Customer match was by far my favorite Google AdWords release of 2015 (sorry structured snippets). I’ve seen strong performance from these audiences across all account types, but especially for my e-commerce clients. Customer match lists can be used with Search, YouTube and Gmail ads (my personal favorite). You can choose to either target these audiences or use them as exclusions.
Often times, I’ll see clients upload one customer match audience with all of the emails in their database. Just like remarketing, customer match is much more powerful when you segment your audiences and take advantage of their differences.
Here are some different customer match audiences you should test out in your ecommerce accounts.
1. First Time Customers
You want to turn first time buyers into repeat customers by rewarding customer loyalty. Every time a customer returns, they are more likely to come back again and again. Advertise discounts to this audience in order to increase the likelihood of a second purchase.
2. Repeat Customers
Repeat customers are the foundation of successful companies. You want to make sure you’re continuing to invest your marketing budget towards these valuable customers. Develop this core base by offering VIP or exclusive promotions not offered to other groups.
3. Online-Only Buyers
If you are an e-commerce retailer with both an online and physical store locations, you definitely want to create lists based on where people purchase. By doing this, you’ll be able to align promotions and messaging with behavior. For example, you can focus on online offers like free or expedited shipping.
4. In-Store Only Buyers
Just because a customer doesn’t purchase online doesn’t mean you don’t want to advertise to them online. One strategy that has worked really well for me is when you have a sale or promotion running, target this audience with an ad that directs them to a coupon they can download and use in-store. You can also use unique codes for these coupons in order to track sales from these campaigns on the back end.
5. Lapsed Buyers
Your initial instinct might be to exclude these customers from your campaigns since they no longer engage with your brand. But don’t discount the value of the lapsed buyer. Offer a stronger incentive to encourage these customers to return with juicier deals than your other audiences. I worked with a client who advertised additional discounts during their semi-annual sale to lapsed buyers and generated over $20,000 from customers who hadn’t purchased in over 3 years. Test the type and frequency of the messaging to see which drives the most reactivation.
6. Previous Purchases
Segment customers based on which products they purchased in the past. When certain products go on sale, or new complimentary products are released, you can advertise to the people most likely to be interested.
7. Similar Audiences
I used to give similar audiences some major side eye, as I do with many of the automatic features in AdWords. However, I have been pleasantly surprised with the performance of similar audiences created from customer match lists. In a recent Gmail prospecting campaign I ran, the customer match similar audiences had more than double the ROAS of interests and keyword targeted ads.
You do need at least 1,000 emails in order to use a customer match audience, so keep that in mind when segmenting your email lists.
To learn more about customer match strategies, check out our post from Jill Dupre.
How do you use customer match in your accounts? Share with us in the comments!
