About customer retention for loyalty program members

Customer retention for loyalty program members can help you retain your most valuable customers by optimizing your campaigns to reach and re-engage members of your loyalty program.

This article explains the goal for Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns.

On this page

• Benefits
• Availability
• How the Loyalty Program Members retention works
• Understand annotations for customer retention
• Set up the Loyalty Program Members retention goal
• Measurement

Before you begin

To use customer retention for loyalty program members, you must first upload your loyalty member lists to Google Ads using Customer Match. You can segment your members into different lists to represent up to seven loyalty tiers. For the best performance, refresh your Customer Match lists frequently.

Enhance customer retention by integrating Merchant Center loyalty program with Google Ads Customer Match. This allows you to automatically serve personalized member pricing and shipping across ads using up to 7 distinct loyalty tiers.

Loyalty program setup guide

Step 1: Check loyalty labels in Google Merchant Center

1. Enter Loyalty program setup > Loyalty program tier benefits.
2. “Tier 1” should be the tier with the lowest barrier to entry, for example “Free to join”.

Step 2: Prepare and upload customer lists in Audience Manager

1. Prepare separate Customer Match lists based on Google Merchant Center benefits (for example, Free to join, Credit card, and so on).
2. 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

1. Select audience list > “Customer type” in the dropdown > Loyalty > Select tier.
2. Ensure that the tiers are the same as Google Merchant Center labeling from Step 1.

Benefits

• Increase return on ad spend (ROAS) and customer lifetime value (LTV): Focus your budget and bids on your most profitable customer segment—loyal members who typically spend more and convert at a higher rate.
• Enhance your ads with exclusive offers: Attract loyalty members with tailored annotations on your Shopping ads, such as member price and member shipping benefits. Learn more about annotation options in the retention goal.
• Gain deeper performance insights: Understand the impact of your loyalty program with tiered reporting that segments performance metrics, like conversions and ROI, across your different loyalty levels.

Availability

• Campaign types: Customer retention for loyalty program members is available for Performance Max campaigns with a linked Google Merchant Center account and for Shopping campaigns.
• Bidding strategies: Customer retention for loyalty program members compatible with Maximize conversions (with a target CPA) and Maximize conversion value (with a target ROAS) bid strategies.
• Geographic availability: The ability to optimize bidding for loyalty members is available globally. However, the display of tailored annotations (Member Price and Member Shipping) is currently available only in select regions.

How customer retention for loyalty program members works

Customer retention l for loyalty program members uses your first-party data to improve your campaign’s performance. When you enable this goal, you unlock 3 core capabilities:

• Targeted Bidding: You provide Google with lists of your loyalty program members using Customer Match. Google’s Smart Bidding then uses these lists to apply bid multipliers, helping you bid more effectively and competitively for these high-value shoppers. You can provide up to seven distinct loyalty tiers for more granular bidding and reporting.
• Tailored Annotations: You can showcase exclusive benefits directly on your Shopping ads for proven loyalty members. These annotations can highlight special member pricing and shipping offers, making your ads more compelling to your best customers.
• Tiered Reporting: After you opt in, you can segment your campaign reports by loyalty tier. This allows you to view key metrics for each of your member cohorts, helping you measure the effectiveness of your loyalty strategies.

Understand annotations for customer retention

You can acquire and retain loyal shoppers with member price and shipping annotations. These annotations allow you to:

• Show member pricing benefits to both members and non-members and shipping benefits to members.
• Reflect pricing for fixed time periods or showcase evergreen discounts.
• Customize at the SKU level and personalize pricing for up to 7 loyalty tiers via Customer Match.
• Showcase member pricing on organic surfaces for non-member.

Set up customer retention for loyalty program members

To use the loyalty setting, you’ll need to upload Customer Match lists that represent your loyal members and add and maintain your loyalty program benefits in the Google Merchant Center Feed.

1. Go to Campaigns within the Campaigns menu .
2. Select the Performance Max or Shopping campaign you’d like to update.
3. From the Settings tab, find the Customer retention section.
4. Under Loyalty program members, you can check one or both of the following:
   1. Show member benefits to loyalty program members in eligible countries: This setting showcases your loyalty program benefits, like price and shipping, on Shopping ads. Choosing this option as a default is recommended for all of your campaigns.
   2. Bid higher for loyalty program members: With this setting, your campaign can bid more competitively to show ads to your loyalty program members. Choose this setting only if you'd like to optimize your campaign towards loyalty program members by bidding higher towards them. Because nurturing loyalty program members is an always-on strategy, this setting is recommended.
5. Select Save.

You can also make changes to benefits and bidding for multiple campaigns using bulk edits. After you’ve set up your goals, visit Best practices for customer retention for loyalty program members to review measurement, data, and optimization best practices.

Measurement

You can evaluate the success of your campaigns by leveraging Google Ads reporting or by conducting optimization experiments in Google Ads.

Loyalty segmentation in campaign reporting

To view reporting metrics, follow the steps below in Google Ads.

1. Go to Campaigns within the Campaigns menu .
2. From the “Campaigns” table, select the Segment dropdown.
3. Choose Loyalty program members.

This report view provides metrics broken down by loyalty tiers, known non-members, and Unknown customers, allowing you to attribute performance to specific cohorts and evaluate your loyalty reach. Note: This report measures audience-level performance. It does not track whether specific loyalty annotations, such as member pricing or shipping, were served in the ad; instead, it identifies whether your campaign is successfully reaching and driving results for your loyalty audiences

Key recommendations for evaluating the Loyalty segmentation report:

• Focus on Conversions and Conversion Value: These are the primary performance indicators. They show the direct impact of the campaign on the value generated.
• Review your Conversion Value: Conversion Value column will reflect the value adjustments (bid modifiers) made for loyalty.
• Consider Unknown Customers: These are users whose loyalty status could not be definitively determined at the time of the ad interaction or conversion. This can be due to privacy settings (e.g., iOS App Tracking Transparency (ATT) restrictions, Google Ads personalization opt-outs) or other technical limitations.

Product promotions report

You can also view product promotion details by taking the following steps:

1. Go to Products within the Campaigns menu .
2. Choose the Product promotions tab.

This is the primary report to verify if your member pricing, member shipping, and other active promotions are serving. It provides granular performance metrics, including impressions, clicks, and conversions, specifically for these promotions.

Related links

• About customer lifecycle goals
• About customer retention
• Create a customer list
• Best practices for customer retention for loyalty program members