Facebook and Twitter both offer the ability to create custom audiences; Twitter calls them tailored audiences.
This option is useful if you would like to target certain people or exclude them from a social media campaign. Some examples:
- Upload your email list to Facebook and/or Twitter. Save it as a custom audience. You could then target a social media campaign to this audience, to reinforce an important message to an already loyal group.
- You could exclude people from a particular list from an ad campaign. For example, let’s say you already know who has taken advantage of a particular offer and is thus ineligible to take the same offer again. It makes sense to save yourself ad dollars in targeting these people. Just exclude them.
- You can target, or exclude, people who have visited your website. Let’s say you’d like people to sign up for your event. Lots of people are visiting your site but don’t actually sign up. You can track this and then target this people with a social media campaign.
It is important to note that if your email list is small — fewer than a few thousand — you will be able to use the list for targeting in Facebook and Twitter.