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. It can 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.

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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’t add 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 its ad to encourage users to revisit the site. It also 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

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