How to Retarget People Who Opened Your Lead Form

Someone who opens your instant form has already shown interest. If they close it without submitting, you can still reach them again. Meta’s engagement custom audiences include a Lead form type built from how people interacted with a specific form on your Page. Meta’s lead ads best practices recommend exactly this: build an audience of people who started your form but never finished it, and encourage them to come back and submit.

How do you create the audience?

1. Go to Audiences.
2. Open the Create audience dropdown and select Custom audience. If you’ve never made one, choose Create a custom audience.
3. Select Lead form and click Next.
4. In the Events dropdown, choose the type of form engagement to use.
5. In the Page dropdown, select your Page.
6. In the Lead form dropdown, select the form.
7. Under Retention, enter how many days back Meta should collect engagement.
8. Name the audience, add a description and click Create audience.

The audience appears in your list of audiences, and the Status column shows it as populating until it’s ready.

How does the retention window work?

It rolls. Meta’s example: with a 30-day window, someone who engaged 29 days ago is in the audience, but drops out the next day unless they engage again. New people who engage within the window are added. Because the audience refreshes itself, you only need to edit it or make a new one when you want a different time period or type of engagement.

What else can you build from lead form activity?

Audience	Built from	Meta’s guidance
Lead form engagement audience	People who interacted with a chosen instant form	Use it to reach people who started but didn’t submit
Lookalike audience	An engagement custom audience as its source	For lead ads, Meta recommends a source of existing customers rather than form submitters
Leads Center audiences	Leads you’ve collected in Leads Center	Create custom and lookalike audiences to re-engage interested people

Meta’s reasoning on lookalikes is that a source based on existing customers helps you reach the people likely to provide the most value to your business.

What restrictions apply?

Meta says you can’t create new ad sets with audiences based on Facebook Pages that have been deleted, and that includes engagement custom audiences and their lookalikes. Targeting options are also limited for audiences that include people under 18, or older in some countries.

FAQ

Is this the same as a website custom audience?

No. Meta says engagement custom audiences use actions people take across Meta technologies, such as opening a form in a lead ad, while website custom audiences use actions taken on your website, known as events. Lead form is one of the engagement custom audience types Meta lists, alongside video, Facebook Page and others.

Do I need to update the audience as new people open my form?

No. Meta says an engagement custom audience is constantly refreshed: people who engage within your chosen time period are added, and those whose engagement falls outside it are removed. Edit it only if you want a different period or engagement type.

Can I build a lookalike from people who submitted my form?

You can use an engagement custom audience as a lookalike source, but for lead ads Meta recommends basing lookalikes on existing customers rather than people who submitted a form, so you reach people likely to provide the most value to your business.