods the customer stays. Example: a cafe customer who spends 25 per visit, visits three times a week and stays for two years is worth roughly 7,800 in revenue over that time, in whatever currency the cafe trades in.
It matters because it reframes small decisions. A free tenth coffee looks like a cost until it is set against two years of visits. Spending on retention makes sense only when you can see what a retained customer is worth.
CLV is a forward-looking estimate; retention rate and repeat-visit share are backward-looking measurements. CLV is also revenue, not profit, unless you subtract the cost of serving the customer. Treat any CLV figure as a planning tool rather than a fact.
A loyalty program provides the inputs for the estimate: recorded visit frequency and, where configured, recorded loyalty revenue per customer. The Loyal-T Cards dashboard reports those as recorded by your team; the pricing page has a simple calculator for the value of one regular customer.