Twitter: Tailored Audiences from Lists
Which fields can you prepare for a list to import to Twitter for paid marketing? According to Twitter Ads documentation, you can reference:
- Email addresses
- Mobile Advertising IDs
- Twitter @handles
- Twitter user IDs
There are pros and cons to each identifier. Here are their benefits and shortfalls:
| Identifier | Benefit | Shortfall |
|---|---|---|
| Email addresses | Easiest to export from a CRM or marketing automation platform. | Only matches when the address on file is the one tied to the Twitter account, so match rates run low. |
| Mobile Advertising IDs | Strong for retargeting app users you already reach. | Nearly impossible to source for a cold B2B prospect list. |
| Twitter @handles | Public and easy to find by hand. | Handles change whenever a user renames themselves, so lists rot. |
| Twitter user IDs | Permanent: the ID survives any handle change, so it matches best. | Not displayed anywhere in the interface; you have to retrieve it. |
When we're advertising on Twitter, we want to be able to target the right users. Out of the four options, the id number is best. So, the question is, how do we retrieve the twitter id for a given user?
One way is by brute force. You can query each username in a variety of online sites that will ping the Twitter API for you and reveal the number we want.
There are, however, two programmatic (semi-automatic) ways to get the user ids of the prospects: