Yes! OuterSignal can process historical customer data from before your account activation. This is valuable for:
Understanding your existing customer base immediately
Segmenting past customers for re-engagement campaigns
Analyzing customer demographic trends over time
What happens automatically
To unlock the ability to import historical orders, you need to be on the Pro or Scale (formerly Enterprise) plan. This feature isn't available on Starter or Free.
On Pro and Scale, you run back searches yourself right from your dashboard. See the steps below. For more hands-on searches, please reach out to your customer success rep.
When you activate a Pro plan, OuterSignal automatically runs a 7-day backsearch — no action needed. You'll see your last 7 days of orders begin enriching immediately.
If you want more than 7 days of history, follow the steps below to pull additional historical data. For most brands, a 6–12 month backsearch gives your personas enough signal to be genuinely useful.
Running a Backsearch
How to pull historical data
If you're on Pro or Scale, you can do this yourself right from your dashboard:
Go to Settings → Data Sources, find your Shopify channel, and click Edit (gear icon) to open Edit Data Source Settings.
This is where your search history and filters live together: Previous back searches, then New back search, then your Include, Exclude, and Auto-Tag for Segmentation filters. Back searches inherit whatever filters are set below them, so set those first if you want the search to respect specific tags, a minimum order value, or excluded marketplaces. If you've changed a filter and haven't saved, the New back search row will say "Save changes first" — saving on its own never starts an import or runs an estimate.
Click New back search to slide into the Back search view with the date picker and timeline.
Choose your start date — drag the slider or enter a date directly. It's bounded: no earlier than your oldest Shopify order, no later than the point you're already covered to. If we already hold your full history, there's no date picker at all — the screen just tells you what date you're covered back to.
Click Estimate to see the exact number of new customers and the total cost before committing to anything. Estimates are good for 5 minutes — after that, you'll need to re-estimate before running.
Review it, then click Run Back Search — or use the back arrow (or Escape) to return to settings. Going back discards an estimate you haven't run, but never cancels a search already in progress.
On Scale? The steps are the same. A few days after your search finishes, the charge is added to an upcoming OuterSignal invoice, for the customers we actually researched, so the final amount can differ slightly from your estimate. For more hands-on searches, please reach out to your customer success rep.
Not on Shopify? Historical order data for WooCommerce, Magento, or another platform is pulled via CSV upload or API. For a CSV of customers with orders, your file must include at minimum name, email, and zip code for each customer. Only provide data you're confident in for each customer — placeholder or example values (like a sample zip code) will be read as real and can lower the quality of your enrichment. Reach out to your rep to get this set up. See Can I import data via a CSV upload? for more information.
Backsearch is for customers, not prospects. Backsearch researches customers: people who have placed an order. Prospects (people who gave you an email but haven't bought yet, like your email list, new Shopify sign-ups, or your Klaviyo lists) are a completely separate upload with a separate charge: you only need an email address, they're kept separate on your Signal Feed's Prospects tab, and they're charged at $0.03 for each prospect we successfully research, on every plan, including Scale. The backsearch pricing below covers customers only.
How much does it cost?
Backsearches are charged at $0.03 per unique customer in your selected date range. This covers customers only; prospect research is a separate upload with its own $0.03-per-prospect charge.
A few things to know:
You're charged per unique customer, not per order — a customer with 5 orders counts as $0.03
If a customer has already been enriched through your 7-day auto-backsearch, an earlier backsearch, or ongoing processing, you won't be charged again for that profile
We only enrich customers in supported regions (US & Australia) with an email on file. Customers outside those regions, or without an email, aren't enriched and aren't charged. Any Include/Exclude tag filters, minimum order value setting, or excluded marketplaces you've set on the data source apply here too, since a back search inherits those filters
If we've already researched 80% or more of the customers in your selected range, the estimate is automatically capped at what's genuinely left, so it can't overshoot
If the estimate comes back with nothing new to charge, you'll see "Estimated under $10" rather than a $0 quote
On Scale, back searches are billed on your OuterSignal invoice after the search finishes.
Getting your estimate. You don't need to count customers yourself — click Estimate when setting up a backsearch and you'll see the exact new-customer count and total cost before you run anything. It's a rough estimate; your final cost can vary slightly.
A note on large backsearches and Shopify's billing cap. Charges for the backsearch are billed through your Shopify subscription, which has a monthly spending limit you approve. Before showing your estimate, we check what's left in your current billing cycle — your limit, minus what's already been billed, minus research already in flight, with about 10% held back as a reserve. If your estimate costs more than what's left, you'll see a panel with your current limit, what's used, what remains, and a proposed higher limit — you can approve the higher limit in Shopify (confirming with Check Updated Limit once it's through), or click Research up to $X to run as much as your current allowance covers. Default limits, if you haven't approved a specific amount: $500 on Starter, $2,000 on Pro, $10,000 on Scale (formerly Enterprise), $0 on Free, with $500 as the fallback — and a hard ceiling of $100,000 above which Shopify won't approve the limit. On Scale, back searches are billed on your OuterSignal invoice rather than through Shopify, so this limit doesn't apply.
How long does it take?
Up to 5,000 customers: typically 24 hours
5,000–20,000 customers: typically 1–2 days
20,000+ customers: 2–3+ business days
Data appears progressively as it's processed — you'll start seeing profiles and early persona signals before the backsearch is fully complete.
To check progress: Settings → Data Sources → Backfill Progress bar (see below for an example).
If progress hasn't moved in 24 hours — reach out via chat or email and we'll take a look.
What to do while you wait
Connect your Klaviyo integration so enriched profiles start flowing in immediately
Set up your first Playbook so it's ready to trigger as personas build
Review your Signal Feed — early VIP and high-signal profiles often surface within the first few hours
Watch for Personas to unlock. Brand Personas become available once you've processed 1,000+ customers, so going beyond the 7-day default is the most common way brands reach that threshold
Need help? Contact your rep or our team at support@outersignal.com