Google AdWords Customer Match E-mail List Strategies

Customer Match was released on 27^th September 2015. It gives you the capability to upload e-mail addresses that your customers have given you to target users on the Search Network, YouTube and Gmail Ads within Google AdWords. Today, I will be discussing the different e-mail list strategies you can use to segment your campaigns.

Before setting up your e-mail lists, you need to plan how to split the e-mail addresses up and how they will relate to the ads you create. I have split this post into e-Commerce and lead generation ideas to describe the different tactics to use for each of these.

e-Commerce

Type of Products

You could segment your lists by type of products to target users with an interest in a certain category. For example, if you ran a bathroom store, you could have one ad group for “vanity units” and another for “basins”, with the relevant e-mail list and ad text targeting this.

Previously Converted

This strategy would be useful for those with big e-Commerce stores and would work if your aim were to bring previous customers back to your store. For example, this would be a great strategy for clothes shops. You could find out what the user bought from you and direct them to the most relevant landing page. Be sure to use highly targeted ad text if you go for this option.

Average Order Values

Find the users who spend a large amount of money on your website and create a highly targeted campaign for them.

Lead Generation

Topics

By segmenting your e-mail lists by topic, you’re able to narrowly target the users who are interested in a certain section of your business. For example, a marketing agency could segment its lists on the basis of the different services offered, such as “Design” or “Branding”.

Sales Funnel

Identify the different levels in your sales funnel and target the user at each level. An example of this could be a leisure centre: if a user completed an enquiry form, target them to sign up for the leisure centre’s services. If a user applied specifically for a gym, target them to sign up for the gym.

Last Action

Target users based on the last action they took on your website; check out the “Behaviour Flow” funnel in Google Analytics to find this data and analyse from there.

Downloads

Did the user download a specific whitepaper from your website? Where did the user’s e-mail address come from? Figure this out and create an e-mail list with details of where you originally found them.

What Else?

It is also worth creating a campaign targeting all e-mail addresses in order to catch all traffic with a generic ad describing what your business does. You don’t need to use bid adjustments on this list, but you could use bid adjustments of +5-10% on the segmented lists. Another thing to note is that your e-mail lists need a minimum of 1000 e-mail addresses per list in order to work with your campaigns, so work out whether you have enough e-mail addresses to split out in the first place!

I’m sure there are many more strategies out there that you can use for your campaigns, but these should help you get started.

If you can think of any other strategies to use with Customer Match, please comment below. Alternatively, feel free to ask me any questions on Twitter via @SophieeHowell.