Email at the heart of social ads

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Have you tried out Facebook’s Custom Audiences yet? I have. They’re quite wonderful, a great way to advertise to people you already have in your audience. It’s basically a paid retargeting program.

Have you tried out Twitter’s Tailored Audiences yet? I’m starting to experiment with those. The Twitter Tailored Audiences function very much like Facebook’s – you can retarget audiences you already know.

What do they have in common? Both of them can accept an upload of email addresses from your existing email marketing platform or CRM. For years upon years, I’ve been advocating that your email list is the only insurance you have against the shifting sands of social networks. With these new advertising platforms, your email list is now at the heart of your retargeting abilities. With your email house list, you can now reach people in multiple, different channels to make sure they see the important stuff.

With my new book, Marketing Red Belt, I’ve been using custom audiences to advertise the book on social as well as emailing people directly. The results? Marketing Red Belt in just its first week has earned 25% of the revenue that Marketing White Belt earned in three YEARS. (and thank you for buying it!)

As social networks get more and more desperate for advertising revenue, expect to see these retargeting options expand. I’d not be surprised to see them spread to LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and even secondary networks like Waze, Flickr, and Snapchat. Your email list will be at the heart of them all. Are you ready?

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