How to Use Facebook Custom Audiences with ActiveCampaign

How to Use Facebook Custom Audiences with ActiveCampaign

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    Our integration with Facebook allows you to leverage contact information in your ActiveCampaign account to advertise more effectively to potential and existing clients or customers on Facebook.

    With the integration, you can use ActiveCampaign automations to add and remove contacts from Facebook Custom Audiences.

    In this guide, you’ll learn from two example use cases to demonstrate how this feature is useful and to help you get started.

    Why Use Facebook Custom Audiences

    The Facebook Custom Audiences integration provides additional data between ActiveCampaign and Facebook to help inform your marketing strategy.

    By connecting the two platforms, you can target your ActiveCampaign contacts on Facebook; if they click on your ad, you’ll see that data in Facebook. If they follow through and visit your site or make a purchase, you can track that information in ActiveCampaign with the help of our site tracking and attribution features.

    The combination of Facebook and ActiveCampaign data will give you deeper /insight into your contacts’ behavior, and a more well-rounded way to interact with them.

    Additionally, uploading an ActiveCampaign contact list to Facebook with the Custom Audience integration allows you to interact with your contacts right where they are.

    Use Case: Targeting Prospects on Facebook

    Let’s say you have a list of prospective customers in ActiveCampaign called “Prospects,” containing contacts who aren’t opening the emails you send. Since email doesn’t seem to be their preferred messaging method, you’ve created an automation that has reduced the number of emails those contacts receive. And because they haven’t been responsive to your email marketing efforts, you consider them unengaged contacts.

    But what if you tried to reach them through another messaging method instead? For instance, they might prefer to interact with brands on social media. That’s where the Facebook Custom Audiences integration comes in!

    With this integration, you can add an action to your automation that adds the contacts from your Prospects list to a Facebook Custom Audience, so you can begin targeting that list of contacts with your messaging via Facebook ads.

    First, ensure you’ve set up the Facebook Custom Audiences integration. You can find directions here.

    After setting up the integration, navigate to the Automations tab in ActiveCampaign and find the automation you’d like to add to.

    Use the new “Add to Facebook Custom Audience” action to add your “Prospects” list to a Facebook Custom Audience:

    New action modal in ActiveCampaign

    Select the Facebook Ads account you want to add contacts to:

    Facebook custom audience form in ActiveCampaign

    Then select your Prospects list from the “Select Custom Audience” dropdown. This will add contacts on your Prospects list to a custom audience in Facebook once they reach this step in the automation.

    Finally, create an ad on Facebook and select your new “Prospects” custom audience. Your ad will specifically target these contacts.

    If the unengaged contacts on your “Prospects” list click on your Facebook ad and it redirects them to a landing page specific to your Facebook ads, ActiveCampaign can capture visits to that page (with the site tracking feature).

    If those contacts arrive at your landing page via a Facebook ad and then submit the form on that page, those contacts are once again engaged.

    You also learn that they are more responsive to your messaging on Facebook rather than when you try to reach them via email. With this new knowledge, you can make more informed decisions about engaging with and marketing to these contacts moving forward.

    Use Case: Removing Contacts from a Facebook Custom Audience

    Let’s say you run a travel agency and have been using the Facebook Custom Audiences integration to market your Costa Rica vacation package to your contacts on Facebook.

    You want to remove them from the Audience when they book the Costa Rica vacation package so you are not spending money advertising after they have purchased.

    You just need to create an Automation that will remove them from the Audience when they buy.

    In our example, a contact receives the tag “Purchased: Costa Rica” when they have successfully purchased the package; we will use this as a trigger to start the automation to remove them from the Facebook Custom Audience. 

    To start, you would create an automation with the start trigger of “Tag is added – Purchased: Costa Rica”

    Action option in ActiveCampaign

    And then add the Action “Remove from Facebook Custom Audience

    Add a new action page in AcitveCampaign

    Select the correct Facebook Ads account and your Costa Rica Custom Audience from the appropriate dropdowns in the “Remove from Facebook Custom Audience” action module.

    Remove custom audience page in ActiveCampaign

    Anytime the “Purchased: Costa Rica” tag is applied, that contact will be removed from your Costa Rica Facebook custom audience. At this point, if you like, you could add these contacts to a different Facebook custom audience.

    Learn More

    Remember, the Facebook Custom Audiences integration allows you to gather another data set, giving you better insight into your contacts’ behavior.

    With the ability to sync ActiveCampaign contact lists with Facebook, you also have a more well-rounded way to interact with your contacts, and another opportunity to meet your contacts where they are.

    To learn how to set up the Facebook Custom Audiences integration, read our help article.

    To learn how to set up site tracking, read our other help article!

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