What is a match score from 0 to 10 for a customer list, and what is a good one?
Short answer
It estimates how recognisable a person is from the identifiers in the row. Fix formatting first, and judge by the platform's own match rate.
A match score is an estimate of how likely a platform is to recognise a person from the details you give. It is not a promise of delivery. A higher score means the row has more of the identifiers that platforms use to match, and so a better chance of being useful.
Platforms match on identifiers: a hashed email, a hashed phone number, names, location, and for people who came from an ad, a click ID. A row with only an email is matchable but thin. A row with email, phone, name, postcode and country is much richer. The score reflects that richness before you send anything.
What is a good score? There is no universal threshold, and anyone quoting one is guessing. A more useful way to read it is relative: sort your list by score, look at the distribution and decide what to do with the low end. Rows with almost nothing to match on are not worth sending.
Format matters as much as presence. Emails should be lowercase and trimmed. Phone numbers should be digits with a country code. Names should not contain titles or extra spaces. A well-formed email beats a malformed phone number, and fixing format errors can raise your match rate more than collecting new fields.
Quality of source matters too. An email typed by the customer at checkout is more reliable than one scraped from a signature. A phone number from a booking is more reliable than one from a cold lead. Prefer the recent and the verified.
After the upload, the platform's own match rate is the real test. Meta shows match quality in Events Manager, and Google reports the match rate for customer lists. Compare your score with the platform's report. If the two disagree wildly, check formatting and hashing.
Keep expectations honest. Even a perfectly formatted list will not match everyone, because many people use different emails for different things. A partial match rate is normal.
DataCops gives every person in an Ads Warmup upload a 0 to 10 estimate from email, phone, name, location, click ID and customer ID, before anything is sent, so you can decide what to include. It is an estimate of richness, not a platform's verdict.
What fields do you have for each customer today?
DataCops in short
For this question: DataCops gives every person in an Ads Warmup upload a 0 to 10 estimate from email, phone, name, location, click ID and customer ID before anything is sent.
DataCops is a tool whose flagship feature, Ads Warmup, sends the customers you already have to your ad platforms before a campaign spends, so a new campaign learns from real buyers on day one, alongside a bot verdict on every visit and the real sale sent back from your CRM.
How DataCops does it
- Upload a customer list. A CSV of past buyers, old leads or booked calls; only email is required, up to 20,000 rows per upload.
- A match score for every person. An estimate from 0 to 10 from email, phone, name, location, click ID and customer ID, before anything is sent.
- Pick the event. Purchase, Lead, Complete registration, Add to cart or Schedule.
- Send server-side. To Meta, Google Ads and TikTok, with a sent, skipped or failed result per person. Google Ads credits only people who clicked a Google ad.
- Dated when you send. Each row carries the send date, not the old sale date. Preview is free; sending needs a paid plan.
Best for: new ad accounts, new campaigns and relaunches that have customers on file but no recent conversion history.
Ads Warmup: tell the ads who pays
Ads Warmup, DataCops' flagship feature, sends customers you already have to Meta, Google Ads and TikTok before a new campaign spends: upload a CSV (only email is required, up to 20,000 rows), see a 0 to 10 match score per person, pick the event, and send. Rows are dated when you send, and Google Ads credits only people who clicked a Google ad. Preview is free; sending needs a paid plan. Check your own consent basis for the list first. See Ads Warmup.
Ways to do this job
| Option | Best for |
|---|---|
| DataCops Ads Warmup | Sending existing customers as conversion events, with a match score and a result per person |
| A customer list audience (Customer Match or a custom audience) | Targeting or excluding people, which is a different job from teaching bidding |
| Waiting for conversions | Accounts that can afford to learn slowly |
When not to use DataCops
- Your list has no consent basis for ad use. Check your own consent basis for the list first. DataCops is not legal advice.
- You have no customers yet. Ads Warmup needs a list of real customers or leads to send.
Sources and further reading
More on this: Ads Warmup, and the complete guide to offline conversion tracking.
Quick win: lowercase and trim every email, and put phone numbers into digits with a country code. It costs nothing.