💌 Your Subscribers And Buyers As Google Audiences

Customer Match lets Google show your ads to, or keep them away from, people already on your list. ADs sends your subscribers and buyers to Google as customer lists, kept in step every day, with only scrambled email addresses leaving your site.

Where to find it:

Open Networks, Audiences and tags, 3. Your subscribers and buyers as Google audiences. With the Google Ads script, the files Google collects are on Networks, Google Ads, under Send your customer lists to Google (Customer Match).

The lists:

• ResultsAiX ADs: Mailer active subscribers: everyone your Mailer counts as active (confirmed, not unsubscribed, not bounced). Shown only when the Mailer is on your site.
• ResultsAiX ADs: buyers: everyone who paid you. Test payments are left out.
• With Audience Vault, one list per Vault segment, such as Champions, Big Spenders and At Risk. See Audience Vault: Your Best Customers As Ad Audiences.

Before anything is sent:

1. Tick My privacy policy tells subscribers their email address may be shared, scrambled, with Google for advertising, and I accept Google's Customer Match policy.
2. People in the EU, UK and Switzerland are left out unless you also tick My subscribers in the EU, UK and Switzerland agreed to advertising use.
3. Press Save.

With the direct connection:

Press Send to Google on a list (Update now once it is sent). Only scrambled (SHA-256) addresses leave your site. Every day after that, new people are added and people who left are removed.

With the Google Ads script:

A script cannot add people to a customer list, so Google collects each list from your site instead, once a day, by itself. Set it up once per list, in about two minutes:

1. On the Google Ads tab, under Send your customer lists to Google, copy the Username and Password.
2. In Google Ads, click Tools, then Data manager.
3. Click the blue Connect product button, choose HTTPS, then Audiences ("Use HTTPS for an audience segment").
4. Paste the list's address (Copy the address), then the username and password.
5. Create a new customer list named as shown on the card, say the data is already hashed (SHA-256), with one column, Email, and set the schedule to Daily. Save. Google confirms with "You've connected a product".

Back in ADs the list gets a green tick with the number of people once Google has collected it, for example "Google collected it 7 hours ago (1,964 people)". Start with these shows your active subscribers and your buyers first; More lists holds the Audience Vault ones.

One step left:

Connecting the file is not the same as making the list. If Google has collected the file for more than a day and a half and your account still has no list by that name, the list shows "Not in Google Ads yet: one step left" and the exact step: in Google Ads open Tools, Shared library, Audience manager, press +, then Customer list; choose "Use an existing connection", pick HTTPS and the file named on the card (for example list-buyers.csv), name it exactly as shown (for example "ResultsAiX ADs: buyers"), tick Google's Customer Match confirmation and press Create. ADs finds the list by that name within the hour. Google renames these screens now and then: look for "HTTPS" and "Audiences".

When Google can use a list:

Google needs about a day to match a list and uses it once 100 or more people are matched. Google lets an account show ads only to a customer list once it is eligible: a good policy and payment record, plus either 90 days of history and 50,000 US dollars of lifetime spend, or a completed advertiser verification (Google emails you when Customer Match is switched on). Until then, lists still work to keep customers out of ads and to watch how they respond.

A real example:

yoursite.com uses the script. The owner connected both files in Google Ads Data manager. The Google Ads tab shows green ticks: Mailer active subscribers, 1,964 people, and Buyers, 431 people, each collected 7 hours ago. The course campaigns keep ResultsAiX ADs: buyers out.

Tips:

• Start by keeping buyers out of every campaign for new customers. It works from day one.
• Count the people on each list now refreshes the numbers on the Audiences tab.
• See Privacy: What Leaves Your Site for exactly what is sent.