Ever wondered how many of your sales from your paid media campaigns are actually coming from new customers? 
‍

This is where New Customer Tracking comes in. 
‍

We all know that ad platform algorithms will go after the low-hanging fruit first, which often means your existing customer base. And yes, whilst strong customer retention is critical to your brands growth, there are often better channels for capturing those returning sales than your paid media. 

What is new customer tracking? 
‍
‍New Customer Tracking does exactly what it says on the tin. 
‍

It allows you to see exactly which parts of your ad account are converting prospects into new customers - rather than generating sales from your existing customer base. 
‍

Now, you might already be monitoring your new customer rate and might even be breaking it down by channel - but our approach takes it further and allows you to see new customer performance right down to the specific campaign, product or ad creative.
‍

How does it work? 

The set up is relatively simple - a tracking script installed on your checkout page identifies whether each sale is from a new or existing customer. 
‍

Conversions are then fired into your ad accounts based on if the purchase was via a new customer, including the revenue for each sale. The ad platforms will then attribute your new customer sales accordingly, as it would with any other sale. 

‍

How can you use New Customer data in your account?  

There are multiple ways to leverage your new customer data now that you have it flowing into your ad account. 
‍

Calculate your nCPA or nROAS‍

Now that you have visibility on your new customer data at an ad level, you can start analysing your existing activity to understand how it’s performing from a new customer aspect.

Eg. How much are you currently paying to acquire a new customer via Performance Max? How does that differ from your prospecting activity on Meta? What is your new customer ROAS? 
‍

Identify where to scale‍

If your objective is to grow your new customer base then you will suddenly start noticing which campaigns have the opportunity to scale. 
You could take this further and start analysing which products are driving a higher new customer rate, suggesting that these products are resonating more with new audiences rather than existing ones. 
‍‍

Train algorithms to target new customers ‍

Whilst both Google and Meta’s smart bidding strategies have come a long way over the last few years, they’re still only as good as the data you feed into them. 
‍

By switching your campaign’s optimisation event away from optimising for any sale and towards new customer sales only, you’re effectively forcing the ad platform algorithm to go out and find more audiences that share similar attributes to your new customers.  
‍

This should allow you to unlock efficiencies within your new customer targeting, bringing down your nCPA and improving nROAS. 

‍

Final thoughts
‍

If you’re on Shopify and using Google Tag Manager then you can have new customer tracking firing within hours - it’s really that straightforward. However, nearly every brand we audit has no direct approach to tracking new customer performance within their ad account despite it being their main KPI.

‍

Get in touch today if you want to start acquiring new customers more profitably. 

‍