Learn some tips and tricks to set up your Custom Audience.

Best Practices
1. Leverage the data sources that align best with your objective.

Custom Audiences can achieve business objectives such as acquisition, retention and re-engagement. For best results, use the data source that aligns with your objective.

You can build out your Custom Audience using multiple sources: contacts from a CRM database or an email list. Or, you can build one from third-party data.

To increase the match rates for your Custom Audience, it is recommended that you provide more data (e.g. first name, last name, zip code, city, state, etc.). An increased match rate will help to improve your targeting, optimization, and measurement.

2. Make your Custom Audience segments mirror your existing audience segmentation efforts.

Custom Audiences works best when specifically targeted to a particular group of your customers. Leverage what you already know about your customers and target messaging that can drive action.

For example, are you looking to reconnect with your loyalty members or newsletter subscribers? Or perhaps you want to target customers who left items in their online shopping cart with a special discount? Tailor your messaging to your audience segments to personalize their experience and drive your desired business outcome.

3. Build Custom Audience segments based on where your customers are in the funnel.

From new and high-value customers to former or at-risk customers to those who have demonstrated intent, Custom Audiences provide a way to adjust your marketing strategy depending on what people know about you and where they are in the purchase funnel.

For example, you can target new customers with educational messaging to learn more about your brand, while high-value customers receive targeted messaging tailored to their needs.

Why is this important? A recent Facebook study discovered that as your customers move through the funnel, sequenced marketing messaging could improve the results that matter to your campaign or brand.

4. Exclude existing customers from customer acquisition campaigns.

Don’t pay for unwanted impressions, clicks, or conversions in your customer acquisition campaign. You can exclude your current customers from your campaign to ensure your messaging is on target.

For example, you can exclude existing customers from your Custom Audiences data file or do it automatically by excluding customers based on activity (like a purchase) using Custom Audiences from your website or mobile app.

5. Optimize your direct-mail or email campaigns.

Direct mail and email

Use Custom Audiences from a data file to complement your next direct-mail campaign. Reach those who don’t open an email, or amplify your direct mail message by reinforcing it within your audience on Facebook and Instagram.

Search campaign

Find your customers before they search for you. Use Custom Audiences from your website or mobile app to uncover intent earlier in the purchase funnel to maximize search spend. Remember: People can’t look for your brand by name if they’re not aware you exist.

6. Target customers who have demonstrated intent to purchase.

Implement the Facebook pixel on your website and/or the Facebook SDK in your mobile app to target people based on intent. You can also add additional rules—like frequency, recency, time spent—to build Custom Audiences of people with stronger intent signals. With Custom Audiences, you can target people based on the specific actions taken on your website or mobile app and reach them on Facebook and Instagram.

Remarket to people who abandoned their shopping cart with messaging that drives them back to purchase. Or cross-sell or upsell to people who recently purchased items on your website or mobile app.

7. Target customers across devices.

Facebook and Instagram target real people, no matter which device they’re using, and drives them to convert. Consider your cross-device conversions to ensure you’re sending the right message to the right people on the right device, based on where they are in the conversion funnel. You can view your cross-device conversions by enabling the cross-device view in Facebook ads reporting.

For example, if you know that your customers convert more on desktop, then build Custom Audiences of people further down the conversion funnel and reach them with strong call-to-action messaging on the device they’re likely to convert on.

8. Find people who are similar to your best customers.

You can also use Facebook lookalike audience to find potential customers who are similar to your best customers. Build lookalike audience from your CRM database, website visitors, and mobile app customers. (To learn more, we recommend going through the Targeting - Lookalike Audiences course.)

9. Use a bid type that best suits your goals.

If you’re running a direct-response campaign, Facebook defaults to people likely to convert based on your objective. Use CPA if you don’t want to pay more than a specific cost per mobile app install. Lastly, test CPM to increase delivery to a highly qualified audience, such as your high-LTV customers.

10. Use quality data to build your Custom Audiences.

When building Custom Audiences from a data file, you will have a better match rate with the people on Facebook and Instagram when using higher-quality data, like complete email addresses or newer data.

For example, consider the time frame in which you pull the data from your database. If your contacts were entered several years ago and haven’t been updated since, it’s likely that their contact information is out of date.