Does your brand already have a strong email marketing program? Have you dabbled in some retargeting campaigns and gained some favorable returns? You’ve covered two of the most powerful advertising bases, now it’s time to ensure you’re getting the most out of them both — with email retargeting.
With several kinds of email retargeting to choose from, it’s important to choose the right one(s) to ensure your efforts are efficient and results are raised. And there are some great companies out there who can help you maximize and advance your campaigns, which will be covered in more depth via Part 2. First, the basics. You may already be a seasoned ad vet, but like any craft, it’s essential to understand and always incorporate the fundamentals to ensure a lasting evolution of your brand. The basics will be covered this round with more advanced tactics discussed next week.
re-tar-get-ing: a form of online targeted advertising that captures and stores consumers’ browsing, email and search history (using cookies) to later serve them custom-tailored banner ads for the purpose of retention, conversion and lead generation.
The benefits of retargeting alone are apparent: sending customers emails based on their interactions with your site and current point in their purchasing journey. Most commonly known as a highly effective solution for cart and search abandonment, a successful email retargeting campaign can directly result in an uplift in revenue of anywhere from 10% – 35%.
The most basic type of email retargeting aims to bring back customers who have either visited your site or interacted with your brand via email subscription, as well as to increase brand loyalty. Email messaging is curated with content that addresses their last actions on your site, usually related to: Search or product abandonment, Cart abandonment, Check out and post-purchase upsell opportunities.
How email retargeting ups ROI and revenue.
For every retargeted banner ad or customized email campaign, a customer either (1) responds to that content and ends up purchasing, (2) engages briefly but only to search and then leave the site, (3) searches, shops but abandons items saved in their cart, or (4) doesn’t respond at all (we hope the last one never happens!). Regardless of the outcome and point in the consumer journey, any email retargeting effort would greatly help solidify that conversion. Your regular banner ad retargeting attempt doesn’t have to stop working when the user leaves that screen. Add timely and thoughtful email retargeting to the equation to expand and extend that banner content, turning non-buyers into buyers, and passive browsers into active fans. With email retargeting, you are:
Decreasing cart abandonment
Your lowest hanging fruit and the group most likely to contribute to a significant lift in revenue: The Cart Abandoners. They’re shopping and they’re leaving without completing the purchase! Email retargeting works as quickly and seamlessly as your Out-of-Office auto-response; instantaneously, your platform has cookied and recorded the user’s activity so that the very next virtual places they reach, your creative is there to give a gentle nudge back to your brand and to that point of purchase.
Fostering loyalty and increasing brand relevance
Stay top of mind when it comes time for that customer’s next purchase in your category, and use their clicking history to smartly segment their interests for better email retargeting with your next blast. It’s also the perfect tool for capitalizing on a recent purchase with an instantaneous upsell or recommendation for their next shopping experience.
Reactivating opt-outs and dormant leads
Those people still haven’t taken the time to totally opt out of your emails, but they also can’t be enticed to open them. They may have become immune to your emails, robotically ignoring them out of habit. So you’ve begun a retargeting campaign, using that Facebook Feed or Google Search to bring that customer back to your site and brand. You’ll then make the most out of those banners by following up with your perfectly timed and cleverly curated retargeting email that will finally guide that buyer to purchase.Problems you might not be able to solve with banner retargeting, but can solve with email retargeting.Retargeted ads and email marketing efforts, while tried and true, have saturated customer experiences for years, so it takes a refined touch and a sound strategy to maximize their benefits while not alienating or desensitizing consumers.
Stay one step ahead and know the issues you’re likely to encounter
Address them with smart email retargeting. You’ll see tangible improvement in areas like:
Cart abandonment: the right timing and a custom offer helps close the deal. This specific type of triggered email retargeting drives an average click-to-conversion rate of 20%, depending on the type of purchase.
Search and product abandonment.
Data capture. Understand what your customers want to see in your email content to ensure continuous brand loyalty and engagement with future retention campaigns.
While banner retargeting can do a great job of bringing customers back to your site, it’s limited in its ability to drive loyalty and keep the conversation going. Adding a layer of email retargeting addresses a range of issues and allows for continuous nurturing of the brand-consumer relationship. While any budget can make any ad visible to anyone, email retargeting creates an opportunity to make a new customized, longer-lasting connection to your most important customer base: those who intended to find you. So hold those folks tight, marketers, and don’t them go!
Ready to up your revenue and enhance your customer relationships? SellUP happens to specialize in this kind of email retargeting, so get in touch and we’ll figure out where you should start.
If you’re interested in exploring more ways to acquire these customers or bring them back to your brand, stay tuned for Part 2 where we’ll dive into some more advanced email retargeting strategies and introduce a couple more partners who may have a few tricks up their sleeves for you.
Retargeting Resources
You’re probably already savvy to it all, but in case you need a refresher, we love these quick-read retargeting resources.
Getting Started: Brand new to this stuff? Check out HubSpot’s 13 Bright Ideas for some extra tips.
Platforms and Pricing: Plenty of third party providers make it fairly easy to get started — AdRoll, Facebook Exchange, Google AdWords, and ReTargeter. Pricing is based on that platform’s predetermined CPM (cost per mile, or, per thousand views/impressions of your ad). Understanding your data and your audience ensures you’ll get the most bang for your buck.
Benefits: Google’s AdWords blog is a great place to understand how to maximize the success of your campaigns.
By Allan Levy
March 14th, 2016
