Free tool

LTV calculator.

Calculate your customers' Lifetime Value and make better investment decisions. Enter average ticket, frequency, margin and retention rate to get the real value of each customer to your business.

Customer data
Gross margin60%
5%95%
Annual retention rate75%
10%99%
LTV
Lifetime Value
$1,728
Revenue / customer
Total revenue over lifetime
$2,880
Customer lifetime
Estimated years
4.0 years
LTV : CAC
Healthy ratio 3x or more
6.91x

What LTV is and why it sets the ceiling for what you can spend on acquisition

Lifetime Value is the total profit a customer generates for your business across their entire relationship with you. It's not revenue — it's margin. And it's the single number that determines how much you can sustainably spend to acquire a new customer.

Without a clear LTV, every CAC discussion is theoretical. With it, you can size paid budgets, calibrate sales investment and decide which channels deserve more capital. A growing LTV is the strongest signal that your product-market fit is real and that growth is compounding.

The LTV formula

LTV formula
LTV = Average ticket × Frequency × Margin × Customer life

Customer life is derived from churn: 1 ÷ monthly churn rate gives expected life in months. A 5% monthly churn means an average customer life of 20 months. Lower the churn, longer the life, higher the LTV — without changing pricing or margin.

How to grow LTV

Four levers, in order of impact: reduce churn, increase average ticket, raise purchase frequency, expand margin. Of the four, churn is where most teams under-invest. Cutting monthly churn from 5% to 3% lifts customer life from 20 to 33 months — a 65% LTV increase without touching pricing.

Why organic customers have higher LTV

Customers acquired through SEO and organic content arrive with clear intent. They searched, evaluated and chose. That self-selection produces better product fit, lower early churn and longer retention than customers interrupted by an ad. In most data we see, organic cohorts show 20–40% higher LTV than paid cohorts of the same vintage.

Frequently asked questions

Everything you need to know about LTV

What's the difference between LTV and CLV?

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Conceptually none. LTV (Lifetime Value) and CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) are the same metric under different names. LTV is more common in SaaS and growth; CLV in traditional marketing and CRM. What matters isn't the acronym but that you calculate it on margin, not gross revenue.

How often should I recalculate LTV?

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Quarterly at minimum, and any time you have structural changes: new pricing, margin shifts, new plans or large variations in retention. In mature SaaS, recalculating monthly by cohort is the standard.

What's a good retention rate?

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It depends on the model. Enterprise B2B SaaS: annual retention above 90% is healthy. B2C SaaS: above 70% is good. Non-recurring e-commerce uses repeat purchase rate instead.

How does churn affect LTV?

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Exponentially. Customer life is derived from churn: if monthly churn goes from 2% to 4%, estimated life is halved and so is LTV. Reducing churn is the most powerful lever to scale LTV without touching price or margin.

What LTV:CAC ratio is healthy for raising capital?

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Investors look for at least 3x. Below 1x you destroy value with every customer. Between 1x and 3x the model works but is fragile. Above 4x shows efficiency and room to scale. Above 5x can be a signal you're under-investing in growth.

How does SEO improve customer LTV?

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Customers acquired through organic SEO have higher intent and better retention than paid. They arrive actively looking for a solution, not interrupted by an ad. That translates into lower early churn, better product fit and structurally higher LTV.

Enterprise SEO consultancy

Every paid click has an organic equivalent waiting to be earned.

We design end-to-end SEO programs for brands that want to lower their paid dependency, scale predictable organic traffic and dominate Google plus the new AI search surfaces.

+1B
Organic visits generated
+280%
Average lead growth
-73%
CAC reduction
+2,500%
AI search visibility
What we do

SEO strategy, technical SEO, content, authority and AI visibility (GEO) under one senior team. SEO tied to pipeline and revenue, not vanity metrics.

How we do it

Squad embedded in Slack, Notion and Linear. Weekly sprints, a 12–24 month roadmap and executive reporting that connects every organic move with CAC, leads and revenue.

What you get

Compounding organic growth, lower paid dependency, growing share of voice in LLMs and an acquisition channel that keeps working when you stop paying for clicks.

Methodology
/01
Diagnosis

Technical, content, authority and LLM visibility audit. Benchmark vs. competitors and opportunity quantified in traffic and revenue.

/02
Strategy

Topic universe prioritised by intent, 12–24 month traffic projection and a measurement model wired to business outcomes.

/03
Execution

Technical fixes, briefs, content, on-page, authority and GEO shipped every week. Embedded operation, not deliverables that sit in a PDF.

/04
Measurement

Organic KPIs tied to pipeline and CAC. Monthly iteration on what is actually moving the business, not on what climbs in Search Console.

SEO consultancy

Is your CPC high and your margin eroding?

We will send you a free SEO diagnostic with the real organic opportunities for your domain and a projection of how much you could cut paid spend while keeping the same lead volume.