7 Best Practices for Email Retargeting Campaign Success
Updated February 2018
Looking to generate more qualified leads, boost engagement with your target audience, increase brand awareness, and ultimately drive more conversions? A retargeting campaign may be the answer. Here are 7 best practices that are key to retargeting campaign success.
What Is Email Retargeting and How Does Retargeting Work?
Retargeting—also commonly referred to as remarketing—is a powerful online marketing method that involves showing targeted ads to potential customers on social media sites (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) and via search (e.g., Google). These potential customers have shown an interest in your company and its products by taking actions such as opening your emails, clicking a link in your emails, or visiting your website (but not converting). Retargeting gives you another chance to reach potential customers and give them a nudge (or several nudges) to return to your website and convert.
Considering that, typically, only about 2% of users convert on their first visit to an e-commerce website, email remarketing has the potential of making a big impact on conversion rates. Here are a few retargeting-campaign statistics that demonstrate just how effective retargeting campaigns can be:
- The click-through rates for retargeted marketing ads (0.7%) is 10 times that of typical display ads (0.07%).
- Website visitors are 70% more likely to convert on website when retargeted with online ads.
- An estimated 72% of online shoppers abandon their carts before completing a purchase, and, typically, only 8% will return and make a purchase. Thanks to retargeting, the percentage of cart abandoners who return and convert increases to 26%.
What Is a Retargeting Pixel Versus List-Based Retargeting?
How do retargeting ads work? There are essentially two types of retargeting emails: pixel retargeting based and list based. The most common is retargeting pixel based, which uses remarketing software and unobtrusive codes (retargeting pixels) on your website or in the HTML templates of your emails to place a cookie on a user’s browser. This, in turn, gives you the ability to track that user’s online behavior. Then, when the “cookied” users browse the internet, the cookie will let the retargeting networks know so they can put up ads. In this way, people who have visited your website will see your ads, which will recapture their interest and bring them back to your website.
On the other hand, list-based retargeting involves uploading your email list to a retargeting platform on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Then, the platform identifies which of your subscribers are on the social media site and subsequently allows you to show retargeting ads to them.
Remarketing Examples That Show Success
How much of an impact can email remarketing have on your email performance metrics? Here are some retargeting email examples to give you a good idea:
- In this case study, high-end furniture designer Made.com used email retargeting to increase remarketing revenue from email by 36%, boost open rate by 31%, and surpass the target return on investment (ROI) by 200%.
- This case study, email retargeting by the hobby retailer AMain Performance Sports and Hobbies increased open rate by 90% and click-through rate by 27%, as well as achieved 775% more email conversions. Plus, the company’s ROI for retargeting on Facebook increased by 26.5 times.
In addition, check out this case study that shows how the online community for digital marketing professionals DigitalMarketer used onsite retargeting to convert 15% of its abandoning website visitors into customers.
7 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Retargeting Email Campaigns
How can you maximize the return on investment from your retargeting campaigns? Here are 7 best practices to help ensure retarget marketing success:
- Use segmentation to create retargeting emails that convert. This applies both to your retargeting ads, as well as the promotional email campaigns that support your remarketing efforts. For example, create segments based on the products visitors browsed at your website and where prospects and customers are in the sales funnel. Audience segmentation helps ensure that potential customers get marketing messages with content that is relevant and engaging. Be sure to check out the following FulcrumTech article to learn more about how to effectively segment your email lists: “Email-Marketing List Segmentation—Give a Lift to Your ROI With These 5 Best Practices.”
- Send your email retargeting campaigns promptly after abandonment. Keep in mind that these prospective customers showed interest in your brand and possibly almost made a purchase. So stay top of mind with a retargeting email—sent within an hour—to take advantage of that heightened interest in your products.
- Use automated drip email campaigns to boost the results of your remarketing emails. When potential customers provide you with their email addresses, follow up promptly with a welcome email series. Another automated email series that’s useful in retargeting is an abandoned-cart recovery email campaign, which targets subscribers who placed items in an online shopping cart but didn’t complete the purchase. Combined with remarketing email data, automated drip email campaigns are a highly effective way to nurture prospects, build customer relationships, and increase sales.
- Personalize your email retargeting campaigns to help increase engagement and drive more conversions. From using the recipient’s name to tailoring the actual email content for maximum relevance, personalization can have a huge impact on your performance results. For example, if someone leaves an item in his or her online shopping cart, include the abandoned item, as well as a link where it can be purchased immediately. For some great tips on how to personalize your retargeting campaigns, be sure to read the previously published FulcrumTech article: “Personalized Email Marketing—It’s Time to Get Personal.”
- Cap your retargeting ad and email frequency. Be aware that bombarding prospects and customers with too many of the same ads (following them all over the Internet and in emails) can lead to overexposure. Not only can such overexposure result in potential customers ignoring your retargeted ads and emails, but it also can engender a negative feeling about your brand.
- Use retargeting email campaigns to upsell and cross-sell to converted customers. Once a prospect has converted, be sure you’re not targeting him or her with the same promotions and asking that prospect to take the same action again and again. That would be annoying! You can untag customers after they have converted by using a snippet of code called a “burn pixel” on your post-transaction page. Then, enroll these converted customers in a new retargeting email campaign to reward loyal customers, as well as upsell and cross-sell other products and services.
- Test and optimize. The banner ads and promotional emails that you use in your email retargeting emails play a big role in determining campaign success. So, be sure to devote the resources needed to develop effective creative, as well as test and optimize to continually improve the performance results of your retargeting email campaigns.
At FulcrumTech, helping you get the most out of your email-marketing campaigns is our passion! Contact us and we’ll get you on the fast track to implementing innovative approaches to successfully pull people through your sales funnel, optimize conversions, and drive more revenue from your e-commerce business.