So, as every experienced marketer knows, one of the best features of Facebook’s marketing platform is that you can upload a list of email addresses and target them. This is one of the most underused and most powerful features: so long as you can get an email address, you can target them.

Creative uses of this feature, we’ll discuss another time. But just so you can get a sense of the power, here are a few:

• You can target anyone who has filled out a form or contacted you via your website
• You can target former clients
• You can target current clients, to let them know about upsells
• If you’re a b2b company, you can target laser-like your prospects.
• You can use other services which enable you to get anyone’s email address and target them

Do you see the power brimming under the surface of those ideas?

But today’s gem: it’s widely ignored that you can do the same on Google Ads! Google calls it “Customer Match” and go start Googling it on the count of 3… 2…. wait, not yet. First, read The Caveat.

So, given that Google knows everything about everyone, and they run their display network and ad platforms–they can let you do the same as well: fill particular individual’s display ads they see with the ads you want to show them.

This is so awesome, how come the feature isn’t used as much as it should be? Is it “too good to be true”?

Well, almost. There are a few requirements, most of them small and easy (your account needs to have been live for good 90 days, no policy violations, a good payment history, etc) but then there’s one requirement that will make your jaw drop: your account must have a lifetime spend of $50,000.

In other words, this is available only to The Big Boys.

My recommendation for smaller accounts: estimate your avg monthly spending. Calculate how many months to go until you reach this level. If you spend $1k/month, you have 50 months to go. But guess what? Time flies. Life is short. In no time, 4 years will have gone, in a jiffy. So put it on your calendar, so you don’t forget when that point happens. Just try not to remember, at that point, that you will be 4 years closer to death.