I get asked all the time how an advanced CAPI connection compares to the free Shopify native CAPI. It turns out, better data can lower customer acquisition costs by 27.6%.
It’s hard to quantify the difference between a high performance aftermarket data connection and the free data connection you get with the Shopify-Facebook sales channel.
That’s why we ran a test to help show what’s possible with an advanced connection and to quantify the value.
1️⃣ Set Up Custom Logic
Using the new Popsixle Shopify app, we have built in server-side logic that determines whether a site purchase came from a New Customer or from a Return Customer.
This custom logic pings the Shopify API in real-time to look up any/all historic orders from that person in that particular Shopify store:
➡ If there are any historic orders, the order is sent to Meta as a Purchase Return Customer event.
➡ If this is the only order from a customer, the order is sent to Meta as a Purchase New Customer event.
2️⃣ Unlock Advanced Tracking
Once this new vs return data is flowing, it’s simple to add additional columns to your Ads Manager reporting views. Put Purchase events and Purchases New Customer events side by side, and it’s easy to read how many orders are from New vs Return customers.
In the below example from an actual Popsixle customer, we observed that orders were, on average, coming from 40% new customers and 60% return customers. (Not ideal and a big waste of money)
3️⃣ Unlock Advanced Optimization
Next we helped set up a head to head test where the business-as-usual campaign optimized to Purchase events while a new test campaign optimized to Purchase New Customer events.
This means that in the test campaign, Meta’s algorithms were bidding on and optimizing to New Customer purchases only.
💥 The rate of new-to-return customers increased from 39% to 64%
💥 The customer acquisition cost improved by 27.6%
4️⃣ Unlock Improved ROI
Let’s do some simple math. In the sample shared below, this customer spends $1.5M per month on prospecting ads. If these prospecting efforts are 27.6% more efficient, that means that the brand could spend $1.09M per month instead of $1.50M per month, and get the same results. (That’s a monthly savings of $414,000)
Meanwhile, it costs them under $1,100 per month to pay for an advanced data connection with Popsixle.
That’s a 375X return on investment.
5️⃣ Summary Takeaways
The saying is true: you get what you pay for. If you’re still using the free Shopify native CAPI connection, you’re missing out on a huge amount of upside from leveraging a better data connection, custom event logic, advanced tracking, advanced optimization, and dramatically more efficient ad performance.