Customer lifecycle goals are a suite of goals that help you connect with customers at every stage of their purchase journey within Google's Performance Max, Search, Shopping, and Demand Gen campaigns to help you grow lifetime value. You can configure these goals depending on whether your objective is to acquire new customers, retain your highest value customers, reach lapsed customers, or all of the above.
On this page
- Benefits of customer lifecycle goals
- How lifecycle goals and optimization modes work
- Get started: Requirements and supported lists
- Considerations
Benefits of customer lifecycle goals
- Grow customer lifetime value by connecting with users at every stage of their purchase journey.
- Efficiently acquire new customers by setting specific bids for new users versus existing ones.
- Re-engage valuable users by targeting lapsed customers or retaining your high-value existing customer segments.
- Optimize across multiple campaigns, including Performance Max, Search, Shopping, and Demand Gen.
How lifecycle goals and optimization modes work
The first step is to define your customer lists based on the stage of the customer lifecycle you’re interested in optimizing toward. You can configure these goals using different modes, which determine which customer segments your campaigns reach or prioritize.
Learn more About customer lifecycle goals.
| Lifecycle goal | Mode | Customer segment reached or prioritized | Customer list type |
Includes Google autodetection |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
New Customer Acquisition |
Bid higher for new customers |
New customers | Existing customers | Yes |
|
Bid higher for high-value new customers |
High value new customers | High value existing customers | No | |
| Bid only for new customers | New customers | Existing customers | Yes | |
| Customer Retention | Bid higher for lapsed customers | Lapsed customers | Lapsed customers |
No |
|
Bid higher for high-value lapsed customers |
High value lapsed customers | High value existing customers |
No |
|
|
Member pricing and member shipping annotations on Shopping ads |
High value existing customers |
High value existing customers |
No |
Get started: Requirements and supported lists
Eligibility and requirements
- Customer lists must have at least 1,000 active members in at least one network to be used in lifecycle goals.
- If you use cross-account conversion tracking, meaning your conversion tracking is managed by a manager account (MCC), then you’ll need to configure your lifecycle goals, including customer lists, within that manager account. When using customer lists at the manager account level, ensure that continuous audience sharing is turned on.
Supported list types
You can use the following list types with lifecycle goals:
Note: Lifecycle goals don’t support custom combination segments or custom segments.
Customer Match upload methods
Customer Match lists can be uploaded in all of the following ways:
- CRM and CDP connectors through Google Ads Data Manager
- Google Ads API
- Conversion based customer lists
- Google Analytics audiences
- Direct upload
Considerations
Google autodetection
Google autodetection is automatically activated when you optimize your campaign to bid higher for new customers or bid only for new customers, and if you’re already tracking Google Ads purchase conversions. Google autodetection automatically creates an audience list based on up to the last 540 days of campaign activity and tracked purchases. These lists will automatically be used for exclusion in new customer acquisition campaigns. This is the easiest method to distinguish new customers from existing customers, but we recommend supplementing with Customer Match lists for the most accurate detection.
Customer list best practices
We strongly recommend using both website or app remarketing lists and first-party data lists via Customer Match for all lifecycle goals for the most durable and accurate customer detection. Customer Match lists add to your website and app lists by using your first-party data to match against signed-in Google users, which provides another layer of detection. Using both list types will give you the best coverage for reaching your desired customer segments.
Member pricing and member shipping annotations on Shopping ads
Note: This feature is only available in the US.
Step 1: Check loyalty labels in Google Merchant Center
- Enter Loyalty program setup > Loyalty program tier benefits.
- “Tier 1” should be the tier with the lowest barrier to entry, for example “Free to join”.
Step 2: Prepare and upload customers lists in Audience Manager
- Prepare separate Customer Match lists based on Google Merchant Center benefits (for example, Free to join, Credit card, and so on).
- Upload customer lists into Audience Manager using CRM and CDP connectors through Google Ads Data Manager, Google Ads API, or Direct upload.
Step 3: Label customer type in Audience Manager
- Select audience list > “Customer type” in the dropdown > Loyalty > Select tier.
- Ensure that the tiers are the same as Google Merchant Center labeling from Step 1.
For more information about member pricing and member shipping annotations, reach out to your account manager.