Joseph Bou-Younes's Website

Tag: marketing

  • Using Lifetime Total Value correctly

    I’m elbows-deep in an optimization project, helping the client track churn, retention, ARPU and LTV. Forbes online published this article warning about the dangers of relying on LTV; I agree with much of it. The headline was misleading, but the article was quite good. LTV is a tool, not a substitute for strategy.

    LTV forces you to think about retention and upsell. Many companies have no idea what their retention is by channel. They invest in PPC and affiliate programs, focus on the cash generated, and fail to look at downstream revenue or churn. LTV is a useful rough guide; it’s an estimate produced by an unweighted average of averages. Although it’s a good starting point, companies should measure revenue per customer directly, segmented by customer type, marketing channel, and product. To the extent that the future looks like the past, this information can be useful in helping to plan future investment.

    Using Lifetime Total Value correctly

  • Evolve.

    This month’s Fast Company features a cover story about Amazon’s Kindle. It describes how Amazon could use the Kindle to squeeze publishers out of the book value chain. It also talks about how Apple might respond, and what the ensuing battle might look like.

    Over the past few years I’ve been impressed by Amazon’s willingness to create products and services in markets where there still is really no business – like Kindle. They constantly look for opportunities to leverage their distribution, retail expertise, and infrastructure to grow their business and increase their relevance to consumers and merchants. On the other hand, ebay stuck to its knitting, failed to grow out of the U.S. auctions business, and had its lunch eaten by craigslist.