It is standard practice for businesses to gather information from their customers including their email addresses. But are you putting them to good use? Perhaps it’s time to utilise the information you have at your fingertips and capitalise on this for the benefit of your business.
What are customer match lists?
Customer match lists allow you to reach customer segments and re-engage with your existing customers who have interacted directly with your business by using both your offline and online data. The information gathered is valuable to your business as it comes directly from your customers and using the customer match list tool will then allow you to make the most out of your own data that you have collected and deliver tailor made messages when it is most relevant to them across platforms including shopping, search, display, YouTube and Gmail. As well as re-engaging with your existing customers, this tool allows you to reach similar and potential new customers across the Google network.
What are the requirements for customer match lists?
As with other features on Google Ads, there are certain requirements in place which should be met before you can use this feature.
Your account must have:
- A good payment history
- A good history of policy compliance
- At least 90 days history in Google Ads
- A total lifetime spend on the account of more than $50,000 USD or equivalent alternate currency based on current exchange rate, which is around £38,000 at the time of writing this.
How does it work?
Once you have your customer list and you have uploaded it you can then either update an already existing campaign or create a new one to target your new customer match segment whom are Google users from your data file. When those customers are then signed into their Google account, they will see your ads throughout the search or display network, Gmail or on YouTube.
Collecting your customer data
It is important that the only information you upload is collected in the first-party context that your customers have shared directly with you. This could come from the likes of apps where you have collected information from customers who have registered for marketing messages, on your website where a customer has purchased an item or from a physical shop or similar where a customer has signed up for your loyalty programme.
Before using your customer data information you must always ensure that your privacy policy clearly states that you share customer data with third parties whom perform services on your behalf and you obtain their consent to do so where required. You should also ensure that you have obtained consent for such sharing where it is required by law or where applicable by any Google policies where personalised ads or user consent which includes Google’s EU user consent policy. Complying with all regulations and laws which are applicable is of the utmost importance along with only using Google’s approved interface or API when uploading customer data.
In short, Google customer match lists let you target potential leads and is a very useful tool for many business goals including driving conversions and increasing brand awareness. If this is something your business is yet to dive into, we strongly suggest that you give it a try and see the positive impact this could have on your business.
