The Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) is a vital metric that every company should know. Without understanding how much a customer is worth to your company, you have no idea how much you can spend to acquire that customer profitably.
Your LCV is the present value of all future cash flows (profits) that a typical customer will generate over a lifetime of doing business with you. We're discounting the number by 10% annually to take into consideration the cost of capital.
A good rule of thumb in marketing is that you'll need to spend around 10% of your LCV to acquire a company. That's a 10x return over their lifetime. Of course, that number can vary from company to company, and industry to industry.