GOA Skincare Cuts nCAC in Half by Eliminating Wasted Ad Spend

Challenge

GOA Skincare was struggling to grow its customer base because too much of its ad budget was being spent on existing customers. In the crowded beauty and skincare market, wasting money on ads that don’t acquire new buyers kills growth and the incremental value of ad spend.

GOA had tried existing solutions such as website tags, budget limits, and customer list syncs to Meta and Google Ads. But despite these efforts, the team found that 40% of their ad budget was still targeting past buyers, and those users were making up 75% of their ad attributed conversions. Standard ad exclusion methods weren’t working, and GOA needed a new solution.

This confirms what many of the top voices in D2C ecommerce have said recently regarding native exclusion workflows being ineffective.

Solution

GOA teamed up with WasteNot, a user-friendly tool that makes it easy for advertisers to activate real-time exclusions at the campaign or ad group / ad set level, preventing ad budget from being wasted on the wrong users, like existing customers. 

Using WasteNot’s simple, no-code interface and native platform connections, GOA’s team connected their relevant data sources (Shopify, Klaviyo and Stripe) as well as their ad platforms (Meta and Google) to their WasteNot account in just a few minutes.

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Next, GOA defined criteria for different exclusion rules and built exclusion lists from their first-party data in WasteNot’s point-and-click editor. These lists were then streamed to Meta and Google with every available ID appended to maximize match rates. 

And because WasteNot automatically handles workarounds for scenarios where exclusions aren’t explicitly allowed, GOA was able to run exclusions across all campaign types, including Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns. The combination of these tactics allowed GOA to exclude 70% more unwanted users than their existing exclusion tactics. This automatically allocated GOA’s budget toward acquiring new customers without wasting money on existing customers or warm traffic.

Results

In just one month of using WasteNot, GOA achieved an increase in new customer ROAS by 151%–without increasing ad spend or making any other targeting changes. This increase also occurred in March, a month when GOA typically sees a decrease in sales.

Additionally, GOA saw overall orders increase 31%, the cost to acquire new customers decrease by 51.3%, and conversion rates increase by 34.6%.

“WasteNot has been a miracle for new customer acquisition, these results are truly amazing!” - Rodrigo Diaz, CEO of GOA Skincare

With the added efficiency provided by WasteNot’s, GOA is now more confident in increasing ad spending without losing performance, fueling further growth. They’re also testing new creative strategies, knowing their data accurately reflects what works best for customer acquisition.

Conclusion

Meta and Google ads increase campaign results by targeting existing customers and warm traffic instead of creating new demand. This drains DTC marketers budgets without creating any real business value. Ad exclusions are the best tactic to ensure marketing budget drives growth, but legacy exclusion methods are proving ineffective.

GOA Skincare partnered with WasteNot to fix this, quickly setting up a smarter exclusion strategy with no tech hassle. The result? A 51% lower cost to acquire customers and a 33% increase in order volume — proof that WasteNot ensures ad spend drives not just improved growth, but improved profitability.

For more information on how WasteNot can help your business, you can explore the platform for free.