Lookalike Audiences help you find new customers

Lookalike modeling has been around for a while, and for good reason. It’s a powerful targeting tool that’s proven its worth by honing in on particular audiences, especially those of high value, to drive impressive ROAS.

Lookalike Audiences is LiveIntent’s lookalike modeling solution that helps marketers reach and acquire new customers with precision targeting. Keep reading to learn how to leverage Lookalike Audiences in the email channel to achieve your business goals.

What are Lookalike Audiences and how does it work?

A lookalike audience is an audience of new potential customers who have yet to purchase with your brand but are likely customers based on attributes shared with your best customers.

LiveIntent Lookalike Audiences are built from a seed of your first-party customer data. To ensure you build a valuable Lookalike Audience from your seed audience, we suggest using a group for your seed that represents your model customers — people you want to find more of! These can be folks that have taken actions that sit high up in your funnel, like those who sign up for offers, or actions further down the funnel, like your loyal shoppers, frequent purchasers, or those with high order values.

This seed list can come from your CRM or any other data warehouse. All you have to do is upload that list into LiveIntent’s Audience Manager, and we take it from there. Our modeling technology scores the seed audience based on 350 demographic and behavioral attributes and finds new people across our exchange who have similar characteristics to the seed audience.

Want to know more? Check out our video explainer where we explore lookalike modeling through the lens of the 1988 hit film Twins, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito (trust us, it’ll make sense once you watch it).

The benefits of LiveIntent’s Lookalike Audiences

Precise yet scalable

Lookalike Audiences are uniquely built to capture new customers through the email channel. Our model not only analyzes demographic information like age, gender, and device but also looks at behavioral attributes, such as a consumer’s interest in specific newsletter categories or the types of content they’ve clicked on.

When you combine precise yet scalable targeting with high-quality inventory, you’re likely to find consumers who are interested and receptive to your message because they’ve demonstrated interest and engagement with similar content in the past. The best part is that even with such granular targeting, you are ultimately expanding your reach into an entirely incremental channel.

Efficient

With Lookalike Audiences, you can achieve greater efficiency than with other targeting methodologies. That’s because instead of spending time and advertising dollars on reaching consumers who have no interest in what you have to offer, you focus your targeting on audiences that resemble customers that already love your brand, products, and offerings.

Long-term results

Marketers who’ve used Lookalike Audiences with LiveIntent over time have observed positive returns on their investment. Those who look at metrics indicative of a customer’s lifetime value have found that Lookalike Audiences reach customers who will convert with a brand at a higher value time after time. For example, Samuel Hubbard found that Lookalike Audiences generated a 2.5X return on ad spend. The shoe brand discovered that these consumers were not one-and-done customers but rather people who’ve developed a relationship with their brand.

Lookalike Audiences & email newsletters: A perfect pair

Lookalike Audiences have many benefits for marketers running advertising campaigns in email newsletters. LiveIntent offers inventory across more than 2000+ premium publishers; when you combine this with a scalable and engaged audience of [insert number here], email newsletters and Lookalike Audiences are the perfect pair for finding new customers who are likely long-term brand loyalists.

Next up in this context series: Custom Audiences! We’ll dive into several use cases for this audience type spanning acquisition, retention, and re-engagement. In the meantime, reach out [email protected] if you’d like to learn more about how you can leverage LiveIntent’s Lookalike Audiences.