The complete guide to CRM retargeting

Engagement is a necessary element of getting more conversions and sales deals. That’s why marketers use retargeting ads to convert buyers into customers. Especially since ads are three times more likely to get clicked by retargeted customers compared to new ones.

Web retargeting is an across-the-board strategy helping marketers to serve ads to internet users. However, CRM retargeting is a less-popular practice, despite its effectiveness. Nevertheless, it’s an ideal way to target prospects online using CRM data, and increase conversion rates at lower funnel stages. 

In this article, we’ll talk about what CRM retargeting is and how to implement it, using best-in-class automation tools. 

What is CRM retargeting & why do you need it? 

CRM retargeting uses first-party data stored in your CRM (Customer Relationship Management), POS (Point of Sale), and other marketing data storages to deliver more personalized content to an audience. 

You can use CRM lists to create retargeting campaigns. These lists are based on the data that you’ve collected; demographics, common traits, online behavior, offline interactions with your brand, etc. In short, these segments help build highly-targeted ads when running CRM targeting and retargeting campaigns.

If you haven’t set up a solid CRM system yet, discover how CRM integrations work here. 

Website retargeting vs. CRM retargeting

Website retargeting focuses on the people who visited your website but didn’t make a purchase. Targeting these individuals help convert them into potential customers by offering them personalized ads about your products on other platforms or the same website. 

Brands often use this marketing technique to:

• Increase sales during a new collection’s launch
• Promote new partnerships
• Advertise their bestsellers
• Build brand awareness 

CRM retargeting, on the other hand, makes it easier and more efficient for businesses to reach potential customers. 

CRMs store your leads’ data and provide more insights about how to approach your target market in terms of strategy and audience. Besides basic info like the customers’ names, locations, and email addresses, CRMs also store data such as recent visits and interactions. You can use these insights to create lookalike audiences. (we’ll talk about this in a few paragraphs).

While CRM data offers massive potential, you’ll still need to use this data in the right way in order to attract more customers and generate more sales. And CRM retargeting helps you do just that. 

Benefits of CRM retargeting

There are countless benefits to maintaining a robust CRM system. On average, using CRMs can boost conversion rates by 300%.

When we say CRM advertising, the first advantage that comes to mind is having more personalized interactions with the user you’ve already engaged. It means generating high-conversion ads using more meaningful communication with your prospects. 

Let’s have a look at the overall benefits you can gain when running retargeting campaigns.

1. CRM retargeting offers a more personalized ad experience.

80% of consumers are more willing to buy from brands that offer a tailored experience. Adding that to retargeted ads’ 10x higher clickthrough rates, targeting prospects who have already had a meaningful interaction with your company is well worth it. 

2. Channel your efforts towards the prospects who are more likely to convert.

CRM information like lifecycle stages, demographics, and job titles helps you prioritize your ad budget on audiences with higher likelihoods of conversion.

3. Retarget leads who have responded to your lead generation forms.

CRM segments can also be built around your leads generated by lead forms across multiple marketing platforms. 

For example, when a lead opts in for downloading a piece of content through a Facebook Lead Ads form, you can further target them on Google search, LinkedIn, and TikTok. 

4. Contacts in your CRM allow consent-based marketing. 

To stay compliant with the new regulations on privacy, you can only get in touch with contacts who opt-in. Your CRM lead data includes contacts who are expecting to receive communication from you. Apart from staying compliant, these users are more receptive to your ads and more likely to finalize a purchase. 

Speaking about data privacy compliance, read this article to find out more about cookieless retargeting. 

Moreover, leveraging advanced CRM retargeting techniques often involves the integration of specialized data model tools. These tools enable businesses to streamline their data management processes, ensuring that CRM segments are up-to-date and accurately synced with advertising platforms in real-time.

5. CRM remarketing offers an efficient way to reach B2B contacts.

Thanks to updates in CRM data in recent years, you can target contacts that didn’t convert before. This practice results in conversions that would have only happened with aggressive retargeting campaigns.   

6. It helps improve email nurturing campaigns.  

CRM advertising techniques can boost your lead-nurturing email communication as an additional way of reaching contacts in your CRM and converting them.

Incorporating CRM retargeting into your digital marketing strategy

CRM-based marketing strategies call for more elaborate planning and setup. To do this, you’ll have to invest extra time to increase lower pipeline conversions for your business. Compared to pixel-based strategies, however, the results are much better. 

Here’s how to build a good CRM retargeting strategy. 

1. Define your audiences

Like any other good marketing strategy, you’ll have to start with your audience. 

CRM lists also have to be specified within the CRM before they’re uploaded. Ensure that your targeted contact list only contains marketing opt-in contacts to avoid violating privacy regulations.

After creating the list, prioritize which types of campaigns to pursue and analyze your current marketing funnel. 

2. Uploading your lead data

Here, you’ll need to export your list from your CRM, clean it to remove any junk leads, and organize it. Before uploading your lists, make sure they match the formatting standards of the advertising platform. 

Also, don’t forget to include at least an email column on your list, formatted for the same platform; you could use the full name, phone number, etc. 

When running campaigns on multiple ad platforms, and dealing with several different audiences, updating this data in real-time through manual handling will not even be possible!

To avoid managing your uploads and CRM data transfer manually, use integration providers like LeadsBridge to connect your CRM with your advertising platform.

3. Run follow-up campaigns 

Consider the next steps after a prospect converts to your CRM advertising campaigns. 

Maintain a specific dashboard for reporting on CRM remarketing campaigns. So you can delete a contact that has removed their consent. In case the contact is owned by a specific salesperson, you will want to make sure that the sales rep is automatically notified about the conversion. 

When creating automated data bridges, LeadsBridge offers a free email receipt feature. It means that anytime a lead interacts with your ad, you’ll receive a notification right in your mailbox. This feature is available for any of our bridges, including our free integrations. 

How companies can segment their CRM audiences for retargeting

While CRM marketing has many benefits, you can only access these benefits if you have the right execution strategy in place. For best results, try the following CRM retargeting best practices.

1. Awareness campaigns & top-of-the-funnel nurturing

Your CRM data can be your performance indicators. So you can use them to move contacts down the funnel. 

The idea is to nurture contacts from top-of-the-funnel offers. Then, build a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) list by targeting your contacts with bottom-of-the-funnel offers.

2. Bottom-of-the-funnel nurturing

There are always some MQLs that sales reps can’t convert to SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads). You can retarget these leads by offering them meetings with your sales team, in order to nurture and convert them into sales.

3. Running upselling & cross-selling campaigns

Upgrade existing customers’ services or sell them additional products and services. When targeting customers with upsell and cross-sell campaigns, however, personalization is the key.

These types of campaigns need to feel personal in order to avoid alienating customers, and businesses will need to adjust their strategy based on company size and level of customer engagement.

4. Account-based marketing

Account Based Marketing (ABM) segments can be used in ad networks as part of your ABM strategy and serve personalized offers to key decision-makers at your target companies.

How to get started with CRM retargeting

As we already touched on, you can leverage the full potential of your CRM marketing with the right execution strategy. 

Goal setting is the first step, followed by creating a clear roadmap to achieve your business’s objectives. Then, you’ll need to allocate a budget.

The next step is to define your target audience. Once you know the goals of your campaign, you can easily understand who it is you’re trying to reach. Accordingly, you can create audience lists within your CRM data first. 

Whether for offline or online behavioral data, you can use your CRM data to build a seed audience segment. To stay compliant with privacy regulations, however, make sure these are contacts that opted in to receive marketing messages. 

You can also segment these audience lists further according to the customer journey stage, engagement rates, etc. 

For creating better segments, learn more about lead scoring here.

Once this is assembled, you can configure your CRM to overlay with advertising platforms, such as Facebook, to specify and match the data fed through each platform. This lets you achieve better targeting opportunities, and improve your response rates and conversion rates. 

How to apply CRM retargeting on different digital advertising platforms

Marketers and business owners collect so much valuable data in their CRM software to keep data from different sources organized, such as contact information, purchase history, customer insight, demographics, etc. But most of this data is not utilized. 

That’s why this form of retargeting is one of the best contemporary marketing strategies to make the most of this data across different social platforms. 

LeadsBridge is an official partner with Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and TikTok, which enables us to offer you best-in-class automation solutions. 

Facebook

Using CRM retargeting, Facebook Lead Ads’ data in your CRM system can be used to retarget these leads. In the first place, this practice helps you access all of your new leads in one place and avoid manual data management.

However, you can leverage the full potential of your company’s CRM database. Using automated data bridges, you can create Lookalike Audiences and Custom Audience Targeting lists on Facebook that are up-to-date and high performing. 

Here’s how it works:

Manually: CSV file lists 

CRM segments filter your database to create CRM-saved search segments. Once you have created these segments, you can simply upload a filtered CSV on Facebook.

Automatically; Facebook Ad Custom Audiences

The entire process of retargeting your CRM segments can be fully automated by connecting your platforms through Facebook Custom Audiences integrations. 

Find out all you need to know about Facebook Custom Audiences here.

Google

Similarly, you can retarget your leads using your customer data in your Ads targeting. In practice, Customer Match helps you match your list with Google’s targeting data.

Targeting existing customers is highly efficient when it comes to PPC advertising. The Customer Match feature lets you increase your data granularity for your remarketing campaigns, given your CRM is up to date. 

That’s why using Google Customer Match integrations is a go-to if you want to achieve even more precise targeting.

Here’s how to fully integrate Google Customer Match in your marketing strategy. 

LinkedIn Matched Audiences

While being considered a costly advertising platform, CRM retargeting on LinkedIn helps you make up for your investment by increasing your ROIs. LinkedIn Audiences allows you to pull the data from your CRM and get insights on how your LinkedIn-nurtured leads are moving throughout the funnel.

Depending on the size of your CRM segments, you can split your targeting into different lists. This allows you to push different content at various stages of the funnel and increase your precision.

Using automation, you can sync data between LinkedIn and your CRM and create different segments for high-value leads that are up to date.

Discover how to use LinkedIn Matched Audiences to achieve true full-funnel marketing.

TikTok Custom Audiences

Using TikTok for remarketing offers a robust and cost-effective social media marketing strategy. All you have to do is to select Custom Audiences and target your ads groups based on specific factors, including Website Traffic, Engagement, App Activity, and Customer File.

Most marketers overlook retargeting on TikTok, which makes it less competitive. This means you have more opportunities to make a significant impact.

Similarly, keeping your CRM segments updated calls for setting up automation bridges. 

Check out this complete guide about TikTok Custom Audience.

LeadsBridge & CRM retargeting

Generally, targeting leads that are already familiar with your brand and product should deliver your best ROI. So targeting existing customers has the potential to be even more profitable than remarketing. This is the essence of CRM targeting. 

To run retargeting campaigns, however, you’ll need to maintain up-to-date databases using automated audience-based data management. 

Leadsbridge automatically syncs custom audiences by connecting your CRM with your favorite advertising platform. This helps streamline the process and increase your ad targeting precision for the audience to be nurtured and converted.

Benefits of using LeadsBridge for CRM retargeting 

• Refresh your audience lists automatically and on a regular basis. 

Retargeting audiences contain thousands of contacts to perform well. Considering that this data is constantly changing (leads becoming customers, customers becoming returning customers etc), you’ll need to keep them up-to-date regularly. 

• Enabling contact exclusion

Using our integration, you can automatically exclude contacts who opted out from marketing communications from retargeting. This helps you stay compliant with privacy regulations. 

• Secure and real-time data transfer

When running automated sync and refresh of the audience, LeadsBridge mirrors exactly the segmentation you have in your CRM; our integrations help deliver uninterrupted operation by transferring data from CRMs to and from digital advertising platforms in real-time and with maximum security. 

• Help create various CRM lists for better targeting

Small CRM segments can be used to create more extensive and relevant audiences for cross-channel marketing campaigns. 

For instance, you can create the CRM Segment “A” that contains new leads. Using LeadsBridge integration, you can sync this data back to the platform to create Custom Audience A that contains leads. 

Similarly, you can build a CRM segment “B” which contains customers. Then use our automation bridge to feed the data back to the advertising platform and create Custom Audience B (using the same customers’ data). 

Moreover, you can create other audience segments based on other factors, such as demographics, quote/appointment requests, etc.

Combine more segments into a single audience

In addition to creating an audience for each segment, LeadsBridge helps you to create separate bridges to combine multiple segments into a single audience. For instance, merge the data of CRM segments “A” and “B” to build the merged Custom Audience list of “X”. 

Sync data from different data sources

If you are using multiple systems, LeadsBridge lets you build audiences by pulling data from multiple sources. Nonetheless, you can create audiences for any single segment from any system or combine segments into one single audience. 

For instance, use HubSpot segment “A” to create the Custom Audience list of “A”. Or combine HubSpot segment “A” and Mailchimp segment “B” to build the Custom Audience list of “Y”.

Create Lookalike audience lists

Lookalike modeling can define audiences with more than just basic demographic data, like age and gender, allowing you to expand your target audience. 

You can scale behavioral data of the people who are likely to be interested, in order to build larger audiences and use them for multi-channel marketing campaigns. No matter for offline CRM or online behavioral data, marketers can include more data to enrich this segment with added attributes. 

These lookalike audiences can then be on-boarded across all marketing channels, such as Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn. LeadsBridge integrations let you sync and refresh audiences, so lookalike audiences will always be accurate and high-performing.

Audience targeting add-on 

You can now use LeadsBridge integrations for audience targeting using new customized solutions in order to advertise to your leads affordably. Our previous model used a Monthly Tracked Units counter on Custom Audiences plans; It counted an audience each time contact was added or removed. On the other hand, the new audience counter counts just the maximum size of the audience reached. 

The audience targeting add-on helps you figure out the audience size you require at a flat fee. Accordingly, you’ll pay only for the size and not every single lead. This system also gives you more flexibility to run your campaigns without interruption.

You can activate the audience counter on your current custom audience plan by contacting our sales team: Book a call today.

The takeaways

CRM targeting and retargeting is a marketing strategy that uses the CRM segments of your leads, prospects, and customers. These lists are created based on common traits that allow you to retarget them through your ads at every stage of the funnel.

By creating automated data bridges, LeadsBridge allows you to create persuasive ads by retargeting your ideal custom audience.

Discover more about LeadsBridge’s Custom Audience feature here.