How to leverage your email list without emailing an email to anyone!

Put Your Email List to Good Use: Facebook Targeting Tool for Businesses

In the world of marketing, your email list is one of your most valuable assets. It’s the virtual equivalent of keeping one foot in the door and a surefire way to ensure one interaction with a consumer won’t be your last.

But what if you could increase the value of that list exponentially by targeting them in a place other than their inbox?

Facebook has found a way to do just that.

The magic of Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature

With around 1.5 billion active users, chances are a large portion of your existing email list has a Facebook account. Custom Audiences allow you to bridge this gap by uploading your list and using ads to specifically target this already tuned-in audience.

This alone can do wonders for conversion rates, but segmenting your email list even further can ensure you speak to customers differently depending on their specific level of engagement.

Say, for instance, you have broken your list down into customers who haven’t opted out, but never open emails. You can create an ad set that serves them the information they aren’t getting through your email marketing.

Or, if you have a group that always opens your emails, but has never actually made a purchase or followed through with your call to action, you can provide the same information in a more eye-catching way to encourage follow through.

You can even use this form of marketing to encourage survey participation or sweepstakes entries with a group that is already familiar with your brand and thus far more likely to participate.

It’s all about having the ability to further customize your ad messaging in a way that actually speaks to your intended audience.

What a concept, huh?

Does it actually work?

The short answer is yes.

According to TechCrunch.com, the numbers speak for themselves.

“One ecommerce company targeted their email list, increasing its sign-up conversion rate by 43 percent and decreasing cost per lead by 30 percent.

….The Washington Post’s ad arm SocialCode says one Custom Audience campaign delivered a 15% lower cost per fan. Another got three times as many engagements per post as standard ads and received two times as many viral engagements such as likes, shares and comments.”

The bottom line: it’s about increasing engagement by honing in on the group that already has some buy in with your brand.

Understanding the time and the place for custom audiences

In order to see the stellar results with custom audiences that other companies have, it’s important to know when and where this fits into a marketing plan.

While targeting a group with Custom Audiences can be hugely beneficial, it does impact your reach, especially if your engaged audience – or your email list -- is very small to begin with. So if you are in the very beginning stages of growing your list and you haven’t yet formed an engaged audience, this might be a strategy you put on the back burner for now.

Even if you do have a well-formed audience, Custom Audiences could be cutting you off to exposing new consumers to your brand. They won’t just stumble upon your ad because they aren’t in your target group.

But whether this isn’t the right time to utilize this ad tool, or if it simply needs to work in tandem with other ad strategies, Custom Audiences is certainly something to consider keeping in your ad arsenal. It can ensure you stay front and center with a group already tuned in to how awesome your brand is, and that is invaluable.

(If you want to know how Custom Audiences can be utilized in your marketing plan, contact AppJaxx today.)