How to Exclude Customers from Your Ads
Today's question is about preventing customers from purchasing the same audiobook bundle twice through ads. Excluding customers is a balance of risks versus benefits, and no single custom audience catches everyone. Jon explains why you should exclude multiple custom audiences including website purchasers and email lists, how to improve match rates, and why keeping audiences dynamically updated limits repeat purchases.
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Question
Hey Jon, this is romance author Rebecca Heffner, and I have a question about making sure that I don't target the same customers. So sometimes I'll sell an audiobook bundle through Facebook ads, and then a month later Facebook will target that same customer. They'll purchase the audiobook bundle again, and then that creates a hassle for me because I have to refund that customer because they've already purchased it. How do I make sure that Facebook only targets new customers? Thank you.
Answer
Good question, Rebecca!
So whether or not you exclude your existing customers is always a balance of risks vs. benefits.
Of course, we shouldn’t be talking bout excluding all customers unless you only have one product. Otherwise, the people who have purchased other books should be prime candidates for purchasing this audiobook bundle.
That said, it sounds like you’re running into a problem where exclusions are necessary. People are buying your bundle, then buying the bundle again a month later. And those refunds are a cost to you.
So in that case, absolutely, we need to be sure to exclude the prior audiobook bundle customers.
To do that, I would exclude every possible custom audience that would represent those customers.
The first would be your website custom audience based either on the purchase event and parameters for that product or the confirmation page after the purchase, if it’s unique to the bundle.
You should also create a custom audience for your email list of customers who made that purchase. Include as many columns of data you can, like first name, last name, email address, phone number, and more, if possible. This will help get you better match rates.
Make sure to use a third-party tool to keep that email custom audience updated on a daily basis, if not more often, to include the most recent purchases.
And then exclude both of these custom audiences.
Now, that won’t guarantee that you’ll successfully exclude 100 percent of your customers. But the more thorough and dynamic you are about this, the higher your success rate will be.
And hopefully that will at least limit your refunds going forward.
A final point I’d ask is whether your Ecommerce software offers any controls to help prevent repeat purchases based on email address. I honestly don’t even know if such a thing exists, but I’d assume it’s a common problem that businesses would want to avoid in specific situations.
Thanks for your question, Rebecca, and good luck!