Over the past few weeks Facebook has rolled out a new form of advertising for its clients. Custom Audiences combines the power of email marketing with the virality of social media and opens a whole new window opportunity for small businesses to target and re-target those people who have already expressed an interest in their product. Anyone who invests in email marketing understands that it is perhaps one of the least expensive (yet not necessarily easy) ways to reach and encourage consumers.
The value of reminding interested spenders about your product, or specials, or discounts is enormous and it is why so much time is spent crafting and honing email marketing campaigns. Have doubts? The 2008 and 2012 elections were pretty much won by email marketing. If you ever received an email from the Obama Campaign you may remember the blatantly shocking subject lines they would use – which all but guaranteed their hugely successful open rate…but that’s another blog for another day.
Constantly “touching” Consumers Has its Rewards
Consider these statistics regarding email marketing.
- 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. (Convinceandconvert.com)
- 7 in 10 people say they made use of a coupon or discount from a marketing email in the prior week. (2012 Blue Kangaroo Study)
- 56% of businesses say they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2013. (The Small and Midsize Business Email Marketing Survey 2013)
- For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment. (Experian)
Alright, so if email marketing is so great, why am I going to use Facebook advertising?
Two Words: Custom Audiences
Basically, what custom audiences lets you do is design advertisements (like coupons, discount codes, or any other sort of perk to entice already interested consumers) and roll them out to those people who are on your email lists. Pretty brilliant right? The ways that you can use this feature are pretty limitless in terms of strategy.
Just starting to gear up your Facebook presence and want to let your email list know it? Well you could of course send out an email and let everyone know to “like” your page. However, you could also direct people through a Facebook ad to “like” your page and target those people who are already fans of your product/company.
Want to see if Facebook can really convert warm leads into customers? Take a segment of your email list that has maybe, filled their shopping cart, but not made a final purchase and offer them some enticement.
Want to convert one time customers into repeat customers? Offer a discount on something that you know they need (this is great for cyclical products – like oil changes, car tune ups, hair colorings, eyebrow waxes, etc.)
The initial reports on Custom Audience results were recently reported on by TechCrunch. “One eCommerce company targeted their email list, increasing its sign-up conversion rate by 43 percent and decreasing cost per lead by 30 percent.” It would seem as though these results present a strong argument for seeing how you might leverage them to target certain segments of your own email list. For more help on navigating Facebook and its advertising, talk to one of experts at Premiere Creative and give us a call at (973) 346-8100.
