Retargeting provides marketers with the opportunity to nurture those who previously visited the site but have decided to abandon their purchase, increasing the chance of achieving an online sale. Itcan also grow brand exposure, click-through rates and brand loyalty.
Despite the benefits retargeting offers, only one in five marketers have a dedicated budget for it, indicating that many businesses are missing out on the chance to regain 98?per cent of lost customers. But before you start pouring budget into a retargeting campaign, remember, there is more to creating a campaign intended to re-engage prospects than showcasing ads to previous website visitors.
Show previously viewed content
If a visitor has abandoned their shopping cart, viewed a product without purchasing or visited a landing page without clicking the call to action, you can regain their interest by showing them what they?re missing out on.
Obtaining interest through product targeted ads is key for undecided buyers. Let’s say I clicked on this dress from New Look, but didn’tAdd it to my shopping cart or buy it.
New Look used a dynamic banner ad (see circled) to specifically showcase this dress while I was browsing on another website; this is achieved by using a specific tracking code that places cookies in the visitor’s browser those with the cookies will then receive ads. By adding real-time personalisation to it, New Look are far more likely to recover my attention.
Build campaigns from segmented lists
If you have developed a list of leads, then segmenting these further will help create better targeted ads?” these could be based on their location?or stage in the sales journey.
Once your leads have been segmented, you can begin building different retargeting banner ads that appeal to individual segments. Add your collated email addresses to a campaign on a social network (Facebook or Twitter) and the platform will identify users on these networks who have those addresses and serve ads?just?to them. The audience of your ads can be changed on Facebook by visiting Ads Manager and clicking Audiences?.
It is important to remember though that list-based retargeting relies on you acquiring the email addresses your prospects use to manage their social media, for most people will use one email address for social media and another for everything else the more email addresses accumulate, the more likely you are to find matches.
Use discounts and offers
According to Statistica, 32?per cent will leave a website without converting because they found the overall price too expensive,?while 36?per cent manage to find a better price elsewhere. If you’re identifying several people marked closed or lost in your database, it’s possible the price caused them to leave.
Including discounts and offers in your ad banner will increase your chances of enticing a customer back to your website and achieving a sale. You could alter this by pricing it at ten per cent”for the first week and increasing it to 20?per cent the following week if they still don’t convert.
Expedia implemented a percentile discount on itsAd to encourage users to revisit the site. ItAlso added a sense of urgency by writing Last Minute Deals?.
Behavioural triggers, as well as discounts and offers, are also ways to re-engage people
Behavioural triggers
Focus on building advertising campaigns that promote an action through behavioural triggers; this allows you to show different banner designs depending on their last action taken on your website.
When a consumer reaches the final stages of making a purchase but decides to abandon their shopping cart, it’s clear there is some level of objection. On average, 67?per cent of shoppers abandon shopping carts, so creating a segmented campaign that tailors an ad based on where a shopper is situated in the sales funnel will add further encouragement.
Red Balloon have taken advantage of this segmentation by highlighting ?Save $15 using code CTAB1214 when you spend over $69″ as an extra incentive for the consumer.
Retargeted unconverted calls
Despite living in a digital age, phone calls are still happening; meaning knowing how to measure which online marketing channels are leading to offline call conversions is essential. Syncing call data with your campaignsAnd lists empowers you to re-engage with your audience more effectively based on their online and offline engagement history.
If you generated calls that haven?t turned into a sales, you can hit these unconverted consumers with retargeting ads by syncing your call data with your campaigns. Callers tend to be highly engaged, quality prospects. This also eliminates the risk of retargeting someone with a discount offer who already converted over the phone.
Personalise the call to action
Branded ads are useful for increasing brand awareness, but failing to personalise and simplify the process of revisiting your website could affect your CTR and therefore your conversions. Personalised call to actions convert£42?per cent more visitors into leads than untargeted call to actions.
Targeting past customers is usually more advantageous than new customers they already know your brand and trusted you enough to make a purchase; meaning they typically require less coaxing than a new lead. Customer retention generates between 60-70?per cent profitability, whereas customer acquisition only generates between 5-20?per cent.
Although it’s worth reminding customers how much they love your brand through an ad, this isn’t always enough to entice a click. Call to action buttons can also be personalised for targeting previous customers. ModCloth clothing have used remarketing ads to notify previous customers when new arrivals have been posted on the site; encouraging them to head back and view the products.
Before you create personalised call to actions, carrying out split testing is essential. This allows you to test different variations of ads on the same segmented audience to identify which works best for them. Remember, it is best to target audiences based on interests rather than age, for the demographics can be too broad for your ads to receive attention.
Natalia Selby is marketing coordinator at Mediahawk, with over ten?years” experience in analytics, content management and eCommerce.
Image: Shutterstock
