Lifetime Value Redux

I have the utmost respect for Les Wunderman as well as for Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, but I am dismayed at the “who invented LTV” quarrel that has been going on in The CRM Loop.

Lifetime Value is an obvious concept for direct marketers and it existed long before any books.

I looked it up in one of my own books, DataBase Marketing, published by McGraw-Hill in 1993. Lifetime Value is discussed in Chapter 13 “Improving Database ROI.” It is included in a Glossary compiled (from sources which existed even earlier) by researcher Amy Zipkin. “The total profit or loss estimated or realized from a customer over the active life of a customer record.”

It is a concept I used routinely, before and after the publication of that book, for packaged goods clients like P&G, Kellogg’s, Seagram’s, and Mary Kay as well as for “clubs” for Weekly Reader, Mattel and Capitol Record Club.

Writing and using LTV in 1993 might qualify as being “first” by some standards, except I don’t claim to have invented this concept.

Every author contributes to the theory and practice of direct marketing by teaching about concepts like this. That alone deserves respect and appreciation. “Who wrote it first” is irrelevant.

Ed Nash is president of TeamNash Inc.