Optimize for New Customer acquisition

Who should consider this?

This optimization strategy is designed for established brands ready to shift from broad conversion optimization to targeted new customer acquisition. Suppose your brand generates $5M+ in annual GMV and has an established customer base. In that case, you're likely facing a common challenge: advertising platforms optimize for all conversions, including repeat purchases from existing customers.

This means your acquisition campaigns may be serving ads to people already familiar with your brand rather than allocating the budget to reach genuinely new prospects. By implementing new customer-specific conversion events, you can direct ad platforms to optimize specifically for first-time buyers, improving the efficiency of your new customer acquisition efforts.

What platforms and CRMs are supported?

Advertising Platforms

• Meta Ads: Full support with automatic NC/RC event firing to your pixel

• Google Ads: Fully supported - needs manual conversion action mapping

• All other platforms: Any platform in EdgeTag's 50+ channel ecosystem that accepts server-side events and custom conversion optimization

• Browser-side NC/RC event support coming soon for platforms requiring client-side signals

CRM Support

• Out-of-the-box support: Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud

• Custom CRM systems: Supported via webhook integrations

Understanding event definitions

EdgeTag generates distinct events for new and returning customers, and for attribution tracking, based on your customer purchase history and click data.

New Customer and Returning Customer events

When a purchase occurs, EdgeTag checks the customer ID against your connected CRM to determine purchase history. If no previous purchase exists, EdgeTag fires a Purchase_NC event. If the customer has at least one prior purchase, EdgeTag fires a Purchase_RC event. This classification happens automatically based on your CRM data.

First Click and Last Click attribution events

First Click (FC) and Last Click (LC) attribution help you understand which channels drive initial awareness versus final conversions. When a customer purchases, EdgeTag examines all recorded click IDs from advertising platforms before that purchase and identifies:

• First Click ID: The earliest interaction from an advertising source

• Last Click ID: The most recent interaction before purchase

EdgeTag then sends Purchase_FC_<Channel> for the first-touch channel and Purchase_LC_<Channel> for the last-touch channel.

Example: Customer clicks TikTok ad three weeks ago → clicks Facebook ad yesterday → purchases today - EdgeTag sends: Purchase_FC_TikTok and Purchase_LC_Facebook

How to setup using EdgeTag

Verify prerequisites and enable plugin

• Confirm your CRM connection is active in the EdgeTag dashboard (Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or Salesforce CRM)

• Navigate to the Plugins section (below Channels). If your tag is created after Sept 9th 2025, NC/RC plugin is pre-installed. Otherwise, click "Add Plugin" → select "NC/RC"

• Name it descriptively (e.g., "NC/RC Plugin" or "New Customer Tracking")

Configure plugin settings

Access configuration by clicking "Edit" on the NC/RC plugin:

• Channel Instance: Enable for specific channel instances or leave blank for all channel instances. This is useful when you have more than one Meta/Google Ads Channel added and want to configure NC RC only for one of them.

• Channels: Select which platforms receive NC/RC events (leave blank to enable for all connected channels).

• First Click (FC) / Last Click (LC): Check boxes to enable attribution tracking

• First Click identifies channels driving initial awareness

• Last Click shows channels closing conversions

• Enable one, both, or neither based on your attribution needs

• Click "Save & Deploy" to activate

Test in Real Time Logger

• Navigate to Real Time Logger and filter for purchase events

• Complete a test purchase or monitor an actual customer purchase

• Verify you see:

• Standard Purchase event

• Purchase_NC (first-time buyer) or Purchase_RC (returning customer)

• Purchase_FC_<Channel> and Purchase_LC_<Channel> (if FC/LC enabled and customer clicked from ad source)

• Allow a few minutes for events to process if not immediately visible

Complete platform-specific setup

• Meta Ads: No additional setup required. The NC/RC and FC/LC events automatically flow to your pixel and appear in Events Manager within 15-30 minutes

• Google Ads: Map EdgeTag events to conversion actions

• Navigate to Tools → Conversions in Google Ads

• Create new conversion actions for Purchase_NC and Purchase_RC

• Select "Import" as the source and map to the exact EdgeTag event names from the Real Time Logger

Measuring results

Create separate campaigns optimized for the new events, and compare the new customer acquisition cost (CAC) with that of all-conversion campaigns. Monitor MER improvement on first-time buyer acquisition and track new customer percentage of total conversions to validate campaign effectiveness.