By Jaz FieldUpdated
How RMS Beauty cut Google Ads cost per conversion 83% by bidding on new customers
Who is RMS Beauty?
RMS Beauty is a clean beauty brand founded by makeup artist Rose-Marie Swift, selling direct to consumers on Shopify.
RMS has used Littledata for Google Analytics since January 2024, and added Littledata's Google Ads connection in May 2025.
Why couldn't Google Ads find RMS Beauty's new customers?
Ahead of the 2025 holidays, RMS wanted to bring in as many new customers as possible and nurture them into repeat buyers. Spending more on Google Ads tended to reach people who had bought before, so each new customer kept getting more expensive.
Google Ads has a New Customer Acquisition goal for this, but it can only bid on new customers as well as its data tells them apart from returning ones:
- Autodetection fell short. Google's own detection couldn't reliably separate first-time buyers from existing ones.
- Customer Match didn't scale. The usual supplement, uploaded customer lists, needed constant manual updating.
- Exclusions cost more. Excluding existing buyers with static lists pushed the cost per acquisition up.
Key Wins
-83%
campaign cost per conversion, year on year
5.8x
campaign conversion value per cost, year on year
1.6% → 7.2%
campaign conversion rate
How did Littledata tell new customers apart?
Littledata's Google Ads connection sends every purchase from Shopify's servers, using Shopify's own order data, and labels each one as a new or returning customer:
- Three purchase conversions. Every purchase, plus a New Customer Purchase and a Returning Customer Purchase, each with its own conversion value in Google Ads reports.
- Identified on the server. New customers are recognised from Shopify's customer records, not browser cookies.
- Checked, not guessed. Littledata confirms whether a buyer is genuinely new by cross-referencing customer IDs and hashed customer data.
Google recommends adding first-party data to its autodetection for the most accurate new-customer detection. Littledata supplies it with no lists to maintain.
What results did RMS Beauty see?
In October 2025, RMS switched one of its highest-budget Performance Max campaigns from bidding on every purchase to bidding on Littledata's New Customer Purchase event, and ran it through the holidays.
Over November and December, costs in that campaign fell while they rose across the account as a whole, and the campaign brought in new customers for less than the account paid per order on average.
New Customer Purchase campaign vs the whole account
Change vs a year earlier, 1 November to 31 December 2025
| Campaign | Whole account | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per conversion | -83% | +84% |
| Conversion value per cost | +480% | +32% |
| Average cost per click | -18% | +75% |
Should your Google Ads bid on new customers?
RMS Beauty's approach works for any Shopify store growing through Google Ads:
- Start with one campaign. RMS changed the goal on a single Performance Max campaign and compared it with the rest of the account.
- No lists to maintain. Littledata labels every purchase as new or returning from Shopify's servers, so there are no Customer Match uploads to keep current.
- Every destination included. Google Ads, Google Analytics and every other connection come with every Littledata plan, so a store already sending GA4 data can add Google Ads in a few steps in the Littledata app.
What RMS Beauty says about Littledata
RMS Beauty's 5-star review on the Shopify App Store.
Using LittleData has been instrumental for our business success. The team at LittleData is extremely intuitive when it comes to understanding our business objectives and working alongside our digital team to ensure we are making informed data-driven decisions that will move the needle. In addition to being a great partner that helps us optimize marketing strategies and understand overall consumer behavior on our website, the team (David + Ross) are absolutely fantastic to work with.
