Lead Ads use cases
Here you can find some ideas on how to automate your Lead Ads subscription even further.
Welcome (new contacts) Tactic
Multichannel engagement is hugely persuasive: Meta’s own research shows that customers who open an email and view Meta Ads as part of the same journey are 22% more likely to purchase.
You can use the Welcome (new contacts) Tactic to effectively target newly registered leads with a program that drives them to the first purchase within the optimal time window for conversion.
New email subscribers are sent a transactional confirmation email when they complete their registration (from any data source) and are then added to an automated audience. It can take a few hours for them to reach the audience on the network, so make sure you keep them there for a reasonable period of time (e.g. 48 hours) to give them a chance to see your ad.
Using additional channels comes at great expense, so don’t just take our word for it. Use the A/B Splitter node to test your program’s effectiveness on the fly.
Simple welcome program for new contacts only
You can also create an Automation Center program using the New Contact entry point, followed by a Segment node that checks the contact against the segment you created for the list:
The New Contact entry point is a batch entry node, which means that the first email will require the contacts to opt in for receiving marketing campaigns. Ensure that the Opt-in checkbox is selected for this subscription, otherwise none of the new contacts will receive the welcome email.
Using Lookalike audiences
Lookalike audiences are created by the network based on the shared characteristics (not the contacts) of the source segment you choose. The network first creates an audience from your segment, then analyzes the preferences, browsing habits and purchase history of these people and finds similar profiles in its own database.
This is a great and very cost-effective way to generate valuable new leads.
Lookalike audiences are static, not dynamic. This means that they are created once, from the combined characteristics of the contacts in an audience at that time, and are not updated thereafter.
You should also be aware that although the networks will exclude any of their own contacts who were in your source audience, they have no way of knowing whether the other contacts they find are also your customers. To avoid targeting existing customers with lead-specific campaigns, you should use the network's own filtering to exclude any other audience you may already have.
Acquire more valuable leads with Lookalike audiences
Google Lookalike Audiences are deprecated and will be removed from Google Ads completely. Instead, Google offers campaign-level targeting options for audience expansion.
If you are using Web Extend, you can take advantage of the web behavior fields to create a segment of contacts who are active email responders, recent purchasers and browsing your webshop actively.
Then, you can base your lookalike audience on this segment.
Finding new 'platinum' leads
Your best customers all have some characteristics in common: high spenders with an affinity for your brand, a desire for your products, and willingness to spend with you rather than your competitors. Create a segment from your most lucrative contacts, and the network will fill a lookalike audience with similar people. Target them with selected offers and watch them convert into high-value customers.
Expand the reach of a promotional campaign
You know which of your contacts are most likely to respond well to a particular promotional offer. So why not create an audience from them and extend that offer to their lookalikes? Or create an audience from the contacts who responded well to a particular campaign, and use the lookalike audience to find more of the same type of customer.
Customer lifecycle marketing
This image shows three simple customer lifecycle programs that use Digital Ads to target customers on an ad network.
- In the first program, all new contacts in the Emarsys database are automatically added to a lead nurturing audience. For the next three days, they can be carefully targeted with incentives to secure their first purchase. In this scenario, if they haven't converted by the 3rd day, they probably won't, so they are removed from the audience, keeping the audience compact and relevant and ensuring that you don't spend too much of the campaign budget on any single lead.
- In the second program, once a first purchase has been recorded in the database, Digital Ads removes the contact from the lead nurturing audience and adds them to the first-time buyer audience, where they can be introduced to loyalty schemes or simply welcomed as a new customer. Again, they are removed from the audience after three days.
- In the third program, a filter checks daily for new contacts that match your churn profile (for example, as defined in your Smart Insight eRFM scoring model). Once they have been added to the reactivation audience, you can target them with incentives to win them back.
Orchestrated omnichannel engagement campaigns
Here you can see how a program can engage with new customers on three different channels, all triggered by a new contact in the Emarsys database. This allows you to play to the strengths of each channel to send targeted information and start the customer journey off on the right foot.
In the following image, a one-off promotional email campaign is tracked in the ad network according to the behavior of the recipients.
- Contacts who did not respond at all are added to an audience that can be targeted with the same content as the email.
- Contacts who clicked a link in the "menswear" section of the email are added to an audience that can be targeted with offers in that category.
- Contacts who clicked a link in the "ladies shoes" section of the email will be added to an audience targeted with offers in that category.
Engage inactive email contacts with Digital Ads for better retention
Chasing unresponsive email contacts through the same medium can be self-defeating. Digital advertising is not limited to opt-ins or inboxes, so use the networks to reach the full potential of your customer base.
- First, create a segment including your unresponsive contacts.
- Then use our Win back inactive customers Tactic to target each of these contacts for three days every month (you need to configure the Tactic accordingly).
- You will need to set the Participation settings for this program so that contacts can only enter it 30 days after they exit it. You should also use the program below to remove converted contacts from this audience.
A/B testing for ad campaigns
In this image, you can see how easy it is to validate the benefits of an omnichannel approach.
By keeping 10% of your first time buyers in a control group targeted with email only, you can compare their conversion results with the rest of the contacts targeted with a mix of email and Digital Ads.
Ad hoc, batch campaigns
The simplest version of this is a one-off Digital Ads campaign, where you simply create an audience from a segment and launch the campaign from the network. Examples of such Digital Ads campaigns could be:
- reactivation of inactive customers,
- seasonal offers or
- back in stock campaigns or
- a follow-up for everyone who showed an interest in a recent promotion.
Such campaigns are typically of limited duration.
Brand awareness campaigns
You don't always want to use a marketing campaign to sell products. Especially on social media, brand awareness campaigns are often better received and more successful than more commercial ones. For example, segmenting by contacts who have responded to an email or visited your website in the last three days is a good way to maintain an audience of 'hot' contacts.
After three days of no interaction, they are no longer in the source segment and therefore (while synchronization is active) removed from the audience.
Remove converted contacts from Ad campaigns
Whenever you use an audience in a recurring program, it is always a good idea to run another program in parallel to remove contacts once they have converted and made a purchase. You can easily create such an Automation Center program to keep your audience relevant and save your advertising budget.
