Twitter expands tailored audiences to let brands target their Promoted Tweets with email addresses and user IDs

Last month, Twitter launched tailor audiences to let brands target their Promoted Tweets using browser cookies. Today, the company expanded the advertising product to include email addresses and user IDs.

These two separate approaches, CRM audiences (email addresses) and Twitter IDs (usernames), are meant to help advertisers define groups of “existing and potential customers,” according to Twitter. The company outlines both with comparable examples:

The first method lets brands create tailored audiences from lists of email addresses from their own customer relationship management (CRM) database. Alternatively, they can use CRM database records they have previously stored with an advertising partner.

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The second method lets brands create tailored audiences using lists of Twitter IDs. Both usernames and user IDs are accepted.

The CRM approach is more focused on existing customers: the brand shares hashes of email addresses and Twitter matches that information to accounts of its members to show them promoted tweets. The Twitter ID is better suited for potential customers: the brand uses public information on the social network (like a user’s bio, follower count, verified status, or past tweets) or in its API to identify specific accounts which are the most appropriate to see a promoted tweet or account.

Yet Twitter is also going further than that by introducing the ability to exclude selected CRM and Twitter ID audiences from its existing targeting options: interests, keywords, and TV. This should be useful if you want to exclude existing customers or individuals who fit a certain interest group.

The creation of CRM and Twitter ID tailored audiences has also been added into Twitter’s Ads API, now available through partners that support the capability. If you want to get started now, the following Twitter ads partners are helping bring these options to market: Acxiom, Datalogix, Epsilon, Liveramp, Mailchimp, Merkle, and Salesforce ExactTarget for CRM.

If you’re a Twitter user and reading all this makes your head hurt, don’t worry: you can opt out. Just uncheck the box next to “Tailor ads based on information shared by ad partners” in your privacy settings and Twitter says it won’t match your account to information from its ads partners for tailored audiences.

Image Credit: Bethany Clarke/Getty Images