Remarketing is an effective way to sell to customers who have already visited your website. While retargeting is used to drop cookies on shoppers and market to anyone who has visited your website, remarketing strategies are used to reach out to customers deeper in the sales funnel — typically through email. Despite their initial differences, the terms remarketing and retargeting are often used interchangeably, especially in our omnichannel world.
For the sake of clarity, we will use the term remarketing to discuss strategies that bring customers back to your website to complete their purchase. In this case, your customers land on your website, add items to their carts, and then disappear before they buy. Your marketing efforts have gone to waste unless you can bring them back.
Let’s explore a few omnichannel remarketing strategies you can use for your eCommerce business and why they are effective at winning shoppers back.
Why is Remarketing Effective?
Remarketing taps into customers who are already familiar with your brand and who are at least somewhat interested in what you have to sell. There are many reasons why your customers didn’t convert the first time; however, the chances that they return and buy from your brand are still high — especially if they added items to their cart and then abandoned it.
Remarketing is particularly useful to eCommerce merchants during the holiday season. There is increased pressure to stand out amongst the thousands of ads and messages that shoppers see. A customer who visited your website once in early November might not remember the name or products they found a few weeks later. Remarketing gives your brand an opportunity to remind those customers what they liked about your products and bring them back to complete the purchase.
Google recently shared a case study from eCommerce tire retailer Tirendo. By implementing remarketing strategies in Google Ads, Tirendo was able to increase its sales through paid ad campaigns by 22%. Additionally, the company noticed a 161% conversion rate increase compared to normal ad campaigns and a 43% drop in their cost per acquisition.
For Tirendo, remarketing is effective because customers are already showing an interest in engaging with the brand through paid search. Remarketing keeps their brand top-of-mind during the research process, meaning more customers click on their paid ad again and convert. Conversions increase because fewer prospects are lost, increasing the ROI of the brand.
5 Remarketing Strategies That Convert
The remarketing campaigns that you develop will vary by your budget, branding, and business. You can use all of these omnichannel tactics or just a few. As you develop your remarketing strategies, make sure you have target metrics and goals set to know whether your investment is worth the time and budget that you allocate.
Develop Personalized Abandon Cart Emails
Abandon cart emails are one of the most common forms of remarketing out there. Considering the average eCommerce website has a 67% abandon cart rate, marketers across the world are constantly trying to find ways to bring people back to convert.
Neil Patel recently shared a case study from Peak Design, a camera and travel gear retailer. Through careful planning, the company was able to accomplish a 12% recovery rate on abandoned carts within their customer base. They also saw a 66% percent open rate and 14 percent CTR for their first emails sent. So what did they do right? Patel breaks it down:
- Peak Design sent the first email within 30 minutes of an abandoned session and the second email 30 hours later if there wasn’t an action.
- The first email used a soft approach, asking the customer if they forgot to check out.
- The second email offered a small discount to make the products more compelling.
- The emails highlighted items customers bought and use personalized names without crossing over into creeping out customers by sharing too much information.
These remarketing strategies match the branding of Peak Design and resonate with customers, bringing them back to complete sales that the company would have otherwise lost.
Invest in Display Ads Across the Web
Display ads that utilize remarketing consistently outperform traditional display media. According to Invespcro, the average display click-thru-rate is 0.07%. However, the CTR for remarketing ads is 0.7%. While this CTR may seem low, remember that the conversion rate is high. Customers who click on a remarketing display ad are 70% more likely to convert on a retailer’s website.
If you already have a display strategy to target top-funnel and mid-funnel customers, consider adding a remarketing element to close the deal. At the very least, you can allocate part of the budget to test the ads and see how they perform against each other.
Use Social Media to Connect With Customers
Fifty-four percent of marketers think social media is the best opportunity to remarket to customers. Not only do 75% of customers notice retargeted ads compared to other non-remarketed content, they also drive more engagement and sales.
Connect.io reports that retargeted ads can lead to a 1046% increase in branded search terms. This proves the omnichannel nature of remarketing. Customers see a remarketed ad on Facebook while they’re scrolling, search for the website later, and complete their purchase. A low CTR for social display ads doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t driving sales for your brand.
Tap Into Google’s Ideas for Ad Remarketing
If you want to invest in remarketing for your paid search campaigns in hopes of seeing similar results as Tirendo, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s in Google’s best interest for your RLSAs (remarketing lists for search ads) to succeed to encourage you to spend more with their ad platform.
Google developed 21 remarketing strategies for brands who want to bring customers back. These tactics include technical advice like setting the duration of your targeting list to campaign development tips like offering more competitive offers for retargeting visitors. This is a good place to start if you plan to boost your PPC remarketing efforts.
Send Pop-Up Notifications In Your App
Finally, if you have an app for your eCommerce brand where customers can enable push notifications, reach out to your customers if they bounce before they convert. A simple push notification after 20-60 minutes of inactivity can bring the attention back to your website.
These notifications also highlight the omnichannel nature of remarketing. You can trigger one push notification after a few minutes and then send a follow-up email after a few hours of inaction. Your customers engage with your brand on both channels before returning to complete a purchase.
You don’t have to invest in display ads or develop an app to remarket to your customers. Each brand can build its own remarketing strategies to succeed in an increasingly omnichannel world.
Contact Trinity Insight today for a free strategy session and personalized suggestions for eCommerce growth and remarketing best practices.
