Customers are increasingly being viewed as assets that bring value to the firm. Customer lifetime value is a metric which allows managers to understand the overall value of their customer base and relate it to three customer strategies firms employ: asset acquisition - attracting new customers to the firm, asset maximization - maximizing the value the firm extracts from each customer, and asset retention - retaining existing customers for the long term. The note gives students a foundation for analyzing marketing cases, as well as providing an analytical structure and process for completing a marketing plan. The note is accompanied by a free Excel worksheet which contains sample problems, prebuilt Excel models to calculate customer lifetime value, and charts and graphs which help visualize the results.