Sync your CRM lists into ad audiences

The best CRM lists for ads are the ones where you'd say something different to that group, or nothing at all. Kite looks at how your CRM is organized and proposes groups that fit your situation. Common ones include:

• Current customers, to exclude. This keeps acquisition ads away from people who already pay you. It's the simplest audience to build and usually saves money from the first day.
• Open opportunities, to target with proof. People in an active deal are comparing options. Case studies and customer stories help them more than another "book a demo" ad does.
• Lost deals from the last few months, to win back. These people knew enough to talk to sales. A new feature or a changed price can be a good reason to show them an ad.
• Past customers who cancelled, to re-engage or exclude. Whether to target or exclude this group depends on why they left, and Kite reads the deal notes and close reasons to suggest which.
• Your best customers, as a seed for lookalikes. Meta and LinkedIn can find people who resemble a list you give them, so a list of your highest-value customers can be a better starting point than your whole database.

Kite uses the fields your CRM actually has. In HubSpot, that might be an existing list or a search on lifecycle stage and deal stage. In Salesforce, it might be a list view your sales team already maintains, or a report of closed-won opportunities. When the field Kite needs is missing or messy, such as a "Customer" checkbox nobody updates, it tells you and suggests a better source, such as closed-won deals.

A list only works if the ad platform can match the people on it to its own users. Every platform matches on the details its users signed up with, so a list of work email addresses often matches poorly on Meta, where most people use a personal email address. Before anything is uploaded, Kite prepares each list so more of it matches:

• It removes anyone who has opted out of marketing in your CRM.
• It removes duplicate records, so the same person isn't counted twice.
• It lowercases email addresses and trims stray spaces.
• It puts phone numbers in international format with the country code.
• It adds first name, last name, country, and postal code where your CRM has them, because those fields help the platform confirm a match.

For LinkedIn, Kite can also build a company list instead of a contact list. A company list uses company names and website domains, which suits account-based campaigns where you want to reach everyone at a target account rather than one known contact.

Kite shows you the counts before anything is created. For example, it might report that 2,140 of your 2,600 customers have an email address, 380 also have a phone number, and 95 opted out of marketing and were removed.

Kite creates a Customer Match list in your connected Google Ads account and adds each person from your CRM list by email address. Google matches the addresses to Google accounts, and Google says the matching can take up to 48 hours. You can then use it in a campaign's audience settings, either to target those people or to exclude them.

Google only allows Customer Match in accounts that meet its eligibility rules, which look at your account's history of following Google's ad policies and paying on time. Google also won't serve ads to a list on Search or YouTube until enough of it has matched, so very small lists may not be usable there. Kite checks the list size and tells you if a list is too small to be worth using.

Kite creates the customer-list Custom Audience in your connected Meta Ads account, with a name and description that say which CRM group it holds and where the data came from. Meta asks every advertiser to state whether the list came directly from customers, from partners, or both, and Kite fills that in from what it knows about the list.

Kite's Meta connection can create the audience but can't add people to it, so Kite prepares the customer file in the columns Meta expects and your team uploads it in Ads Manager. Ads Manager hashes the file in your browser before it leaves your computer, so Meta matches people without receiving their contact details in plain text. Once Meta finishes matching, it shows the audience size, and Kite tells you which ad sets should include or exclude it.

Kite prepares a contact list or a company list in the format LinkedIn's Campaign Manager accepts, and your team uploads it as a Matched Audience. Company lists usually match better than contact lists on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn knows where its members work even when it doesn't know their email address.

With your LinkedIn Ads account connected, Kite can also draft LinkedIn campaigns with targeting by job title, seniority, industry, and company size, and suggest bids. A team owner or admin launches a draft campaign from Kite after confirming its budget. Kite tells you which of your uploaded Matched Audiences to add to each campaign.

Build a list of your current customers from your CRM, turn it into an audience in each ad platform, and add that audience as an exclusion on every campaign meant to win new customers. Kite builds the customer list from your closed-won deals or your customer lifecycle stage, creates the audience in Google Ads and prepares it for Meta and LinkedIn, and lists the campaigns that should exclude it.

It's often worth excluding open deals as well. Someone already talking to your sales team doesn't need a top-of-funnel ad, and clicks from them make your acquisition campaigns look better than they are. Kite suggests which campaigns should exclude only customers and which should also exclude open deals, based on what each campaign is trying to do.

Kite keeps your audiences current by checking your CRM on a schedule and updating the lists with what changed. You agree on the job once, such as "Every Monday, add anyone who became a customer last week to the Google Ads exclusion list," and Kite runs it each week without being asked.

For Google Ads, Kite adds new people to the existing Customer Match list through your connected account. For Meta and LinkedIn, Kite prepares a fresh file each time with the people who joined the group, and your team uploads it. Each run reports what changed, such as "Added 14 new customers to the exclusion list. 3 had no email address in HubSpot, so they couldn't be added." You get that report in the Kite web app, by email, or in a Slack channel if your team uses Slack.

Kite adds people through the Google Ads connection, but it doesn't remove them. That works well for exclusion lists, because a customer stays a customer. For a list that people should leave, such as open deals, Kite builds a fresh list on a regular schedule and tells you to swap it into your campaigns.

Kite measures each audience by what happens in your ad accounts and your CRM. It reads campaign results from Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn, then compares spending and conversions before and after an exclusion went live.

It also checks the leads your ads bring in against your CRM. If your ads are still producing form fills from people who are already customers, the exclusion list is out of date or isn't attached to every campaign, and Kite tells you which one. If a win-back audience is producing meetings with people from lost deals, Kite reports that too, so you can decide whether to put more budget behind it.