Engagement is the holy grail for marketers, and tools like retargeting make it easier to tie email marketing to display advertising to boost awareness and engagement with shoppers. But there are limits. If you’re selling luxury items and the consumer has made a recent purchase, retargeting with the same image is a waste. Broaden your view and feature brand awareness images or complimentary or comparable products. Take your cues from subscriber interaction, such as clicking or viewing a specific product, and use the data to trigger automated messages showing the product or related products. You’ll gain insight into how a more robust retargeting program will perform, as well as additional sales.
Q&A with Fawn Young
How can marketers effectively use retargeted ads that originate from email interactions?
If they are able to track whether or not someone actually purchased that product, they can determine whether or not to show the product. It has been said that someone needs to see a product as many as three times before they actually take action and buy. What they’re shown doesn’t necessarily have to be the product itself. Brand awareness, complimentary products or comparable items can also be effective.
It’s also important to know when to stop. Luxury items, for example, are not purchased multiple times so it will not be worth it to market that product to the customer multiple times and may actually have an adverse effect.
What are a few common mistakes marketers should avoid?
Not knowing when to stop. Be careful about being too intrusive. This can often happen with some abandonment emails that could be seen as too big brother, such as product page abandonment reminders. It depends on your audience. Older audiences and those that are less tech savvy may be especially concerned when they see images start to be repeated.
What successes have you seen?
I have clients that are using third parties to retarget ads. For example, if you visit their site by clicking a product in an email, ads will appear with just branding and sometimes a product. This has led to additional sales that may have been lost from folks who simply abandoned once they got on their site.
What’s the best way to get started?
The concept of retargeting ads can be translated into the inbox. You can take subscriber interaction like clicking or product views and use that data to trigger automated messages that show the product or related products. This can give some insight into how a more robust program may perform.
I predict ad retargeting will grow in its usage and effectiveness. The opportunity to expand engagement with emails into display advertising to help shoppers continue down the path to purchase will provide marketing with new ways to communicate with shoppers. – Fawn Young
Courtesy: Bronto
