A Facebook Tool You Probably Didn’t Know You Have

For more than a year now, Facebook has quietly allowed advertisers to link their Facebook and Mail Chimp accounts. With this connection, you can target ads and posts to the people Facebook can match from your Mail Chimp lists and to the demographic lookalikes of those matches. As people sign up for your auction alerts through your website, your Mail Chimp audience grows; but so can your Facebook audience—automatically. Not only does this give you the opportunity for extra advertising impressions with your email subscribers, it allows your Facebook lookalikes audience to grow more and more accurate. If you’ve ever wished you could grow your email list faster, this Facebook-Mail Chimp partnership is the next best thing. 

And maybe even better.

One thing Facebook ads don’t have to worry about is a junk filter. And ads reveal the entire visual presentation of your content at once without hoping a headline will get prospects to open your ad. Also, Facebook’s algorithm allows the lookalike audiences tool to find people we were missing.

What if you don’t have Mail Chimp?

If you use another email program for building your emails, you can still use and replicate your email subscribers lists. You just have to export them manually. The process adds a few extra minutes but not much complexity. Both the automatic and download-then-upload methods use the Customer List tab of the Custom Audiences menu in Ads Manager. And the process of building the lookalikes audience is actually identical.

What if you have a small email list?

First, you’re in good company. Many auction firms are still growing their in-house lists. Second, you can use Facebook ads and your other advertising to drive people to your site (instead of your open houses or live events), where you can put an invitation to subscribe on every page they visit. Many companies find that offering something like a free buyer or seller guide in exchange for an email address garners more subscribers. If you’re wondering about how big your email list will need to be, Facebook has to match at least 100 (and usually more) of the email addresses and names on your list to be able to target ads to your list and lookalikes. So, you’ll probably need an email list of several hundred, maybe even more than 500.

What if you have no email list?

I buy email lists almost every week. Actually, I pay to include email addresses where available with mailing lists I purchase from my list broker. It costs significantly more than the addresses alone, but those opt-in addresses can be used both for my clients’ emails and their Facebook in perpetuity. Even if someone gets a new email address, Facebook knows who the original email address holder was. One benefit to this approach is that you can build multiple lists for different types of assets. You can save each one separately in your email distribution platform and in Facebook.

By the way, this same tool works for the bidders or consignors in your database and the lookalikes of those Facebook can match from those databases. If your auction software allows you to export these contacts from specific auctions or asset categories, you can imagine how targeted these audiences can be. 

All auctions can benefit from this connection between your email and Facebook marketing platforms, but real estate auctions have the most to gain. Since 2019, Facebook’s compliance with HUD anti-discrimination guidelines has prevented us from targeting real estate ads based on demographic and consumer interest criteria. But we can upload lists (or connect Mail Chimp), accept the indemnity of the targeting, and have Facebook create lookalikes through the Special Ad Audiences tool. So, segmented email and/or mailing lists can allow us to weed out members of the general population who are less likely to be interested in our properties.

Within reason, repetition of advertising impressions moves prospects closer to purchasing. This Mail Chimp Facebook partnership doesn’t just do that. It adds value to the two separate advertising methods in such a way that two plus two equals more than four.

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Stock photo purchased from iStockPhoto.com