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How to optimize campaigns to reduce RTO

  • Updated

Introduction

This guide explains how to improve campaign performance by focusing on high-quality orders using Meta’s Delivered events. It covers how to optimize campaigns for successful deliveries, create custom and lookalike audiences based on delivery outcomes, and apply a targeting strategy that prioritizes low-risk customers while excluding users more likely to result in RTOs.


Prerequisites:

How to reduce Return to Origin (RTO) using Meta events

In this article, you’ll learn:

  1. How to optimize campaigns using Delivered events
  2. How to Create Custom Audience
  3. Creating the RTO-Optimized Lookalike Audience
  4. Applying the Audience Strategy

1. How to optimize campaigns using Delivered events

To optimize for high-quality orders:

  1. Create or edit a campaign in Meta Ads Manager
  2. Choose Sales or Conversions objective
  3. Under Optimization & Delivery, select:
    • Delivered (custom conversion)



This helps Meta prioritize users whose orders are more likely to be delivered successfully.

2. How to Create Custom Audience

You must create two distinct custom audiences using the custom events we pass to Meta.

  1. Log in to your Meta Ads Manager and navigate to the Audiences section.
  2. Click Create Audience and select Custom Audience.
  3. Choose Website as the source.

  4. Create Audience A (Targeting Source):
  5. Source: Select your Pixel.
  6. Events: Choose the custom event named Delivered.
  7. Name: Give it a clear name, such as [Custom] Successfully Delivered Customers.
  8. Create Audience B (Exclusion List):
  9. Source: Select your Pixel.
  10. Events: Choose the custom event named RTO.
  11. Name: Give it a clear name, such as [Custom] RTO High-Risk Customers.

3. Creating the RTO-Optimized Lookalike Audience

Once your custom audience is populated, you will create a Lookalike Audience based on your successful customers.

  1. In the Audiences section, click Create Audience and select Lookalike Audience.
  2. Source: Select the custom audience you just created: [Custom] Successfully Delivered Customers.
  3. Audience Size: Select your preferred audience percentage (e.g., 1% to 10%) based on your target reach.
  4. Create Audience: This new Lookalike Audience represents users who share traits with your lowest-RTO-risk customers.

4. Applying the audience strategy

Use the following strategy when setting up new ad campaigns:

  1. Targeting: In your Ad Set, set the Target Audience to the Lookalike Audience you created in Step 3.
  2. Crucial Exclusion: Scroll down to the Exclusions field and select the custom audience named [Custom] RTO High-Risk Customers.

This ensures your ads avoid users most likely to return orders.