What it is
cohort_lifetime_value is what one customer in a cohort is worth across the life Beacon strikes it over.
It is stated per customer acquired into the cohort, not as the cohort’s total — the same basis as cohort acquisition cost, so the two describe the same customer and can be set beside each other.
Like the cost, it is held for an acquisition month cut by segment. One month carries a figure for each segment inside it rather than a single figure overall.
It is not a whole-life figure. It is struck over a fixed window rather than over however long a customer eventually stays, and How fresh it is names the window.
This figure is the kind of number your finance team reads as a matter of course, and it is still not open by default on any door. Reaching it on the read interface or through MCP tools, sending it to an event destination, and writing it onto your CRM records each take an opt-in, and Where it comes from says where that choice is made — a rule about where the value may travel, not about who inside your company may look at it.
How it is calculated
Measured. It comes out of Beacon’s calculation layer, where the arithmetic is fixed and written down, rather than out of one of the parts of Beacon that reason. Definitions sets out what the three method words mean. You will not reproduce it from your own records the way you can reproduce a revenue total, and that is worth stating plainly. Lifetime value is what a customer is expected to be worth over the window the figure is struck at, and that expectation rests on how long customers like these are likely to stay and what they hold while they do. Until the window is complete, both of those are carried forward rather than observed. The arithmetic is fixed; what it runs over is a cohort whose life has not finished happening. Beacon strikes the value over the cohort as a whole and states it per customer acquired into it. Small cohorts carry weaker figures than large ones. Below 20 accounts in a segment tier, results for that tier are pooled with comparable segments and labelled as an estimate across segments, with the account count shown — the same limit set out under cohort dimension.Where it comes from
Billing, through the customers in the cohort, and Beacon’s own view of how those customers have retained. Billing is the required connection: with no billing there is no revenue on any account, so there is nothing to carry forward. The figure sits on the cohort’s economic record, beside its retention curve and its acquisition cost. The customer side of Beacon produces that record once it is live and the cohort has enough completed history behind it. Before that there is no partial figure and no estimate — the value is absent.
Where the choice is made. This figure is not open by default on any door. The choice happens when a reader grant that reaches it is issued or widened, when you subscribe to events, or when you turn the CRM property on. Whoever makes it is shown who becomes able to see the figure, and their yes is recorded — holding a grant is no longer enough on its own. That is a rule about where the value may travel, not about who inside your company may look at it.
The CRM and event doors carry a further consequence. Every read of the figure through Beacon is recorded in the access log; once it sits on a CRM record or has been sent to an event destination, that tool’s own permissions govern who reads it from then on and Beacon can no longer record who did.
And what accompanies it there is not settled. This is an aggregate, assembled from many parts each converted where it was recorded, so it travels with your reporting currency and the kinds of anchor its parts were pinned under — and it carries no single anchor date and no single billing currency, because it does not have one. Through the read interface and through MCP all of that travels with the figure automatically, in the same response. A CRM property holds one value. The table above says the door is open behind an opt-in; it does not say the rendering is finished. That is being worked out and will be stated here when it is.
How fresh it is
A cohort’s economics are struck at two points: 18 months and 24 months after the cohort opened. Before the first of them the cohort carries no lifetime value — not a provisional one, not an estimate. Between the two it is the same cohort read earlier, with less of its life complete, and the two readings are expected to differ. At 24 months the cohort is closed, its window is complete and the figure is final for that cohort; it is not revised afterwards to account for what those customers went on to do. Membership is frozen when the cohort opens, so the population behind the two readings is identical. What changes between them is how much of that population’s life has happened.Currency and rounding
The figure is in your single reporting currency. The revenue behind it is converted where it is recorded, under the rules set out in currency; no second conversion happens when the cohort figure is struck. Beacon applies no rounding of its own. A screen or an export may round for display; the value as published is not rounded to a whole hundred.What changes it
Before the window is complete: retention moving inside the cohort, and revenue moving with it — an expansion, a contraction, a churn among the customers acquired that month. After the window is complete: nothing. A closed cohort’s figure stands as its record, and a later cohort is where later behaviour shows up. A change in your reporting currency, which changes the currency every cohort’s figure is stated in.What it is not
- Not a ratio, and Beacon does not publish one here. This figure and cohort acquisition cost are both per customer, so dividing one by the other looks valid. Beacon strikes that ratio for a segment as a whole, where the population is large enough to carry it, and does not strike a second one for a cohort inside a segment. Two figures bearing the same name over two different populations leaves a reader unable to tell which one they are holding.
- Not the cohort’s total lifetime value. Multiply it by the number of customers acquired and you would have that, and that count is not published.
- Not a whole-life figure. It is struck at 18 and 24 months. A customer still paying in month 25 adds nothing more to it.
- Not
customer_value. That is a 0-100 measure of what one account is worth ahead of you, published for every active account. This is money, struck over a cohort at a fixed window. - Not recurring revenue. Revenue is what customers hold now; this is what a customer acquired in that month is expected to be worth over the window.