The holiday season is both the most wonderful and one of the most competitive times of the year for beauty brands. While advertising costs tend to skyrocket, this doesn’t mean brands should pull back on acquiring new customers. In fact, maintaining momentum is critical to long-term growth.
The challenge lies in striking a balance: engaging loyal customers, reactivating dormant ones, and efficiently attracting new audiences. For the beauty industry, a strategic approach to Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) is key to sustaining profitability and driving brand growth.
Strategic CAC Management in a Competitive Season
Efficient customer acquisition isn’t just about spending less to acquire customers. The beauty industry has increasingly focused on understanding the lifetime value (LTV) of customers, alongside their retention rates, to optimize campaigns. Platforms like Meta, Google, and Shopify make it possible for brands to scale acquisition campaigns—but achieving clarity on new vs. returning customers remains a challenge.
To overcome this, many brands are taking a more granular approach. Tailoring messages to high-LTV repeat customers differs significantly from what’s shown to new prospects. Without this segmentation, media budgets can easily blur between customer types, leading to inefficient CAC.
Tools That Streamline Acquisition Efforts
Shopify’s Shop Campaigns feature has emerged as a valuable tool for beauty brands to streamline customer acquisition, especially during the holiday season. Initially available to enterprise-level brands, it’s now open to all Shopify merchants in the US and Canada.
The feature operates on a cost-per-conversion model, meaning brands only pay for new customers that successfully convert. By inputting a target CAC, daily budgets, and desired return on ad spend (ROAS), Shopify automates campaign optimization, including creative, targeting, and ad placement across its Shop App, Meta, and Google.
This “autopilot” approach reduces the manual burden of managing multiple campaigns across platforms, making it easier for beauty brands to scale their acquisition efforts during peak shopping seasons.
Maximizing Holiday Budgets Without Overspending
For beauty brands that have clear CAC targets, there’s confidence in spending aggressively during the holidays. If campaigns are hitting their efficiency goals, scaling budgets ensures brands capitalize on seasonal demand without leaving revenue on the table.
The Shop Campaigns model offers a built-in safety net by prioritizing actual conversions over clicks or impressions, which aligns with the industry’s focus on real customer growth. As more shoppers use platforms like the Shop App for rewards programs like Shop Cash, brands gain access to customers actively looking for ways to spend their rewards.
The results speak for themselves: beauty brands leveraging tools like Shop Campaigns report significant increases in new customer acquisition while maintaining efficiency—showing that even in a competitive landscape, it’s possible to hit CAC targets and drive meaningful growth.