Lifecycle goals

AI-generated Key Takeaways

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• The Google Ads API supports configuring customer lifecycle goals, including customer acquisition and retention goals, through dedicated resources.

• Customer lifecycle goals can be configured at the customer-level using the CustomerLifecycleGoal resource and at the campaign-level using the CampaignLifecycleGoal resource.

• Proper audience segmentation for customer lifecycle goals is managed using the UserListCustomerType resource.

• Retention goals, primarily for Performance Max campaigns, aim to enhance customer loyalty and can be set at the account or campaign level.

• Lifecycle goals can be retrieved using the search or searchStream methods of the GoogleAdsService.

Use the CustomerLifecycleGoal and CampaignLifecycleGoal resources of the Google Ads API to configure goals related to the customer lifecycle. The Google Ads API supports customer acquisition goals for efficiently acquiring new customers through your Google Ads Search and Performance Max campaigns.

If your Google Ads account is using cross-account conversion tracking, then you must configure customer lifecycle goals in the Google Ads conversion account instead of directly in your Google Ads account. You should still set campaign lifecycle goals in your account, however. This is similar to how you manage other goals when using cross-account conversion tracking.

Configure customer lifecycle goals

At the customer-level, configure a lifecycle goal by creating or updating a CustomerLifecycleGoal. There can be at most one CustomerLifecycleGoal per Google Ads account. The customer_acquisition_goal_value_settings.value field defines the additional value adjustment to add to a new customer's first purchase conversion. The customer_acquisition_goal_value_settings.high_lifetime_value defines the incremental conversion value for new customers who are of high value. High lifetime value should be greater than value, if set.

Segment your audiences

You must use the UserListCustomerType resource to segment your audiences for customer lifecycle goals. You must associate each user list with one or more categories by creating a UserListCustomerType for each combination of user list and category.

Use the UserListCustomerTypeService to create UserListCustomerType instances. If you have previously populated the CustomerLifecycleGoal.lifecycle_goal_customer_definition_settings.existing_user_lists field, then your account will already contain related UserListCustomerType instances.

The UserListCustomerTypeService only supports create and remove operations, so if you want to update an existing UserListCustomerType you must remove it and then create a new one with the necessary updates.

A UserListCustomerType can only be assigned to one user list, but a user list can have multiple associated UserListCustomerType instances as long as there are no conflicts between the UserListCustomerType instances. Trying to assign UserListCustomerType instances with the following combinations of customer_type_category to the same user list will result in a UserListCustomerTypeError.CONFLICTING_CUSTOMER_TYPES error:

Configure campaign lifecycle goals

At the campaign level, configure a lifecycle goal by creating or updating a CampaignLifecycleGoal. There can be at most one CampaignLifecycleGoal per campaign.

The customer_acquisition_goal_settings field of a campaign-level goal lets you set the optimization mode of the campaign as well as override the value settings from the parent customer goal.

The optimization_mode can be one of the following values:

TARGET_ALL_EQUALLY

The campaign targets new and existing customers equally. This is the default optimization mode.

BID_HIGHER_FOR_NEW_CUSTOMERS

The campaign targets both new and existing customers, but bids higher for customers that are predicted be new and are not in one of the existing_user_lists.

TARGET_NEW_CUSTOMERS

The campaign only targets new customers.

The value_settings are the same as the customer_acquisition_goal_value_settings on the customer-level goal. Use these campaign-level settings to override the values for a specific campaign.

Retention goals

Retention goals are designed to drive customer loyalty and high lifetime value (LTV) within your business. They offer multiple modes within Performance Max campaigns, allowing you to target specific segments of existing customers.

Before creating a retention goal, you must satisfy the prerequisites described in About the retention goal. This includes having a Performance Max campaign and a Customer Match user list.

To create a retention goal you must first initialize the GoalService and issue a request using the mutate_goals method to create a new goal.

def create_goal(client: GoogleAdsClient, customer_id: str) -> None:
    """Sends an API request to add a new Goal.

    Args:
        client: an initialized GoogleAdsClient instance.
        customer_id: a client customer ID.
    """
    goal_operation: GoalOperation = client.get_type("GoalOperation")
    goal = goal_operation.create
    goal.retention_goal_settings.value_settings.additional_value = 50.0
    goal.retention_goal_settings.value_settings.additional_high_lifetime_value = 100.0

    goal_service = client.get_service("GoalService")
    goal_service.mutate_goals(
      customer_id=customer_id, operations=[goal_operation]
    )

This will create a new retention goal at the account level for the specified client account, which will be applied to all of its campaigns. By default, this goal will target all users in your Customer Match user lists.

It's possible to override this goal with campaign-level settings, using a CampaignGoalConfig. Once you have an account-level goal, use its resource_name to create a CampaignGoalConfig using the mutate_campaign_goal_configs method on the CampaignGoalConfigService.

def create_campaign_goal_config(
  client: GoogleAdsClient,
  customer_id: str,
  goal_resource_name: str,
  campaign_resource_name: str
) -> None:
    """Sends an API request to add a new CampaignGoalConfig.

    Args:
        client: an initialized GoogleAdsClient instance.
        customer_id: a client customer ID.
        goal_resource_name: the resource name of an existing Goal.
        campaign_resource_name: the resource name of an existing Campaign.
    """
    operation: CampaignGoalConfigOperation = client.get_type("CampaignGoalConfigOperation")
    goal_config = operation.create
    goal_config.campaign = campaign_resource_name
    goal_config.goal = goal_resource_name

    # Note that the target_option will be set to TARGET_ALL by default. In order
    # to set it to TARGET_SPECIFIC your account must be allowlisted.
    #
    # goal_config.campaign_retention_settings.target_option = (
    #   client.enums.CustomerLifecycleOptimizationModeEnum.TARGET_SPECIFIC
    # )

    campaign_goal_config_service = client.get_service("CampaignGoalConfigService")
    campaign_goal_config_service.mutate_campaign_goal_configs(
      customer_id=customer_id, operations=[operation]
    )

The campaign_retention_settings.target_option will default to TARGET_ALL if not set. The option to set to TARGET_SPECIFIC is only available to allowlisted users.

Retrieve lifecycle goals

As with other resources in the Google Ads API, use the search or searchStream methods of GoogleAdsService to retrieve lifecycle goals.

The following query retrieves the details of every CustomerLifecycleGoal in a Google Ads account:

SELECT
  customer_lifecycle_goal.owner_customer,
  customer_lifecycle_goal.customer_acquisition_goal_value_settings.value,
  customer_lifecycle_goal.customer_acquisition_goal_value_settings.high_lifetime_value
FROM customer_lifecycle_goal

Similarly, the following query retrieves the details of every CampaignLifecycleGoal:

SELECT
  campaign_lifecycle_goal.campaign,
  campaign_lifecycle_goal.customer_acquisition_goal_settings.optimization_mode,
  campaign_lifecycle_goal.customer_acquisition_goal_settings.value_settings.value,
  campaign_lifecycle_goal.customer_acquisition_goal_settings.value_settings.high_lifetime_value
FROM campaign_lifecycle_goal