Customers are the lifeline of every business.

Having the best products or services is simply not enough if potential customers are not aware they exist. This is why every business needs to implement a marketing plan and a strategy to acquire new customers right from the start. Otherwise they risk closing up shop or losing significant market share.

There are no shortages of marketing strategies you can employ to attract new customers. But strengthening existing relationships offers one of the highest returns on your marketing dollars. After all, customers who have previously done business with you are already familiar with your brand.

Past customers are a huge revenue source. The only problem is reaching them.

Email is one of the more common channels to reach out to individuals who may have engaged with your business whether by making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. But what if you could take it a step further and reach those customers on other channels including search?

With Customer Match you can.

What is Customer Match?

Customer Match is the latest product offering from Google. It lets marketers create highly targeted campaigns in a way previously not possible. The new feature works with Google’s main products including Search, YouTube, and Gmail, providing even greater targeting capabilities.

Here is a brief overview from the announcement:

“Customer Match allows you to upload a list of email addresses, which can be matched to signed-in users on Google in a secure and privacy-safe way. From there, you can build campaigns and ads specifically designed to reach your audience.”

Here is an example of how it works.

A number of customers have joined your rewards program, making them eligible for special deals. When those members search for certain keywords (e.g. travel packages, etc.), watch videos on YouTube, or catch up with their emails, they can be shown targeted ads with a link back to your landing page.

As you might expect this is extremely powerful as your marketing campaigns are much more targeted and relevant to your audience.

What Can You Do With Customer Match?

Customer Match is potentially game changing. Here are a few examples of what advertisers can do with the latest offering from Google.

1. Target Previous Customers
Businesses love repeat customers as it requires almost no effort to bring them back. But not all previous customers will return to your site for various reasons. With Customer Match, you can easily create highly targeted campaigns to reach those who have not been to your site or purchased in a while.

The average cart abandonment rate is 68.55%, calculated based on 32 different studies on e-commerce shopping cart abandonment. That means that over two thirds of potential customers add items to their shopping cart but leave without completing their purchase. Customer Match can be used to close more sales by bringing these very same visitors back to your site with targeted ads.

2. Cross Sell Existing Customers
Customer Match lets you refine your campaigns to easily cross sell supplementary products to existing customers. For example, if a customer has purchased a holiday travel package, your ads can be shown to offer discounts on other products such as car rentals or hotels.

One way you could take this further is to split test each campaign to see which product generates more sales. Then you could offer a complete package with those items to new customers.

3. Exclude Certain Customers
There are certain situations where it makes sense to exclude customers. You may want to offer a special deal limited only to those who have purchased a certain product or to those who put down their email address as preorders. In either case you will want to exclude some of these customers from your next marketing campaign.

Conclusion
Customer Match is the latest offering from Google. While still relatively new, it has a lot of potential for businesses. Advertisers can reach previous customers and fine-tune their campaigns to display targeted ads on Search, YouTube, and even Gmail. Business can utilize these features to drive more purchases by targeting previous customers and cross selling existing ones.

This is exactly the kind of effort that will inevitably push online personalization in advertising.