How to upload Shopify customers to a Meta Custom Audience (with lifetime value)

Your Shopify store knows exactly who your customers are and how much each of them has spent over their lifetime. Meta's ad platform can turn that knowledge into some of the highest-performing audiences available — but only if you get the data in correctly. This guide walks through the whole process: exporting your customers from Shopify, formatting the file the way Meta expects, uploading it as a Customer List, and using it to build a value-based Lookalike Audience.

Step 1 — Export your customers from Shopify

Don't export straight from the default Customers list — it's easy to accidentally pull the wrong group (like only email subscribers). The reliable way is to export from a segment, which lets you export exactly the customers you mean to.

1. 1
   Go to Customers → Segments

   In your Shopify admin, open Customers in the left sidebar, then click Segments.

2. 2
   Open the “Customers who have purchased at least once” segment

   Shopify creates this segment for you by default — you don't need to build it. It's exactly what you want for a value-based audience: everyone who has placed at least one order, which is a much better source list than the email-subscriber segment.

1. 3
   Open More actions → Export

   On the segment's page, click More actions in the top right, then Export.

1. 4
   Confirm the export options and export

   In the export pop-up, leave “X customers matching your filters” selected (this is everyone in the segment, not just the current page) and keep CSV for Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet programs selected as the file format. Click Export customers. Shopify emails you the CSV — usually within a couple of minutes.

1. 5
   Check you have the key columns

   The export includes columns like Email, Phone, First Name, Last Name, Province, Country Code and — crucially — Total Spent. That last column is the lifetime value Meta uses to build value-based audiences.

Step 2 — Convert the CSV to Meta's format

Shopify's export and Meta's Customer List importer don't use the same column names or formats. The three things that trip people up:

• Phone numbers. Meta wants E.164 format with a country code (e.g. +447911123456). Shopify often stores them without, or inconsistently.
• State / province. Meta matches on full state names in many regions; Shopify exports two-letter codes.
• Lifetime value.Meta's value-based audiences need a dedicated value column — you have to map Shopify's Total Spent across to it.

You can do this by hand in a spreadsheet, but it's fiddly and easy to get wrong. Our converter does all of it in one step: drop in the Shopify customers_export.csv and it returns a Meta-ready file with phones normalised, states expanded, and lifetime spend placed in the value column. The conversion runs entirely in your browser — the customer list is never uploaded to us.

Step 3 — Create a Customer List audience in Meta

1. 1
   Open Audiences in Meta Ads Manager

   In Meta Ads Manager, click Audiences in the left sidebar.

1. 2
   Create audience → Custom Audience

   Click Create Audience at the top of the page, then choose Custom Audience from the dropdown.

1. 3
   Choose Customer list as the source

   In the Choose a custom audience source pop-up, select Customer listunder “Your sources” and click Next.

1. 4
   Prepare list → click Next

   The wizard opens on Prepare list. There's nothing to change here — click Next to move to Add list.

2. 5
   Upload the converted CSV

   Under Add list, upload the file from Step 2. Leave Inclusions or exclusionsselected (not “Only exclusions”) so you can also use this list for a Lookalike later.

1. 6
   Confirm customer value, name the audience, and click Next

   Scroll down. Meta will ask “Does your file include a column for customer value?” — answer Yes and select the value column (this is the lifetime-spend column from Step 2). Add an audience label and name if you want to keep track of your uploads, then click Next.

1. 7
   Check Map identifiers, then Import and create

   On Map identifiers, Meta should show 9 columns mapped — email, phone, first name, surname, ZIP/postcode, city, county/region, country, and customer value — these are the data points that came from Shopify. You may also see an “Action needed” tab listing a handful of extra columns (like madid, dob, gen) set to “Do not upload” — these are optional Meta fields Shopify doesn't provide, so it's safe to ignore them. Click Import and create.

1. 8
   Complete Upload and Confirmation

   Follow the remaining Upload and Confirmation steps. Matching and processing usually takes anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on list size.

Step 4 — Put the list to work

Once your customer list has finished processing, there are two places to use it:

1. 1
   Add it to Advertising settings as an existing customer list

   Go to Advertising settings in the Ads Manager sidebar (just below Audiences) and add the list you just uploaded under existing customers. This lets Meta exclude — or specifically target — these customers across your account without you having to add the audience to every ad set manually.

2. 2
   Build a value-based Lookalike from the list

   Back in Audiences, select your customer list, then Create audience → Lookalike audience using it as the source. Because your list includes lifetime value, Meta offers a value-based Lookalike — it finds people who resemble your highest-spending customers, not just any buyer.

3. 3
   Pick your audience size

   A 1% Lookalike is the tightest match; 5–10% trades precision for reach. Many advertisers build several (1%, 5%) and test them as separate ad sets.

How often should you refresh?

A Customer List is a static snapshot — it doesn't update itself. As you gain new customers and existing customers place repeat orders (changing their lifetime value), the list drifts out of date and your Lookalikes age with it. Re-upload periodically to keep the seed fresh. There's an interactive calculator on the homepage that suggests a cadence based on your monthly order volume — most stores land somewhere between monthly and fortnightly.

Frequently asked questions