Facebook Custom Audiences (FCAs) are an advertising targeting system by which Facebook allows advertisers to target lists of specific Facebook users for particular pay-per-click or CPM campaigns. Advertisers match Facebook users using email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs, app user IDs, or any combination of these identifiers. Once a customer list is uploaded to Facebook, ads will appear only for customers matched to that list.

The biggest challenges with effectively using FCAs for customer retention are deciding which customers to include in which lists and then manually updating the numerous lists on a frequent basis. Optimove addresses both of these challenges as part of its core functions: the software allows marketers to identify and manage large numbers of highly-targeted micro-segments of customers and automatically updates the customers in each list every day. Updating the lists daily maximizes the response rates of customers by always targeting customers with the most relevant messages and incentives, given each customer’s most recent actions and behaviors.

Setting Up the Integration

1. Submit the Facebook Integration Form

Fill out the “Facebook Integration request" via the form to connect to your Facebook ad account to Optimove.

2. Provide Facebook Ad Account Details to Optimove

In order for Optimove to connect to your Facebook ad account, you need to provide the following information within the form:

Facebook ad account name and ID– The name and ID of the Facebook ad account you want Optimove to use. The ID can be found in Facebook’s Ads Manager, by selecting the relevant ad account from the dropdown list (as shown at right).
User ID type– You must choose the method by which Facebook will match its users to the customers in your database. You may select as many fields as you require of the following matching methods – more methods mean more matched customers! Of course, the values for whichever option you select must be included in the batch data received by Optimove and preferably in the same format that is required by Facebook.
- Email address (or hashed email address)
- Phone number (or hashed phone number).
  Required format: remove symbols, letters, and any leading zeroes. It is recommended to include the country code prefix.
- Facebook user ID
- Gender.
  Require format: Female/Male.
- Birthday date.
  Require format: DD/MM/YYYY (can also be sent separately, i.e. Birth Year)
- Last Name (or hashed last name)
- First Name (or hashed first name)
- First Name Initial
- State Code (or hashed state code).
  Require format:2-character according to ANSI abbreviation code.
- City (or hashed city)
- Zip Code (or hashed zip code)- Required format: Use lowercase, no white space. Use only the first 5 digits for U.S. Use Area/District/Sector format for the UK.
- Country Code (or hashed Country code)- Require format 2 characters from ISO 3166-1 alpha-2.
- Mobile advertiser ID
Additional ad account names and IDs(optional) – required if you want to use shared Custom Audiences.
Facebook application ID(optional) - when working with Facebook user IDs, provide the Facebook application ID used for extracting user IDs.

|| The hashing method must be SHA256. You can read more about working with this hashing method here. If you choose to provide non-hashed email addresses or phone numbers, Optimove will perform the hashing for you.

|| Note: when configuring more than one Facebook Ad account, one of the accounts will need to be the main account while the rest will be sub-accounts. We suggest creating one account as the main company account and configuring the rest as sub-accounts, so all integration permissions will be granted in the main account.

3. Accept Facebook’s Custom Audience Terms of Service

After you have been informed by Optimove’s integration staff that they have completed the initial setup, you need to log in with any Facebook account that has full Admin permission in the main Facebook account you are integrating with and accept Facebook’s terms for using Custom Audiences. Before proceeding, log out of any connected Facebook accounts, to avoid connecting to the wrong account. Point your browser to the following page and log in with any Facebook account that has full Admin permission in the main Facebook account you are integrating with.

You will then need to accept the Custom Audience Terms of Service using the link below, replacing the XXXX with your Facebook Account ID and the YYYY with your Facebook Business ID:

https://business.facebook.com/ads/manage/customaudiences/tos/?act=XXXX&business_id=YYYY

|| Note: if you do not know your Account ID or Business ID, here are the quick guides to finding them in your Facebook account:

Find your Account ID here.

Find your Business ID here.

4. Log in to Facebook from within Optimove

From the Campaign Builder, create a new Facebook campaign by selecting the “Facebook Custom Audience” channel.

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The Facebook Login button will appear to the right. You need to log in with the account you accepted the terms & conditions.

Please note before getting started:

Optimove has a business application that Facebook approved called Optimove Engager.

The app is used to manage marketing on the Facebook platform, which is why we have requested and have been granted the following permissions by Facebook. For more information on Facebook Ads Management Standard Access, learn more here.

Facebook asks you which account you’d like to log in with.
Once you’ve entered your username and password, Facebook would ask you to confirm the account you want to log in with:
Then, Facebook will ask you to explicitly grant each of the requested permissions:
Finally, you would see the following confirmation page, letting you know the authorization flow passed successfully:

From this point on, Optimove should remain connected to Facebook without any further intervention. If for any reason, the approval is removed, you will be asked to log in to Facebook again from within Optimove.

Executing Facebook Campaigns Using Optimove

1. Populate Your Customer Audience

Once the above steps have been completed, you are ready to run your first FCA campaign.

To run a campaign on Facebook using the integration with Optimove, begin setting up a new campaign in the Campaign Builder, and select the “Facebook” channel. Then select the desired custom audience from the "Custom Audience" dropdown list.

You can find existing list names using the dropdown menu, or you can create a new list using the "+" button.

The "Share with" field will indicate which FCA account the list will be sent to. You can populate this list with multiple accounts by selecting multiple names.

If you previously provided Optimove with additional Facebook ad account names and IDs, you may also select, at this time, with which ad account(s) the selected custom audience will be shared.

From this point on, Optimove will now automatically populate the Custom Audience with the customers included in the selected Target Group, and remove customers from the audience once the campaign's duration is over. For example, if the campaign duration is 1 day only, and is non-recurring, the customers will be in the audience for 1 day only.

Please note:

When creating Lookalike Audiences, Facebook requires a minimum of 100 seed users from a source audience (e.g., website visitors, customer list). For better performance, a seed list of 1,000+ users is recommended.

If you would like your audience to be updated daily with the most relevant customers, we recommend scheduling a daily recurring campaign in Optimove with a 1-day duration, to populate the audience every day with the relevant customers, and remove those that are no longer relevant.

2. Set up the Campaign on Facebook

After the campaign is scheduled in Optimove, use the Facebook Ads Manager to create or select the desired Facebook campaign for the Custom Audience populated by Optimove.

3. Monitor your campaign in Optimove

You can then monitor the campaign in Mission Control.