The Raptor Blog

The CLV blind spot: Why your best-looking customers might be your worst

Written by Laura Bjerre Schwalbe | Jul 9, 2026 11:41:51 AM
What is a good customer?

The thoughts that come to mind might be:

  • someone who buys often
  • opens emails
  • clicks offers
  • never lets a promotion go by
By most dashboards, that's exactly what a good customer looks like.

Here's the problem.

What if that same customer only ever buys during the sales season and costs more to keep converting than they're worth? In reality, this customer might be worth about the same as a quieter customer who barely interacts with you but buys full-price twice a year.

That's the CLV blind spot: The gap between the metrics that are easy to see (opens, clicks, ROAS, conversion count) and the overlooked metric (lifetime value). This blind spot happens every time a business treats "engaged" and "valuable" as the same thing, and it's more common than most marketing teams would like to admit.