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How to utilize customer data when targeting Facebook Ads

How to utilize customer data when targeting Facebook Ads

Facebook gives marketers a multitude of parameters to pick from when targeting ads. Finding the perfect audience from the 2,7 billion active Facebook users is surely not a piece of cake. However, when it comes to targeting, using the identified customer data you have collected from your own channels is the most valuable data you can have. Facebook can’t access your customer data by itself, and that’s where customer data platform comes to picture.

Integrating Facebook into a Customer data platform

Integrating Facebook to your Customer Data Platform (CDP) like Custobar, enables you to use your customer data when creating custom audiences on Facebook. In other words, you can use your first-party data (the customer data you have collected from your own channels like sales data from stores and multi-device browsing data from your eCommerce) and use this data to segment your customers and target them personalized campaigns.

This is how it works. Customer data platform (CDP) collects customer data from multiple different sources in one place. In the CDP, a marketer can use different tools (like the RFM matrix or audience search) to segment these customers based on, for example, their buying behaviour.

When you have created these data-based audiences, they will be automatically visible on your Facebook Ads Manager. You can start creating personalized campaigns for your customers, who already know you and are more likely to be interested in your offerings. It is more cost-effective to nurture current customers than to attract new ones.

Examples of use cases

  • Removing customers from the retargeting who have recently made a purchase. This integration removes customers from retargeting even if they have been using another device for shopping or purchased in a physical store.

  • Using customer data from all channels to create Facebook audiences. For example, a list of loyalty customer updates automatically to Facebook audience when new customers are added to it.

  • Using Facebook to activate those customers who don’t react to your channels like email and SMS. On the other hand, you can de-activate Facebook marketing from those customers who are actively engaging with your emails to optimise your advertising budget.

  • Targeting those customers who don’t’ want to receive email marketing.

  • Finding similar audiences based on your best customers or similar segments based on purchase behaviour. You can, for example, use Custobar Lifetime value calculation or RFM matrix to identify your VIP customers, make an audience of them, and then target ads to them and similar audiences.

  • Targeting customers in different parts of their buying cycle. You can, for example, remind your customers about their abandoned shopping carts by advertising the products to them on Facebook.

  • Targeting older customers - Facebook conversion pixel only stores data for 180 days, but with the Facebook Custom audience integration, you can also target older customers.

    Here are only a few examples of uses cases. Remember that the possibilities are endless. You can use the customer data you need to best serve your customers.

The benefits of personalized Facebook campaigns

Connecting Facebook to your Customer Data Platform like Custobar enables you to do even smarter and more efficient marketing campaigns. Facebook ad campaigns will have a better conversion rate because the ads are better targeted to smaller audiences, including your customers and prospects similar to them. You can create look-a-like audiences of your most profitable customers and target them on Facebook. The return on marketing investment (ROI) will be higher as targeting based on data will bring more sales and lower the marketing costs.

You will also no longer irritate your customers by retargeting them products they have already purchased. Nothing’s more unpleasant as a consumer than seeing a huge discount on the product you just bought for full price. By integrating Facebook to a CDP, you can combine the sales data from your brick and mortar stores and online shops and the data can be automatically updated in the Facebook audiences.

As Facebook integration allows you to target customers who are not willing to get SMSes or emails, this gives you a new medium to reach customers whose information you have in your customer data platform. Existing customers are also more likely to convert than new ones.

This integration is easy, safe and GDPR proof way to use your customer data on creating Facebook campaigns. No more manual file import-export. Custobar API integration sends the email and phone numbers in a securely hashed format to Facebook. This is vital for marketers as the 3rd part cookies are already blocked in Safari and Mozilla and will be phased out in Chrome browsers soon. The conversion tracking with cookies will soon be history but customer data platforms are an alternative solution. Integrating your Facebook Ads account to a customer data platform like Custobar (that enables sending the server-side conversion data to Facebook in a secured way) saves the trouble of building multiple integrations to different advertisement channels.

If you would like to hear more about the Facebook integration or about better-utilizing customer data in marketing, we are happy to help. Please contact us at support@custobar.com. You can find the instructions on how to set up the integration both in text and video format.