Oct 17, 2025

Zero Party Data to Lower CAC on Shopify: Quizzes & Prefs

Zero Party Data to Lower CAC on Shopify: Quizzes & Prefs

Zero Party Data to Lower CAC on Shopify: Quizzes & Prefs

Mukesh Prajapati

10+ years of marketing expertise

You can feel it in your acquisition metrics. Paid channels keep getting noisier, measurement is harder, and the old fuel of third party cookies is running out. For D2C brands on Shopify, the antidote is not a new hack, it is a data strategy. Zero party data that shoppers volunteer through quizzes and preference centers lets you personalize at scale, train ad platforms with better signals, and cut wasted spend. At Evolvingo, we plan and ship ROI first campaigns for ecommerce brands, and we have seen that combining strong creative with zero party data is one of the few moves that consistently lowers blended CAC. If you are new to us, take a look at our focus on break even and scale in our DTC ad playbook, browse the free blog, or reach out here.


ecommerce,  analytics

What zero party data is and why it changes your CAC math

The term zero party data was popularized by analysts as data that customers proactively and intentionally share, like preference selections, personal context, and purchase intent. According to Forrester’s explanation, this kind of volunteered information gives brands a transparent way to personalize without guesswork. Shopify’s enterprise team makes the distinction clear as well by noting that zero party data is explicitly given while first party data is inferred from behavior you observe.

Why does this lower CAC in practice? It improves the two levers that control your cost per acquisition. The first is conversion rate. When you tailor product recommendations and messaging to stated needs, you convert more of the traffic you already paid for. In fact, research from McKinsey finds that personalization most often drives 10 to 15 percent revenue lift, with leaders deriving 40 percent more of their revenue from personalization than slower growing peers. The second lever is ad platform efficiency. When you share clean, consented data and richer post click signals, systems like Meta and Google can match and model better, which improves delivery and attribution and lets you bid with confidence.

Privacy changes are the forcing function. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency made performance and measurement less reliable, and even Meta’s own guidance explains that after the iOS changes you should expect decreased ad performance and higher cost per action as personalization drops. You can see Meta’s focus on server side resilience in the Conversions API documentation which describes how sending events from your server helps optimize targeting, decrease cost per result, and measure outcomes. On the Google side, enhanced conversions uses hashed first party data captured at conversion to improve measurement and unlock smarter bidding. In other words, if you collect better data from your visitors, you can give the ad platforms the kind of signals they now need.

Where zero party data fits for Shopify brands

For D2C operators, the two most reliable capture points are onsite quizzes and ongoing preference centers. Both create a fair exchange. Shoppers answer a few useful questions, then get a product match, a tailored incentive, or a better content experience. Post purchase surveys sit alongside as a low friction way to learn why someone bought and where they heard about you. Tools exist across the stack, but a common high performing setup looks like this:

If you are just getting started or replatforming, it is simpler to put this ecosystem on Shopify where apps, consent management, and pixel plumbing are mature.


product quiz,  mobile

How to build a high converting quiz funnel on Shopify

Start with the customer’s job. The quiz should remove friction in the buying decision while capturing just enough info to personalize. Here is a practical workflow we use with D2C teams:

  1. Define the minimum viable questions. Anchor on the variables that drive product fit. A cosmetics brand might ask undertone, coverage goal, and skin type. A supplement brand might ask goal, dietary restrictions, and timing preferences. Limit it to 4 to 7 screens, and preface the quiz with the benefit the shopper will get at the end.

  2. Choose the app and wire it to your lifecycle channels. With Octane AI or Shop Quiz you can design the logic, map responses to products, and sync every answer to Klaviyo as profile properties. Klaviyo’s integration roundup highlights that Octane AI quiz fields sync in real time to drive segments, flows, and recommendations. You can also pass quiz opt in to Attentive or Postscript so you can text the result to the user.

  3. Give shoppers immediate value. Do not hide the recommendation behind an email wall. Show the matched products and rationale, then offer to send the result via email and SMS along with a relevant incentive. This keeps trust high and boosts opt in rate.

  4. Place the quiz prominently. Link to it from navigation, use a home hero tile, and run ads to it. The best performing flows often use advertorial style pages to educate first, then route into the quiz. An example many marketers know comes from Jones Road Beauty, where the brand uses TikTok traffic and an educational page to lead into a shade match quiz. According to Octane AI’s case study, the quiz funnel produced 50 thousand emails in one month, saw 82 percent completion, and lifted AOV by 50 percent. Your mileage will vary, but the mechanism is sound.

  5. Make your data model usable. In Klaviyo, store responses as simple properties such as skin_type equals dry or goal equals muscle_gain. Build default segments like Dry Skin, Sensitive Skin, or Goal Weight Loss and use them to personalize flows. For SMS, Attentive’s Preference Collection supports radio, dropdown, and checkbox fields you can capture right in the signup unit and route to segments.

  6. Measure the funnel like a product. Track cost per quiz start, cost per email capture, and the conversion rate and AOV of quiz takers vs site baseline. Use UTM tags on ads and create GA4 audiences for quiz finishers, then export those audiences to Google Ads for activation. Within your ESP, attribute post quiz flows separately from generic welcome series to see the incremental lift.

  7. Respect consent. Shopify’s Customer Privacy API is a browser API you can use to verify data processing permissions and to build a cookie consent banner that signals consent to pixels and checkout. This helps you operate cleanly across regions with different rules without risking signal loss.

Quiz funnels work because they are value exchanges. You give the shopper clarity and confidence. They give you the exact inputs you need to merchandise and market more efficiently.

Build a preference center shoppers will actually use

Preference centers are not for unsubscribes only. When you let subscribers tune frequency, content types, and product interests, you reduce list churn and raise engagement. If you want a blueprint for what to include, the consent and preference management breakdown in Transcend’s guide is a helpful primer. The key is to make the center easy to find, explain what changes do, and keep choices few and meaningful.

On Shopify plus Klaviyo stacks, your center lives as a hosted page where subscribers can update topics and cadence. You can also tie page actions back to ad audiences. For example, create a segment of subscribers who prefer running content, and use Klaviyo’s advertising integrations to sync that segment to TikTok or Meta. When you collect SMS preferences inside Attentive’s signup flow as their documentation suggests, you can map those tags to campaign groups so new subscribers get the right welcome journey and promo cadence.

Compliance is part of the product experience. If you use Shopify’s Customer Privacy API, you can check whether analytics or marketing processing is allowed and respect opt out signals like the Global Privacy Control in supported regions, all while letting consent flow to pixels, audiences, and checkout. That keeps your measurement clean and lowers the chance of running dark in key states or countries.


preference center,  email

Turn zero party insight into cheaper ads

Collecting preferences is step one. Activation is where CAC moves. Here are the highest leverage ways to push those insights into Meta and Google the right way.

  • Feed platforms with server side and hashed signals. Meta’s Conversions API lets you send purchase and other events from your server, link them to a dataset, and use them for optimization and measurement. Google’s enhanced conversions uses hashed, first party customer data captured at conversion to improve match rates and bidding.

  • Build and refresh CRM audiences with value. Meta’s instructions to create a customer list custom audience allow you to upload emails with additional fields such as phone, city, and date of birth to improve match rate. If you include a customer value column as described in Meta’s formatting guidelines, you can create a value based lookalike to find more people like your best buyers.

  • Use your quiz and preference data to make ad sets smarter. A skincare brand that collects skin_type and primary_concern can build creative variants that speak to Dry Skin or Acne Prone shoppers and pipe those segments into custom audiences. You can also use those properties to exclude recent purchasers of a product family, which saves budget on people who just bought.

  • Close the loop with GA4 and search. When a visitor finishes the quiz or sets a preference, add them to a GA4 audience and export that audience to Google Ads. You can run remarketing that reiterates the match result or promotes the exact routine that fits the preference profile.

  • Rewrite your prospecting creative using insights. If 40 percent of your quiz takers choose Fragrance Free, make that a hero line in top of funnel ads. The point is to let actual shopper language earned through your quiz and preference center guide your hooks and angles. If you need frameworks and examples, our piece on UGC that sells is a helpful companion.

This approach keeps you aligned with the reality of post iOS advertising. While CPMs fluctuate by quarter, industry trackers like Tinuiti reported stabilization through late 2024, which means creative and signal quality are the real levers. Put simply, better inputs in means better outputs out.


ads manager,  data sync

Email and SMS plays that compound the effect

Zero party data lowers CAC fastest when lifecycle channels carry the weight with targeted automation. A few patterns to implement early:

  • Post quiz welcome that acknowledges context. If a user says their goal is pain relief, the first three emails and texts should focus on that use case, not generic benefits. In Klaviyo, save quiz answers as profile properties and branch your flow based on skin_type or goal. As Klaviyo’s integration overview notes, Octane AI quiz properties sync in real time so flows and segments can react instantly.

  • SMS frequency and topic control. Use Attentive’s signup unit fields to ask subscribers whether they prefer new product alerts, tips, or deals. Then split the welcome journey using those preferences so every text feels wanted. Attentive’s guide also emphasizes compliance, reminding brands to include clear legal language and explicit opt in on forms.

  • Preference triggered content. When someone opts into Marathon Training content, automatically send a three part content series and surface category pages that match. This keeps engagement high, which improves deliverability and downstream revenue.

  • Post purchase surveys that inform prospecting. If Fairing or similar tools show a strong lift in referrals from a specific creator or channel, reflect that in your top of funnel creative and quiz examples. This is how you scale what is already working.

  • Segment deepening over time. You do not need every field on day one. Follow Forrester’s advice about asking for data in exchange for value and use progressive profiling in flows to learn more about the subscriber’s needs without adding friction upfront.

A 30 day sprint to a lower CAC data engine

Use this lightweight plan to get to first value fast, then iterate.

Week 1: Install your quiz app, draft 5 to 7 questions, write the results pages, and map answers to 3 to 5 best selling SKUs. Connect the app to Klaviyo and Attentive and confirm properties are writing to profiles. Add a nav link and a homepage tile for the quiz.

Week 2: Build the post quiz email and SMS flows with segments for the top three outcomes. Set up GA4 events for quiz started and quiz completed, then create audiences for completed and not purchased. Update your privacy banner using Shopify’s Customer Privacy API so consent flows to pixels cleanly.

Week 3: Launch two prospecting ads that drive to an educational page which routes into the quiz. In Meta, create a custom audience of quiz finishers and a lookalike from that list. For Google, build a Display or YouTube remarketing campaign using the GA4 quiz audience. Make sure enhanced conversions is configured on your conversion actions and that Meta CAPI is sending server events.

Week 4: Ship your first preference center update in Klaviyo. Add a frequency selector and two topic toggles. Send a re engagement email that links subscribers to update those preferences instead of blasting a discount. Review funnel metrics and begin A B testing your quiz incentive and your first question order.

If you want help running this playbook while keeping an ROI first mindset, our team builds end to end campaigns and data plumbing for Shopify brands and has shipped 75 plus campaigns with 4.5 million dollars in revenue generated. See how we work at Evolvingo or drop us a note on the contact page.


team meeting,  whiteboard

Pitfalls to avoid

  • Asking for too much, too soon. Keep the quiz short and your preference center simple. You can enrich profiles later through flows.

  • Hiding the value. Tell shoppers what they get before they answer, and show their result immediately after. This keeps opt in rates high.

  • Letting data sit idle. Every property should map to a segment, a flow branch, a dynamic block, or an audience sync. If you cannot act on a field, do not collect it.

  • Ignoring consent. Use Shopify’s Customer Privacy API to honor consent states across regions and surfaces, and keep your cookie banner accurate.

  • Measuring only last click ROAS. As platforms adapt to privacy, model quality depends on better signals. Use CAPI and enhanced conversions, compare pre and post activation cohorts, and watch total account CAC and MER. If you need more on holistic launch measurement, our break even guide is a great starting point.

The bottom line

Zero party data is not a niche tactic. It is a durable way to make your paid and lifecycle channels smarter, cheaper, and more respectful of the customer. When you give shoppers a helpful quiz and a genuine preference center, then connect those insights to Meta and Google with server side and hashed signals, you reduce waste at the top and raise conversion at the bottom. The stack is proven. Forrester frames the why, Shopify explains the what, Klaviyo highlights the pipes, and Meta CAPI and Google enhanced conversions handle the heavy lifting on the ad side. Pair that with compelling UGC and creative, and you will feel CAC move in the right direction. If you want a partner that treats every test like it is our own spend, say hi at Evolvingo.

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Join our newsletter!

Learn about marketing straight from your inbox, learn how to strategize, and get discounts

Newsletter Review

Evolvingo was a life-saver for our business, we have finally break even with our ads and made positive ROI. Without them we would burn thousands of $$$.

Jason Nash

Athos, CEO

© 2025 Bright Minds Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

Join our newsletter!

Learn about marketing straight from your inbox, learn how to strategize, and get discounts

Newsletter Review

Evolvingo was a life-saver for our business, we have finally break even with our ads and made positive ROI. Without them we would burn thousands of $$$.

Jason Nash

Athos, CEO

© 2025 Bright Minds Media, LLC. All rights reserved.