Looking at customer lifetime value is an important metric in applying and measuring the success of relationship marketing efforts for a key account. Vetting those accounts to see which perform better than others when relationship marketing is applied can help you hone your strategies and tactics.
Taking it one step further – if you look at the highest stage of a relationship, one that I will call “Innovator,” you should consider applying the same life-time value principle with a twist. When a relationship is at the Innovator stage, that means they are literally co-creating with your organization and building each other into each respective company’s strategy. Check out this blog post by Braden Kelley of Innovation Excellence: http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/07/22/innovator-lifetime-value/
Being able to measure the performance of innovator-lifetime-value makes sense so you can gauge and manage these crucial high-end customers and give them the right kind of attention so you can keep and deepen that relationship your company worked so hard to gain.
— Lisa Dennis