How can you use lookalike audiences to personalize your direct marketing?

1 What are the benefits of lookalike audiences?

Lookalike audiences can help you expand your reach and target new prospects who are more likely to be interested in your products or services. By using lookalike audiences, you can reduce the cost and time of finding and qualifying leads, and focus on delivering relevant and engaging messages that resonate with your audience. Lookalike audiences can also help you improve your segmentation and personalization strategies, by allowing you to tailor your direct marketing campaigns based on the preferences, needs, and pain points of different groups of prospects.

2 How to create lookalike audiences?

The first step to create lookalike audiences is to identify your source audience, which is the group of customers or contacts that you want to replicate. You can use data from your CRM, email list, website visitors, social media followers, or any other source that reflects your ideal customer profile. The source audience should be large enough to provide enough data for the platforms to match it with similar people, but not too large that it becomes too broad or generic. Depending on the platform you use, the minimum size of the source audience can vary from 100 to 1000 contacts.

The next step is to choose the platform or tool that you want to use to create and access your lookalike audiences. Some of the most popular platforms that offer lookalike audience features are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google. Each platform has its own criteria and methods to create lookalike audiences, but they all require you to upload or connect your source audience data, and then select the size and location of your lookalike audience. The size of the lookalike audience determines how similar or different they are from your source audience. A smaller size means a higher similarity, but a smaller reach, and vice versa.

3 How to use lookalike audiences for direct marketing?

Once you have created your lookalike audiences, you can use them for your direct marketing campaigns, such as email, social media, or online ads. You can use the same platforms that you used to create your lookalike audiences, or export them to other tools that allow you to integrate them with your direct marketing channels. For example, you can use Facebook's Custom Audiences feature to export your lookalike audiences to your email marketing tool, or use LinkedIn's Matched Audiences feature to export your lookalike audiences to your Google Ads account.

The key to using lookalike audiences for direct marketing is to personalize your messages and offers based on the characteristics and behaviors of your lookalike audiences. You can segment your lookalike audiences into smaller groups based on criteria such as industry, job title, location, or interests, and then craft your direct marketing campaigns accordingly. For example, you can send different email subject lines, copy, or calls to action to different segments of your lookalike audience, or show different social media ads or landing pages to different segments of your lookalike audience. By personalizing your direct marketing campaigns, you can increase your relevance, engagement, and conversion rates with your lookalike audiences.

4 What are the best practices for lookalike audiences?

To get the most out of your lookalike audiences, you should follow some best practices that can help you optimize your results and avoid common pitfalls. To begin, make sure your source audience is accurate, updated, and representative of your ideal customers. You can test different source audiences and refine them based on feedback and data. Additionally, experiment with different sizes and locations of your lookalike audience to find the best reach and relevance. You may also want to create multiple lookalike audiences with different sizes and locations, and target them with different direct marketing campaigns. Finally, monitor and measure the results of your direct marketing campaigns using lookalike audiences. Metrics like impressions, clicks, conversions, cost per lead, and return on investment will help you optimize campaigns and lookalike audiences.