Churn measures the percentage of *existing* customers lost over a specific period, regardless of how many new customers were acquired. This strict definition isolates retention issues from acquisition success, providing a clear and un-muddled health metric for the customer base.
Don't wait for perfect data systems to understand your business. You can estimate critical metrics like average customer transactions with simple 'back of the napkin' math. For example, export your customer data to a spreadsheet, sort by transactions, and average the column.
While businesses focus on lowering customer acquisition cost (CAC), the real competitive advantage lies in maximizing LTGP. A higher LTGP allows a business to outspend competitors on customer acquisition. LTGP is about keeping customers, which has a higher ceiling for growth than just acquiring them efficiently.