fshovlinGoogle’s latest release, Customer Match, comes not as a surprise to those familiar with Facebook and Twitter’s Custom Audiences, but as a welcoming trick…I mean treat. A welcoming treat. It allows advertisers to target users based on their email address via Google search, Gmail, and YouTube. There are quite a few ways that advertisers can leverage this new product so I wanted to focus on five quick ones that you can apply today.
1) Boost Retention Efforts
One way Seer has used Facebook’s Custom Audiences is to re-engage with users, where we saw a 1600%+ ROI. For one client, we targeted a new audience of users on Facebook who hadn’t used their service in the past three months. Now that Customer Match is available, we’re about to launch another retention effort with Google and hope to see similar results. Use this feature to help boost your retention and return more customers to your business.
2) Promote Similar/Updated Products
Another tactic would be to target users who have outdated products with more recent versions. If Microsoft had emails for all those who haven’t upgraded to Windows 10 and are using Windows 7, they may be able to display ads or videos showcasing the benefits of upgrading specifically from that OS.
This is somewhat like pushing a similar product to people who recently made a purchase—companies like Amazon will do this even while you’re browsing (e.g., “people who’ve bought this product also bought these two other items”). Now, you can segment your email list by certain buying behaviors and target those users uniquely via AdWords.
3) Increase Your Chances of Catching a Whale
In addition to targeting users by their email, you can now target users similar to those. Say you have an email list of your top, most loyal customers. Wouldn’t you like to get more people like those? You can definitely increase your chances now. Upon submitting that email list to AdWords, Google may be able to identify users who have shown similar browsing behaviors, just like they do with your traditional remarketing audiences. Keep in mind that this feature only works when targeting Gmail or YouTube.
4) Exclude Existing Customers
If your goal is to increase new customers for a particular campaign, then you’d want to exclude previous customers? Well, then you better add that “All converters” audience as a negative. Oh, wait. That’ll only exclude users who have hit the page you’re tracking as a conversion online. What about all of those that may have converted via call or some other offline channel? You got it. Create a new customer list based on your existing customer’s email and exclude that from this campaign.
5) Understand Behavior Across Devices
Since the targeting criteria are email addresses, you’ll be able to target users regardless of their device as long as they’re logged in. You no longer will have to estimate cross-device conversions as you’ll be able to tell how that specific audience is performing across all devices. Then, just like with remarketing, you can adjust your bid and ad copy specifically for these audiences based on your performance.
Wrapping Things Up
There are numerous additional strategies to get value out of Customer Match and these are only scratching the surface. How have you planned to use this new incredibly powerful product?
Pam Neely
Tom Whatley