GA4’s New Audience Templates: Find Your Best and Lost Customers

GA4 just made it easier to find two groups that matter most to your business: your best customers and the ones you’re losing.

Two new audience templates—High-Value Purchasers and Disengaged Purchasers—let you identify these segments without building complex custom audiences.

What Are Audience Templates?

Audience templates are pre-built segments you can activate with a few clicks. Instead of manually defining conditions, filters, and time windows, you select a template and GA4 does the work.

These audiences can be used in two ways:

1. In GA4 reports – Analyse how these groups behave on your site
2. Exported to Google Ads – Target them with specific campaigns

The new templates focus on purchase behaviour, making them particularly useful for e-commerce.

High-Value Purchasers Template

This template identifies your most valuable customers based on either purchase frequency or total spending.

How it works:

You can define “high value” in two ways:

• Purchase count – Customers who’ve bought more than X times
• Lifetime value (LTV) – Customers in the top X% by total revenue

The LTV percentile option is particularly powerful. Set it to the top 10%, and GA4 automatically identifies customers who generate the most revenue—no manual calculation required.

Use cases:

• Lookalike targeting – Export to Google Ads and find new customers similar to your best ones
• VIP campaigns – Give your top customers early access, exclusive offers, or loyalty rewards
• Retention focus – Understand what your best customers have in common to replicate that behaviour

Example:

An online retailer sets up a High-Value Purchasers audience for the top 20% by LTV. They discover these customers consistently buy during sales events and respond to email campaigns. They adjust their marketing to acquire more customers with similar patterns.

Disengaged Purchasers Template

This template flags customers who bought before but haven’t returned.

How it works:

You define “disengaged” by days since last purchase. Someone who bought 90 days ago but hasn’t returned gets flagged. Someone who bought yesterday doesn’t.

The threshold depends on your business. A coffee subscription might consider 30 days disengaged. A furniture store might use 365 days.

Use cases:

• Win-back campaigns – Re-engage lapsed customers before they’re truly gone
• Churn analysis – Study what disengaged customers have in common
• Reactivation offers – Target with specific incentives to return

Example:

A skincare brand sets up a Disengaged Purchasers audience for customers inactive for 60+ days. They send a “We miss you” email with a discount code. Conversion rate on this segment is 3x higher than cold outreach because these people already know and trusted the brand.

How to Set Up These Audiences

Step 1: Navigate to Audiences

In GA4, go to Admin → Audiences (under Data display).

Step 2: Create new audience

Click “New audience” and look for the suggested audiences section.

Step 3: Select the template

Choose either “High-Value Purchasers” or “Disengaged Purchasers” from the available templates.

Step 4: Customise parameters

• For High-Value Purchasers: Set your purchase count threshold or LTV percentile
• For Disengaged Purchasers: Define how many days of inactivity qualifies as “disengaged”

Step 5: Name and save

Give your audience a clear name (e.g., “Top 10% Customers” or “Inactive 90+ Days”) and save.

Step 6: Wait for population

GA4 needs time to populate the audience. Depending on your traffic, this can take 24-48 hours.

Using These Audiences in Google Ads

The real power comes from exporting these audiences to Google Ads.

To export:

1. Ensure your GA4 property is linked to Google Ads
2. When creating the audience, enable “Google Ads” under destinations
3. The audience automatically syncs to your linked Ads account

Campaign ideas:

For High-Value Purchasers:

• Create lookalike/similar audiences to find new customers
• Exclude from acquisition campaigns (they’re already customers)
• Target with upsell or cross-sell offers
• Use for brand awareness to stay top-of-mind

For Disengaged Purchasers:

• Run dedicated win-back campaigns
• Test different re-engagement offers
• Exclude from “new customer” promotions
• Analyse which messages bring them back

Practical Examples by Business Type

E-commerce (general):

• High-Value: Top 15% by LTV → Target with new product launches
• Disengaged: No purchase in 60 days → Win-back email sequence

Subscription business:

• High-Value: 6+ orders → Loyalty program invitation
• Disengaged: No order in 45 days → Churn prevention campaign

Seasonal retail:

• High-Value: Top 20% spenders → Early access to seasonal sales
• Disengaged: No purchase since last season → “What’s new” campaign before peak period

B2B e-commerce:

• High-Value: Top 10% by order value → Dedicated account manager outreach
• Disengaged: No reorder in 90 days → Check-in call or email

Tips for Better Results

Start with reasonable thresholds.
Don’t set “top 1%” if that’s only 50 people. You need enough volume for meaningful campaigns.

Combine with other data.
High-value customers who also engage with email? Even better target for loyalty programs.

Test your win-back timing.
60 days might be too late for some businesses, too early for others. Experiment.

Refresh regularly.
Customer behaviour changes. Review your audience definitions quarterly.

The Bottom Line

These templates remove the friction from a task you should already be doing: identifying your best customers and re-engaging lapsed ones.

You could build these audiences manually with custom conditions. But you probably weren’t. Now there’s no excuse.

Set them up, export to Google Ads, and start treating your best and lost customers differently. They deserve it, and your revenue will reflect it.

High-Value Purchasers and Disengaged Purchasers audience templates are available in GA4 as of December 2025.