Customer Acquisition: Strategy, Funnel, and CAC (2026)

In physical retail and ecommerce, customer acquisition is the strategy and process of attracting new customers and encouraging them to make their first purchase.

There’s a lot of money marketers put behind that process, too. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found that awareness and conversion account for 62.6% of media spending, a rise of over 10% since 2024.

For businesses, each new order comes with a cost. Ahead, learn how to choose acquisition channels and work out what you can afford to spend.

What is customer acquisition?

Customer acquisition, also called client acquisition, is the systematic process of attracting potential customers and converting them into paying customers.

But getting that process working is an early hurdle. According to Shopify’s Q4 2025 survey of store owners,* marketing (37%) and finding customers (36%) top the list of first-year challenges.

A customer acquisition strategy can help address both challenges by focusing your efforts on the channels and tactics that bring in new buyers.

Note: While customer acquisition brings in first-time buyers, customer retention encourages existing customers to keep buying. A sale requires upfront investment, while retention can increase that return through repeat purchases, minus the costs of rewards, service, and ongoing marketing.

What are customer acquisition channels?

Your customer acquisition channels are the places and platforms you use to connect with potential buyers. Customers may encounter your business across multiple touchpoints. Someone might discover your brand through a friend, try your products at a pop-up, and order from your website a week later.

A few common acquisition channels include:

• Physical stores. Window displays, walk-in visits, and conversations with staff can introduce people to your products.
• Your website and blog. Product pages, buying guides, and articles that attract people researching a purchase.
• Email marketing. Welcome messages and product recommendations that help subscribers become first-time buyers.
• Events. Markets, pop-ups, workshops, and in-store gatherings where potential customers can experience your brand.
• Organic social media and creator partnerships. Posts, demonstrations, and recommendations that introduce your business to new audiences.
• Paid ads. Search, shopping, social, and offline advertising that puts your business in front of prospective buyers.
• Referrals. Existing customers recommending your business to friends, family, or colleagues.
• AI shopping channels. Product discovery through conversational assistants, including through Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts.

A new channel can also revive interest in an old one. Glossy writes that fashion and beauty executives discussed investing in personal connections as AI changes online product discovery in 2026.

Those introductions are becoming increasingly important, too. An analysis of more than 10 million consumers reported in Harvard Business Review found that referred customers represented about 20% of new customers but generated 72% of new-customer profits.

The customer acquisition funnel

The customer acquisition funnel has five stages: awareness, interest, consideration, intent, and purchase/conversion.

Each stage describes a change in how close someone is to buying. The model helps you decide what information to provide and what might be holding up a purchase.

Upon purchase, acquisition hands over to onboarding and retention. A delivery update, setup instructions, or product care advice helps customers get the most out of their purchase and encourage repeat purchases.

But the customer journey isn’t as linear as the model itself. For example, Google calls it the “infinite customer journey,” in which shoppers interact with around 130 mobile touchpoints daily across searching, scrolling, streaming, and shopping. Google’s earlier “messy middle” research describes the repeated exploration and evaluation that happen before a purchase.

The way discovery happens is changing, too. Bain & Company found that 44% of US online buyers surveyed mostly begin with an AI language model or split their searches between AI tools and traditional search engines. Boston Consulting Group (BCG)’s “influence map” similarly shows how the same channel can influence several stages.

The funnel is still relevant because it helps you decide what to fix next. If people discover your products but hesitate to buy, investigate where they pause and what they still need to know.

Read more about the customer acquisition model for growth in 2026.

8 customer acquisition strategies

The following strategies include examples of how Shopify brands have attracted new customers, along with ways you can apply them to your own business.

Each strategy covers the advantages and potential pitfalls.

1. Run pay-per-click (PPC) ads

PPC advertising lets you reach potential customers and pay when someone clicks your ad.

• Advantages. Reach shoppers searching for products like yours and test which ads and offers generate purchases.
• Potential pitfalls. PPC clicks cost money even when nobody buys. LocaliQ’s 2026 search advertising benchmarks put average cost per click at $5.42 across Google Ads and Microsoft Ads campaigns in 23 industries. Check that your margins can cover acquisition costs, and review which campaigns bring in first-time buyers.

According to Shopify’s Q4 2025 survey of store owners,* 31% of merchants with revenue of $1 million or more cited paid advertising as their most effective growth strategy.

Start with a small campaign around a product that already sells well. Then match the ad to the landing page, track purchases, and calculate how much you spend to acquire each new customer.

Shopify also offers a paid acquisition option built around that cost: Shop Campaigns. For eligible stores, you set a maximum customer acquisition cost (CAC) and daily budget, and pay only when a customer converts. Shop Campaigns uses a pay-per-sale model, with placements across Shop and other supported channels.

For example, home fragrance brand Pura doubled acquired customers through Shop Campaigns, while increasing average order value (AOV) by 15%.

“Shop Campaigns gives us tight control over our budget, allowing us to effectively manage both customer acquisition costs and ROAS for this acquisition channel,” says Danielle Mathews, senior director of integrated marketing.

2. Partner with influencers

An influencer partnership introduces your products through people your potential customers already follow.

• Advantage. Reach an established audience through demonstrations and recommendations. You can also use creator content in your ads and product pages with agreed usage rights.
• Potential pitfalls. Fees can add up. For example, the estimated Instagram micro-influencer rates are $250 to $5,000 per post, with additional charges possible for content reuse or exclusivity.

The global influencer marketing industry reached an estimated $32.55 billion in 2025, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. Nearly 88% of respondents to the budget allocation question in the same report expect to increase their influencer marketing spending in 2026.

Your starting point can be much smaller. Start with a few creators whose audiences match the people you want to reach, and review their past sponsored posts and audience demographics before agreeing on deliverables, fees, and content usage rights.

Shopify Collabs helps you recruit creators, send product samples, create affiliate links and discount codes, and automate commission payments.

The deodorant brand Duradry used Collabs to build a network of more than 250 creators. Their partnerships helped generate more than $50,000 in affiliate sales in less than seven months while decreasing CAC by 29%.

Give each creator a unique link or code and compare the profit from attributed orders with fees, commissions, and gifting costs. Shopify’s free Campaigns tool can help you track results across channels through shareable links, QR codes, and tracking parameters. Its reports differentiate between new and returning customers.

3. Run email marketing campaigns

Email gives interested shoppers a reason to come back and make their first purchase.

• Advantages. In Litmus’s 2025 State of Email survey, 35% of marketing respondents reported getting $10 to $36 back for every dollar spent on email. Automated sequences can continue working between campaigns.
• Potential pitfalls. A subscriber won’t necessarily become a customer; irrelevant messages can lead to unsubscribes, discounts can cut margins, and poorly configured automations can miss people you intended to reach.

Start by giving people a reason to subscribe, such as product advice, early access to launches, or a first-order offer.

For example, Glossier’s website pop-up offers subscribers 15% off their first order, alongside updates on offers and product launches.

Shopify Forms lets you collect sign-ups through pop-up and inline forms. You can then use Shopify Messaging to automate welcome emails and follow up with subscribers based on their activity.

Make sure to check that your email marketing automations work as intended. Shopify retailer Dagne Dover discovered that a sending restriction was preventing some shoppers from receiving their first abandoned-cart email. After correcting the setting in Klaviyo, revenue attributed to the flow rose 44% the following week.

After someone subscribes, follow up based on their interest. The Shopify-Klaviyo integration makes your store’s commerce data available for email marketing, helping you segment subscribers and personalize automated messages.

4. Start a referral program

Your customers may already be introducing people to your business. According to Shopify’s Q4 2025 survey of store owners,* 53% of merchants cite word of mouth as their most common first-year growth strategy.

• Advantages. Personal recommendations give prospective customers a reason to trust your business; rewards redeemable on a future purchase can also encourage existing customers to return.
• Potential pitfalls. A small customer base limits your initial reach, and generous rewards can eat into margins. Set clear eligibility rules and check for self-referrals or duplicate accounts before issuing rewards.

For example, footwear brand Vessi gives referred customers $20 off their first purchase of $100 or more. Once that purchase qualifies, the customer who referred them receives a $20 coupon. Both people have a reason to participate, and the reward depends on a sale.

Smile.io, a Built for Shopify app, allows you to offer referral rewards alongside loyalty points on Shopify. Make the offer easy to understand, provide a link so that customers can share it, and promote the offer after they’ve completed their purchase.

5. Invest in traditional advertising

Print ads, direct mail, radio, and outdoor advertising can introduce your business to customers beyond their screens.

• Advantages. You can reach potential customers in places relevant to their interests or daily routines. These physical placements can also introduce your brand before someone starts searching for a product.
• Potential pitfalls. The production and placement costs can make testing expensive, and printed creative is difficult to change once distributed. Tracking can also be incomplete. Someone may see your ad and buy later without using its link or code.

Start with a placement that matches the people you want to reach. A local newspaper ad might suit a neighborhood store; an insert in a specialist magazine could reach buyers across the country.

For example, Munchkin included an information card in Babylist’s welcome Baby Box to introduce their infant formula to expectant parents. This gave the brand a physical presence at a relevant moment, before those parents might need to choose a formula.

Kristin Pagano, general manager of infant nutrition at Munchkin, says in an interview with Chief Marketer: “Moms aren’t necessarily considering formula for them at that point. What they know at that point is they believe that breastfeeding will work. So we think there are a lot of more effective, cost-effective ways to reach these moms throughout their journey.”

Before booking a placement, ask the publisher or advertising partner for audience details, distribution figures, and the full cost, including production. Test one location or mailing first so you can assess the response before committing more money.

Shopify Campaigns lets you create custom short links and QR codes for printed materials and track their online activity. You can also use a dedicated discount code to link purchases to an offer.

6. Improve your search engine visibility

Search and AI discovery can help potential customers find your business when they’re looking for products or advice.

• Advantages. You can reach people with demonstrated interest in products like yours. Product pages and buying guides can keep attracting customers without a fee for each organic click.
• Potential pitfalls. This visibility takes ongoing work, and rankings or AI recommendations aren’t guaranteed. Track purchases from organic search and AI referrals alongside traffic to see whether discovery translates into customers.

Start with the questions customers ask before buying. Use their language in page titles and descriptions, explain product specifications, and connect buying guides to relevant product pages. If you have a physical store, keep your address and opening hours current on your Google Business Profile.

“Use industry-related keywords as well as backlinks from reputable websites to increase your brand awareness,” says Melanie Bedwell, ecommerce manager for Olipop.

Shopify stores include built-in SEO features, including automatically generated sitemaps and editable title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt text. These help search engines find and understand your pages.

Search isn’t the only way shoppers find products online; AI conversations also lead to discovery. In March 2026, Shopify reports that AI channels generated 3.2% of Omnilux’s total revenue.

Shopify already supports that journey. Agentic Storefronts connects eligible stores to AI shopping channels, while Shopify Catalog structures product data for discovery. The orders flow into your Shopify admin, where you can track AI-channel performance. The free Shopify Knowledge Base app also lets you customize the store FAQs that AI shopping agents use.

7. Focus on audience building

Audience building helps you develop relationships with potential customers before they’re ready to buy.

• Advantages. An engaged audience gives you people to learn from and introduce new products to; shared content and community activities can also bring prospective customers into contact with your brand.
• Potential pitfalls. It takes work to manage a community and grow followers, and it doesn’t guarantee sales. Track email sign-ups, first purchases, and engagement, and give followers ways to stay connected beyond social media.

Choose platforms where your audience already discovers and buys products. eMarketer forecasts that 51% of US social buyers will shop on TikTok in 2026, compared with 47.2% on Instagram. These audiences overlap, so use the figures as a starting point for channel selection; then test which platforms bring you engaged followers and first-time buyers.

Give followers ways to participate. Ask them to vote on an upcoming design or join a challenge connected to your products. IMD’s analysis of gamification for customer acquisition shows how participation and rewards can attract prospective customers.

For example, Gymshark has built a TikTok audience of 6.7 million followers around fitness culture. Its content features recognizable athletes and moments designed to encourage fan participation and sharing, like Chris Bumstead recreating his signature mirror message.

An established audience can also give you a head start during major shopping periods. In an interview with Glossy about the expanding retail calendar, PwC’s Kelly Pedersen describes seasonal events as opportunities to acquire customers who continue shopping throughout the year.

When followers are ready to buy, make the next step clear. For example, Salt Boutique used Shopify to add shoppable links on Instagram and Facebook, replacing a process that required staff to handle orders through direct messages.

“We’re fulfilling online orders now every day. That was not the case before,” says Owner Jennifer Devlin.

For eligible Shopify stores, use the Facebook and Instagram by Meta sales channel to sync your product catalog.

8. Start a blog

A blog gives you room to answer questions that a product page can’t fully cover. Buying guides, tutorials, and expert interviews that can introduce potential customers to your business and help them decide what to purchase.

• Advantages. The space for detailed content lets you demonstrate expertise and address concerns before a purchase. You can also repurpose articles into emails and social posts.
• Potential pitfalls. Researching, writing, and editing of blog posts can take more time than you anticipate. Broad topics may also attract readers who aren’t likely to buy your products.

For example, the food and drink brand Press publishes The Squeeze, with articles connected to their meal plans and juices.

Build your editorial calendar around questions you hear in customer emails, store conversations, or product reviews. Add firsthand detail through original photos, demonstrations, or interviews, and link to products where they help readers take the next step.

Shopify includes a built-in blogging engine, so you can publish articles alongside your store. Distribute them through your newsletter and social channels, then track whether readers explore products, subscribe, or place their first order.

What customer acquisition strategies work for different business models?

The right acquisition mix depends on your products, audience, and how customers buy. Acquiring someone looking for a birthday gift requires a different approach than acquiring a retailer ordering 200 units.

Consider these starting points when deciding where to invest your time and money:

• Ecommerce and retail customer acquisition. Combine channels that help shoppers discover products with information that helps them choose.
• B2B and wholesale customer acquisition. Use targeted outreach, trade events, and introductions from existing stockists to start conversations. Chandler Honey Founder Tique Chandler uses cold emails, cold calls, and in-store demos. “I feel like all these are tiny little turning points of my business that just keep snowballing off each other,” she says. Give prospects a wholesale page or line sheet covering pricing, minimum orders, lead times, and sample options. Shopify B2B supports tailored catalogs and pricing, helping approved buyers move from discussing an order to online purchasing.
• Customer acquisition for startups and new stores. A new ceramics store, for example, could test local markets alongside Instagram demonstrations. The business could then use shoppers’ questions to improve product descriptions. Set a spending limit for each experiment and record which activities bring in first-time buyers, including your time and sample costs.

How do you calculate CAC?

CAC is the average amount your business spends on sales and marketing to acquire one new paying customer.

According to Shopify’s Q4 2025 survey of store owners,* 30% of merchants generating $1 million or more in revenue track CAC, compared with 5% of low-revenue merchants: a sixfold difference.

Choose a reporting period, then divide your acquisition-related sales and marketing costs by the number of new customers acquired during that period:

Include relevant costs like creative production, sales commissions, and referral rewards in your acquisition costs. Count each new customer once, regardless of how many orders they place.

Calculate your CAC at both the channel and overall levels. Channel-level CAC helps you compare acquisition costs across channels, while overall CAC shows what it costs to acquire a customer across your entire business.

Shopify’s Marketing reports show campaign performance, including CAC and return on ad spend (ROAS), when sufficient data is available. The analytics fields also let you compare new customers and sales by source.

Combine these reports with your expense records to assess channel return on investment (ROI). ROAS measures revenue against advertising spend, while ROI accounts for profit and costs.

What is a good customer acquisition cost?

A good CAC depends on your industry, margins, and customer lifetime value. Your target should leave enough money to cover operating expenses and profit.

For context, First Page Sage’s B2C report puts ecommerce CAC at $64 for organic channels and $68 for paid channels. HubSpot suggests customer lifetime value (CLV) should typically be at least three times acquisition cost.

For a hypothetical store, a $100 first order might leave $40 after product and variable selling costs. At a $50 CAC, that first purchase wouldn’t fully recover the acquisition spend.

Ridge CEO Sean Frank said on the Shopify Masters podcast: “We’ve always needed each customer’s first purchase to cover the cost of acquiring them.” He attributes that approach to how infrequently people buy wallets.

Compare your performance over time, too. BDC recommends tracking yearly CAC trends alongside CLV. These additional metrics help you assess acquisition performance:

• Customer lifetime value (CLV) estimates the total revenue a customer generates throughout their relationship with your business.
• Conversion rate measures the percentage of visitors or prospects who complete a specified action, such as their first purchase, during a given period.
• Customer churn rate measures the percentage of customers lost during a given period.

Learn more about the CAC payback period and strategies to reduce your customer acquisition costs.

Customer acquisition tools for Shopify stores

If you’re already on Shopify, start with Shopify’s tools for collecting leads, answering questions, and following up with prospective customers. Add specialist apps where your acquisition strategy needs more support, choosing each tool for a specific job and measuring whether it helps generate first purchases.

• For pop-ups and lead capture. Shopify Forms helps you collect subscriber details, offer sign-up discounts, and gather wholesale applications. Use the information shoppers share to create customer segments and trigger follow-up marketing.
• For chat and conversion. Shopify Inbox lets your team answer questions and share product links while shoppers browse. You can also enable and train the Inbox agent to answer questions automatically using your catalog and store content.
• For email and SMS. Shopify Messaging, formerly Shopify Email, lets you send campaigns and build email and SMS automations from your admin. Use it to introduce products to subscribers and follow up on abandoned checkouts.
• For SEO. Shopify’s built-in SEO features include automatically generated sitemaps and canonical tags, plus editable page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt text. Start by improving the product and collection pages most relevant to prospective customers’ searches.
• For referrals. BON Loyalty, a Built for Shopify app, supports referral programs with automated referral emails and features to discourage reward abuse. The app also integrates with Shopify POS for loyalty rewards across online and in-store purchases.
• For automation. Campaign Autopilot uses your products, customers, and sales data to recommend marketing actions, including email automations, ads, and acquisition offers. You approve what runs, set guardrails, and review performance.

These tools can also work together. Footwear retailer Original’s worked with Shopify partner BOA Ideas to build a membership program using Shopify Forms for registration and customer segmentation and Shopify Functions for member discounts. Their shoppers could see member pricing on product pages and join during their first purchase.

The program attracted approximately 55,000 registered members.

“By clearly presenting exclusive member pricing throughout the shopping journey, we’ve seen a significant increase in membership, benefit redemptions, and conversion rates, while building a stronger long-term relationship with our customers,” says Co-CEO Ayelet Eliav.

How to build a customer acquisition strategy

An effective customer acquisition strategy sets out who you want to reach, how you’ll reach them, and what you can afford to spend turning them into customers.

1. Define your target audience. In Shopify, check the Searches by search query report to see the language visitors use inside your store. Searches with no results can reveal gaps in your catalog or product descriptions. Use these findings to sharpen your messaging.
2. Set goals and a CAC ceiling. Set an acquisition goal, and calculate your maximum affordable acquisition spend. Shopify’s Gross profit by product report shows margins for products with costs recorded at the time of sale. Enter each product’s Cost per item before launching campaigns, then account for other selling expenses, overhead, and desired profit when setting your ceiling.
3. Choose two or three acquisition channels. Match channels to how your audience discovers and evaluates products, and give each a defined role. If paid advertising is part of your plan, Shopify Audiences can generate and export audiences of likely buyers to connected ad platforms.
4. Launch and measure. Track new customers and acquisition spending, then investigate points where shoppers drop off before purchasing. Shopify’s Conversion rate breakdown report shows sessions progressing through cart additions, checkout, and completed purchases.
5. Expand what works and keep testing. Increase spending gradually when results meet your CAC target. Use Shopify’s Customer cohort analysis report, filtered by first-order marketing channels, to compare repeat purchasing and spending over time. Test one specific change at a time and assess both acquisition cost and the value those customers generate.

Furniture brand Nathan James shows why acquisition cost and customer quality need to be assessed together. They found that broadening their Facebook lookalike audience lowered advertising CPMs but attracted shoppers less likely to buy, pushing acquisition costs up.

The brand then used Shopify Audiences to reach higher-intent buyers and build more focused lookalike audiences. Nathan James reported more than 500 new customers attributed to Audiences and a 52% decrease in customer acquisition costs.

“Shopify has enabled us to leverage insights from millions of direct connections that merchants have with their customers, so we can reach high-intent buyers,” says Josh Bultz, chief revenue officer.

*Based on a November 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.