LinkedIn Matched Audiences enable precision B2B targeting beyond standard demographics. Whether you are retargeting website visitors, uploading customer lists, or running account-based campaigns, Matched Audiences deliver your message to the right professionals.
Types of Matched Audiences
LinkedIn offers three primary Matched Audience types:
- Website Retargeting: Target professionals who visited your website or specific pages
- Contact Targeting: Upload email lists to reach known contacts
- Account Targeting: Upload company lists to reach employees at target accounts
Website Retargeting Setup
Website retargeting requires the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your site. Once installed:
- Create audiences based on all visitors or specific URL patterns
- Set lookback windows from 30-180 days
- Exclude converters to avoid wasted impressions
- Layer demographic targeting on top of retargeting
Segment retargeting audiences by funnel stage: product page visitors, pricing page visitors, and demo request page visitors each warrant different messaging.
Contact List Targeting
Upload email lists to reach specific individuals. Best practices:
- Use professional email addresses for higher match rates
- Include LinkedIn profile URLs if available for direct matching
- Aim for 10,000+ contacts to ensure 300+ matches
- Segment lists by persona, stage, or value tier
Contact targeting works well for customer upsell campaigns, event promotion to registrants, and nurturing MQLs toward SQL status.
Account-Based Marketing with Company Lists
Company targeting is powerful for B2B marketing. Upload a list of target companies and reach any LinkedIn member at those organizations:
- Upload company names or LinkedIn Company Page URLs
- Layer job function and seniority targeting
- Create awareness before sales outreach
- Support named account strategies
Company match rates are typically 60-80%, making this more reliable than email matching.
Lookalike Audiences
Expand reach by creating Lookalikes from your best-performing audiences:
- Source from customer lists or high-intent website visitors
- LinkedIn finds professionals with similar characteristics
- Combine with demographic targeting for qualified reach
- Test different source audiences for performance variation
Matched Audience Strategy
Build a comprehensive Matched Audience strategy:
- Top of Funnel: Lookalikes from customer lists + broad targeting
- Middle of Funnel: Website retargeting for key pages
- Bottom of Funnel: Contact targeting for MQLs and opportunities
- Expansion: Account targeting for ABM campaigns
- Retention: Customer lists for upsell and engagement
How Xplainr Helps
Xplainr tracks LinkedIn Matched Audience performance and shows how they contribute to pipeline and revenue across your full marketing mix.
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Measuring Matched Audience Performance
Track these metrics for Matched Audiences:
- Match rate for uploaded lists
- Audience size over time (growth/decay)
- CTR and engagement rate by audience type
- Cost per result compared to standard targeting
- cross-channel attribution to pipeline and revenue
Precision B2B Targeting
Matched Audiences transform LinkedIn from a broad B2B platform into a precision targeting tool. By combining first-party data with LinkedIn's professional graph, you reach exactly the right people at the right companies.
Related Resources
- Closed-Loop Reporting
Connect LinkedIn audience targeting to downstream revenue.
- Cookieless Attribution
First-party audience strategies as third-party data diminishes.