Retention rate

Retention read by cohort shows the shape of the curve, and the shape is the finding: a curve that flattens means the business has a real base, a curve that keeps falling means it is renting customers and will have to keep buying them.

The flattening point matters more than any single month's number. A business whose curve settles at 22 % has a durable fifth of every cohort; one whose curve is still falling at month twelve has none.

Retention measured on the whole base

Mixing cohorts hides the curve entirely. A base that is growing fast reports improving retention while every individual cohort is decaying, because new arrivals keep replacing the departed in the denominator.

Churn rate

The share of customers who stop buying in a period, and therefore the reciprocal of how long a customer lasts.

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Cohort analysis

Grouping customers by when they arrived and following each group separately, so that changes over time are visible instead of averaged away.

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LTV

The contribution a customer produces across their whole relationship with the business, discounted for the fact that it arrives later.

All forty-five termsWhat this is regulated by in the UAE

Is this one right in your own numbers?

The definitions are the easy part. Whether the figure on your dashboard was computed this way is a different question, and usually the more expensive one.