Beginner

How to create a real-time suppression campaign to optimize advertising

The goal of this recipe is to implement a real-time suppression strategy that removes users from advertising campaigns immediately after they convert. This prevents wasted ad spend by ensuring that users who have already completed a desired action, such as making a purchase, are no longer shown ads for that same offer.

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The desired outcome is to efficiently manage your ad budget by reducing redundancy in user targeting and focusing on users who are still in the process of converting. This ensures that converted users are automatically excluded from campaigns in real-time, leading to a more optimized advertising effort.

Step 1: Define the Suppression Criteria

Decide what users should be suppressed from the campaign by defining what actions a user has taken within a specific timeframe. For instance, if a user has completed an order within 7 days, the user should be suppressed from your advertising campaigns.

Step 2: Add the required Sources:

In your workspace, add a new prod or dev source for your website and (optional) another for your order processing system. This should be your website where checkout events will be tracked and the system that captures completed orders. These sources will be responsible for collecting the required Track Events and sending them to Segment.

Sign Up or Log In to Segment

First, access the Segment platform by signing up or logging into your existing account.

Create a Source for Your Website

A source in Segment acts as the origin of data you collect, such as user interactions on your website.

In your Segment workspace, navigate to the Sources section.
Click the Add Source button.
From the catalog of sources, select JavaScript (for websites)
Provide a name for your source, e.g., "i.e. Company Website - Dev or Prod".
Optionally, add labels for organization.
Enter your website URL.
Click Create Source button

Install the Segment Snippet

After creating your source, Segment will provide you with a JavaScript snippet.

Copy the JavaScript snippet provided by Segment.
Paste the snippet into the <head> tag of your site to install Segment.

If you need to connect your website, mobile app, or server as a source please refer to our documentation on these touchpoints.

Step 3: Track your events

Events are user actions you want to track, such as page views or button clicks. In order to build the funnels needed for a timed-out suppression campaign, you'll need to track two key events: 'Page Viewed' and ‘Order Completed’ from your website and 'Order Completed'.

Order Completed: Manually add this event to your site (See V2 Ecommerce spec).
Page Viewed: This event will start sending to Segment once Analytics.js is added to the site.

It should be noted that 'Order Completed' triggers an Identify call because this event allows you to tie a user to their actions and record traits about them. This can further be used for personalized messaging in your timed-out suppression campaign.

Only Identify calls can add and update user traits to a profile. For connections-only customers, the Identify event can still be mapped to downstream destinations to create/update user profiles.

Step 4: Add Destinations

Choose where you want to send the collected data—for this use case we recommend using in-app messaging or connecting to a paid media destination like Facebook Ads or Google Ads.

In your Segment workspace, add a new destination.

Select your preferred tool from the catalog. This destination will receive the data collected by your source and use it according to your needs.

Step 5: Test your setup

Finally, test your setup to ensure data is being collected and sent correctly. You can do this by performing the actions you're tracking on your dev website and checking if the corresponding events appear in your Segment debugger and analytics tool.

The Source Debugger is a tool that helps you confirm that API calls made from your website, mobile app, or servers arrive to your Segment Source, so you can troubleshoot your Segment setup even quicker.

Your data may not show up instantaneously and there may be a delay, but once the data is flowing you are ready to move to the next step.

Step 6: Analyze and activate

Once the data is flowing correctly and the suppression campaign is live, you can begin analyzing the data to further optimize your efforts:

Analyze User Behavior: Use the data collected to analyze user behavior across your website. Identify trends such as how long users take to convert or which pages lead to the highest conversions.
Deploy Targeted Strategies: Leverage the data to engage users who are still in the conversion funnel. For example, you could retarget users who started but didn’t complete the checkout process, while ensuring that those who did convert are excluded from future ads.
If you need inspiration, look to this guide with nearly 70 examples of ad templates that are designed to convert.

Final Thoughts

By implementing a real-time suppression campaign, you ensure that your advertising spend is allocated efficiently. Instead of retargeting users who have already converted, you can focus your efforts on new leads or those who are still in the conversion funnel. This approach optimizes your budget and enhances the overall effectiveness of your campaigns, leading to better ROI and a more personalized user experience.

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