Google Customer Match Adwords to target existing customers

Have you ever wanted the ability to remind an existing happy customer that you can help them at the very moment that they’re looking for your products? Well now you can thanks to the boffins at Google.

It’s a bit big brotherish, but imagine that you’re able to look over all your customers shoulders and just at the point they type in a key word relevant to your business you choose to display an advert at the top of the search results pages? Well you can’t spy on your customers, but if you upload their email addresses to Google then Google Adwords’ new “Customer Match” product will happily do the spying for you.

Google say “Customer Match is a new product designed to help you reach your highest-value customers on Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail – when it matters most. 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“.

Google go on to explain “Let’s say you’re a travel brand. You can now reach people who have joined your rewards program as they plan their next trip. For example, when these rewards members search for “non-stop flights to new york” on Google.com, you can show relevant ads at the top of their search results on any device right when they’re looking to fly to New York. And when those members are watching their favorite videos on YouTube or catching up on Gmail, you can show ads that inspire them to plan their next trip“.

Using Customer Match, you can also generate Similar Audiences to reach new customers on YouTube and Gmail who are likely to be interested in your products and services. For example, you can drive awareness on YouTube for new non-stop flights by showing TrueView ads to prospective customers who have similar interests and characteristics to your rewards members.

There are two things that this tells us. Firstly Google has far too much information about us and more importantly if you’ve neglected to build your email marketing lists and properly segmented them by customer type then it’s time to start doing so. It’s one thing to fire out an random email in the hope that a percentage of your past customers are ready to do business with you again, it’s quite another thing (and a lot more powerful) to drop your advert in front of them when they’re searching for products or services that you supply and tempt them back instead of allowing them to shop with a competitor.

Customer Match and Similar Audiences will be rolling out to all advertisers over the next few weeks.