Using Your Email List To Create “Custom Audiences” on Facebook

Max Braglia - January 16, 2014

With over 128 million daily active users in the U.S. alone, who spend an average of eight hours per month on it, Facebook represents a huge opportunity for businesses with the challenge of finding and reaching their  audience online.

Until recently, marketers were only able to target Facebook users by demographics, interests, or categories. These options, still available to advertisers, offer relatively accurate targeting. But what if you wanted to reach your current customers (whether they have “liked” your page or not), or a specific segment of them, on Facebook?

Thanks to Facebook Custom Audiences, you can now do just that.

How Custom Audiences Work

Custom Audiences are generated through the use of email lists. Advertisers upload their email lists on Facebook’s back end, Facebook then matches their customers’ email addresses with the email addresses of users in their database. Once a list is generated, you have a “custom audience” that you can use in your Facebook advertising.

As far as the security of your valuable customers’ data is concerned, Facebook clearly states that “any personally identifying information will be hashed [a technique used to encrypt and secure information] before being uploaded to Facebook” and that “the Hashed Data you provide to us for the matching process will not be shared with third parties or other advertisers and will be deleted promptly after the match process is complete.”

The efficacy of this new feature, which Facebook has recently made available to advertisers, relies on one word: segmentation. The more accurately you segment your list, the better the response of your campaign, and ultimately the higher the ROI.

For example, an online smartphone retailer could reach people who bought an iPhone a year ago with an ad for accessories, or one for a product upgrade. The possibilities are endless.

Finding New Customers with Your Old List

The Custom Audience feature is also useful for finding new customers, thanks to Facebook’s “Lookalike Audiences.”

According to Facebook, Lookalike Audiences let you reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to the custom audiences you have created with your customers’ email addresses.

So, there you have it, a creative yet powerful way to target your customers and find new business on Facebook. To learn more about how custom and lookalike audience targeting can help your business reach your current customers and grow your customer base, contact one of the qualified marketing professionals at MoreVisibility.