Using Retention Data to Fuel Acquisition? Well, Only if You Want To Acquire Better Customers
A few years ago, we told you how you can use Facebook Custom Audiences to run retention campaigns on the social media network. Now we’re here to tell you how Optimove clients are leveraging their CRM Marketing behavioral data to improve their regular FB ads campaigns. Cause we’re all about breaking siloes
Most people, even marketing professionals, will automatically associate different marketing channels with different marketing funnel stages. Think of a highway billboard, for example. When have you ever seen an advertiser using one of those to push an “abandoned cart” message? Similarly, of course, email is a tentpole of Relationship Marketing, for the apparent reason that you should not have – and if you do, then should not use – the email of anyone who isn’t already a customer. So, you can’t really use it for your regular acquisition campaigns.
But what about Facebook?
Here at Optimove, we take great pride in our ability to enable clients to break barriers, think outside the box, use data-based insights across the organization, and overall, just get rid of the suffocating siloes that almost every organization has.
We do it in a bunch of different ways. Most of them have a lot to do with cross-team reporting and knowledge sharing, the result of our platform’s ability to uncover actionable data insights that can be put into use sometimes in just one click (have you met Opti-bot yet?). Just think what this can do to the life of a marketing team – having a direct line to its own customer data, without anyone’s help, and with zero code. Not to mention solutions like the Data Studio, where the marketer can create their own calculated attributes and put them into use when segmenting audiences – again, all by themselves.
Which brings us back to Facebook.
Acquisition vs Retention? Why not Acquisition + Retention?
Because, of course, FB is a crazy important channel for acquisition. Heck, it transformed the entire global online industry with its reach and audience capabilities and the way it allowed businesses to grow globally over the last decade or so. But, as we said – we’re bullish about breaking siloes, and it was already a few good years ago when we told you all about how you can leverage your customer data to use FB as a retention channel, too.
Wait, did we say “can”? Sorry, we meant “must.” Using FB to bolster your retention efforts is so simple and useful it practically should be a no-brainer.
Still wondering why and how? So, in our 2014 (yes, 2014!) article titled “Facebook Custom Audiences + Optimove = A Killer Retention Marketing Channel,” we detailed exactly how you can go about it, what it means, what it looks like, and what you can get out of it.
The main idea is, obviously, reach. Or, as we call it, “live customer coverage.” Say a customer signed up to your site using a burner email account or declined to give you consent to send them any marketing materials via email or SMS. FB, and its Custom Audiences, allows you to reach such customers with a simple FB ad.
The matching – done using email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs, or app user IDs – gives you another way of distributing your CRM Marketing messages to your customers.
Secondly, when you build these audiences and campaigns, you can safely assume they will perform better than your regular FB campaigns – because, as these would be built upon behavioral customer data and 1-to-1 directed, they will be as personalized and as relevant as possible.
Back in our old blog post – which is still a popular one amongst our search audience – we said that “being able to automatically create and modify Custom Audience lists according to granular, behavior-based customer micro-segmentation […] is an important step forward in transitioning the use of paid online advertising from being exclusively used for customer acquisition to making it an effective and measurable channel for customer retention.”
Secondly, since “Optimove can accurately report the financial gain from every retention campaign that is run using Facebook Custom Audiences, whether the campaign was stand-alone or if it was run in support of a concurrent email campaign,” you’ll also enjoy next-level reporting for these campaigns.
Taking it One Step Further
But, the fun doesn’t end there. Because nowadays, many of our clients are breaking yet another barrier – as they use customer-data on Facebook, yes, but in their ACQUISITION campaigns, too.
Wait, what?
Exactly.
Just think about it, if you’re using a smart/actionable CDP, or a cross-channel campaign management/multi-channel marketing hub – you are already sitting on loads of actionable customer data, the kind that can tell you what your best customers have in common. And, if you’re using Optimove, our AI uses this data to create predictive analytics, the kind that helps you how to “manufacture” great customers with a higher Customer Lifetime Value.
Now, if you just take these customer groups with their emails or phone numbers, you can use them to create Lookalike custom audiences on Facebook. The result would be audiences that share multiple characteristics with your best customers.
The next step should be self-explanatory by now: sending out FB Acquisition campaigns to these custom audiences will guarantee you’ll be acquiring customers with better CLTV potential. And, even if those audiences are sometimes more costly to acquire, most of the time, the math simply shows it’s still a better deal than most ongoing FB acquisition campaigns. Not to mention, as we alluded to above, the superior reporting and control groups/AB testing capabilities that built into the Optimove platform could come in very handy here as well.
Whatever is necessary to break barriers and dissolve debilitating siloes, that’s where we’re going.
Jonathan joined Optimove in 2021 after spending five years in New York and London, mainly in entrepreneurial capacities. It's in his DNA since he opened a lemonade stand outside his parents' house as a kid. What can you do? Riftin, an MBA graduate from Tel Aviv University, has years of experience in client and partner relationships. He's also an ex-Googler, so he mostly uses DuckDuckGo. Cause who wants to see their ex every day?
