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Free Membership Tool
See what an average member is really worth across their whole lifetime — subscription plus ancillary spend — and whether your acquisition costs stack up. Adjust the sliders to model your own organisation.
Your Numbers
The recurring subscription each member pays per year.
Extras members buy: events, courses, certifications, merchandise. Sector data puts this around a fifth of per-member value.
How many years a member stays. Implied annual churn: 16.7%
Marketing and sales spend to win one new member.
The Result
£1,320
Gross lifetime value per member
£1,170
Net of acquisition cost
8.8:1
LTV-to-acquisition ratio
Above 5:1 — you can likely afford to acquire faster and still profit.
Cumulative revenue per member over 6 years
Of each member’s £220 annual value, 18% comes from ancillary spend — revenue you only capture if members stay engaged.
Grow this number — book a free consultationEstimates only, for planning purposes. Figures are not stored and nothing leaves your browser.
How It Works
Membership lifetime value (LTV) is the single most useful number for any membership organisation.
It tells you how much revenue an average member generates across the entire time they stay — and it reframes every marketing decision.
Once you know a member is worth, say, £1,800 over their lifetime, spending £150 to recruit one stops looking like a cost and starts looking like an investment.
The calculation is deliberately simple.
Take the annual subscription fee, add the average ancillary spend a member makes each year — event tickets, training, certifications, merchandise — and multiply by the average number of years a member stays.
That average tenure is the inverse of your churn rate, so a 12.5% annual churn rate implies an average membership length of eight years; the 2025 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report puts the sector median renewal rate at 84%.
Subtract the cost to acquire a member and you have net lifetime value.
Divide gross lifetime value by acquisition cost and you get the LTV-to-acquisition ratio, a quick health check that membership specialists put at a minimum of 3:1.
Below that, acquisition is eating too much of each member’s value; comfortably above it, you can usually afford to grow faster.
The figure most organisations underestimate is ancillary spend.
For professional bodies and trade associations especially, what members pay for courses, accreditation and events over a decade often rivals the subscription itself — and all of it depends on members staying engaged.
That is why lifetime value is really a retention and engagement story as much as an acquisition one.
These are not abstract figures.
The membership sector’s most-cited worked example, from Marketing General’s Tony Rossell, takes an average member paying roughly $175 in dues at an 80% renewal rate — a five-year tenure — plus about $50 a year in non-dues spend, for a lifetime value near $1,125 against an average acquisition cost of just $24.
That same study found per-member ancillary spend sits at roughly a fifth of total member value, which is why we set this tool’s ancillary default conservatively rather than at the much larger organisation-level non-dues share of 40–60%.
You can pressure-test the other side of the equation with our churn cost calculator and acquisition vs retention comparator.
How We Calculate This
Lifetime value = (annual subscription + annual ancillary spend) × average tenure − acquisition cost · LTV:CAC ratio = gross LTV ÷ acquisition costAverage tenure is the inverse of churn (1 ÷ churn rate). We treat an LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 as the minimum healthy benchmark, in line with membership-sector guidance — not just generic SaaS rules of thumb.
Benchmarks & Sources
Questions & Answers
Membership lifetime value is the total revenue an average member generates across the entire time they remain a member. It combines the recurring subscription fee with ancillary spend — events, courses, certifications and merchandise — multiplied by the average number of years a member stays. Subtracting acquisition cost gives net lifetime value.
Use: (annual subscription fee + annual ancillary spend) × average membership length in years. Subtract the cost to acquire a member for net lifetime value. Average membership length can be estimated as 1 ÷ annual churn rate — a 12.5% churn rate implies an eight-year average tenure.
Around 3:1 is generally healthy. Below 3:1, acquisition costs consume too much of each member’s value. Above 5:1 often means you could invest more in growth and acquire faster while staying profitable.
For many membership organisations, ancillary spend — event tickets, training, accreditation, merchandise — rivals or exceeds the subscription over a member’s lifetime. Because it depends on engagement, it makes retention central to maximising lifetime value.
Knowing the number is step one. These services help you grow it.
A healthy LTV means you can afford to acquire more of the right members, profitably.
Every extra year of tenure multiplies lifetime value. Retention is the biggest lever.
Engaged members buy more ancillary services — the hidden half of lifetime value.
Book a free consultation and we’ll show you where the biggest gains are hiding in your membership economics — acquisition, retention or ancillary revenue.
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