Should I use retargeting or lookalike audiences for newsletter Meta ads?

Retargeting has a ton of value in certain industries. I just don't think it does in ours.

"The reason is the value of a client is too low."

Why doesn't retargeting pencil for newsletters?

If you're selling a $300 product, you want to do all the retargeting. I typically get newsletter subscribers for 30 cents to a dollar. Even if retargeting worked, your cost would be too high, because you've limited what Meta can do. An advisor I was coaching had a pixel-limited campaign costing about $75 to $80 per result.

I'll caveat that I haven't tested it heavily.

What about lookalike audiences?

"The lookalike stuff makes so much sense in theory but doesn't seem to work as well in practice."

A paid-media specialist at a regional news company found the same in their own tests: retargeting and lookalikes built from page interactions did worse than plain interest audiences. Even Meta now says not to target and to let the creative be the target.

Lookalikes can also choke delivery. One relaunched campaign spent nothing at all, and the diagnosis was an empty or too-narrow lookalike with household income targeting layered on top.

So what do you do instead?

Go broad. My general strategy is to not target: we're a brand, here's what we do for you, you should sign up. Location is the only restriction. The creative attracts the right people and Meta finds more of them. Details in how to target Meta ads for a local newsletter.

Should I upload my subscriber list?

As an exclusion, once it's big enough. Uploading your list so ads don't keep paying to reach people who already subscribe is worth it around 20,000 subscribers. At 3,000 or 4,000 the value isn't there.

Is there a kind of retargeting I would try?

Yes, one idea, and it's an agency play rather than a growth tactic. If your signup survey asks something useful, those answers become an audience you could target on Meta.

The answer has to be something that's hard for anyone else to get. Homeowners probably isn't it, because that data isn't hard to find. Pet owners is closer.

"We can even target all the subscribers who say they have pets in our newsletter on Meta."

The package I picture: go to a local animal hospital and offer, for $2,000 a month, ads in the newsletters plus Meta ads aimed at your own subscribers who said they own pets. That's a higher-value offer than a newsletter ad alone.

It could work even better for a B2B newsletter, where the survey answer is a job title. If subscribers tell you they're marketing managers, you can go target those marketing managers.

This is still an idea, not a result I've proven. Surveys like this are what greetform collects right after someone subscribes.

When is boosting or engagement different?

Ads that push people to read a story are a different goal from lead generation. And boosting a post that's already popping organically can feed a follow-then-newsletter funnel. That's not retargeting; it's paying to spread what already works.