Do you have an Email list?

Are you looking for creative ways to use Facebook ads?

With Facebook custom audiences, you can reach your email subscribers with relevant Facebook ads.

In this article I’ll share five ways to target your email subscribers with Facebook ads.

#1: Serve Ads to All Email Subscribers

Since it requires no email list segmentation, the best way to get started is to target all your email subscribers. Simply upload your entire email list right into Facebook as a custom audience.

The key is to create a unified message across different channels: email to Facebook to website.

Target this audience if you’re looking to reach your entire list to get the news out about a big event or a storewide sale, where the message is the same for everyone. Make sure your Facebook ad has a similar look and message or offer as your emails.

Amazon uses this tactic to remind customers about their Deal of the Day.

The idea is to share engaging content, so your email audience will help spread your message by interacting with your ads, acting as brand ambassadors.

Since this audience is already familiar with your brand, analyze engagement metrics (likes, shares, comments) to measure the effectiveness of these ads. Their interaction validates how well the ad resonates with them, which results in a higher relevancy score, more social proof and free organic reach.

#2: Target Ad Delivery by Opens and Unopens

To employ these next few tactics, it’s important you are able to segment your email subscriber list into audiences for remarketing.

First, divide your email list into people who have opened your email and those who have not. Then, further segment the open list into those who did and did not take action.

Target Subscribers Who Opened Your Email

Create a Facebook ad that looks similar to the email you sent for those who only read your email. You want to get this audience to take action, so change up the messages with the ad. For instance, if the goal of the email was to get white paper downloads, then offer the same white paper in your Facebook ad, but write a message or ad copy that differs from your email.

If you’re an ecommerce store trying to get your customers to take advantage of a weekly 20%-off deal, show subscribers an ad that highlights the promotion and encourages them to take action.

Sierra Trading Post created a Facebook offer with the same deal as their email.

With this custom audience, exclude people who have already purchased or downloaded an offer.

Target Subscribers Who Didn’t Open Your Email

For the subscribers who didn’t even open your email, wait a few days and then target them with a Facebook ad. Since they haven’t read the email, show them the same message. This helps your company stay in front of your audience.

#3: Segment Subscribers by Purchase

If you have an ecommerce website, a great way to increase the lifetime value of a customer is to cross-promote and/or upsell related products.

Amazon does this brilliantly. The website is always showing their shoppers similar products, bundled products or other products previous customers bought. Their goal is to get people to buy more products that are relevant to what they are viewing.

Utilize Facebook carousel ads to highlight multiple products that provide additional value for previous customers. Show products that fit with items they’ve already purchased. So if they bought dog treats, then show them dog food or dog toys.

Look for creative ways to divide your audience for the purpose of upselling or cross-promoting other products they would find useful.

Depending on your business goals, consider segmenting your customers by type of products, purchase amount, purchase date and frequency of purchases. Then target a carousel ad to each audience.

#4: Reach Out to Disengaged Audiences

Do you have a list of people who haven’t opened your emails in quite a while? Re-engage your audience with a good Facebook ad.

These people are disengaged for a reason. Perhaps they’re not receiving enough value from your emails, and choose not to open them.

Southwest Airlines used an ad to remind their Denver customers to book a flight.

Not everyone is going to stay a subscriber forever. However, you can still make an effort to reactivate subscribers and bring them back into your funnel.

Craft an ad with an exclusive deal, promo code, extended trial or free piece of content. Target this email segment every two to three months, depending on your list size. Remember, it’s more efficient and less expensive to keep your customers than it is to find new ones.

#5: Take Advantage of Lookalike Audiences

Maximize the potential of your previous customers by creating lookalike audiences to scale your advertising efforts by finding an audience that’s similar to previous purchasers.

Upload your previous purchasers‘ emails into Facebook to create lists of people who are similar to that audience.

Think of ways to segment your audience, depending on what you want to advertise. It may make sense to segment by age, gender or product type. Then upload your email segments into Facebook as a custom audience.

Based on your new custom audience, make a lookalike audience to target potential new customers. The custom audiences of around 80,000 email subscribers turned into lookalike audiences of more than 2 million.

While it is more expensive to find new customers than keep the ones you have, lookalike audiences can help lower that cost. In essence, Facebook helps you qualify potential customers with this functionality.

Final Thoughts

There are a variety of ways to use Facebook custom audiences. Target Facebook ads to people who are already familiar with your brand, segment email lists to show highly relevant ads, cross-promote and upsell products to past purchasers, re-engage with audiences and use lookalike audiences to find new customers.

When you reach out to your email segments via Facebook ads, you increase visibility, engagement and the value you bring to your current and potential customers.