Retargeting & Remarketing

What is Remarketing?

Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is a very common and popular form of digital marketing in which marketers serve ads to users who have visited their website, or a specific web page, and who have or have not taken a specific action. It’s an effective way to target people who have already shown some interest in your business or brand. Because you are targeting past visitors or existing customers, it’s called “re”-marketing. Think of it as a second chance to convert, up-sell, or retain customers with online ads or campaigns. You can do remarketing in different ways and with different ad platforms, like Outbrain, Google ads, or Facebook ads.

Remarketing vs Retargeting

While the words ‘retargeting’ and ‘remarketing’ are sometimes used interchangeably, they have some important differences. When it comes to retargeting vs. remarketing, the main difference is in the strategy. Retargeting is mostly about serving ads to potential customers based on cookies while remarketing is usually based on email. Remarketing works by collecting the information of users and creating lists, which are used later to send sales emails. Retargeting and remarketing are both effective methods in their own right, yet a combination of both may be the best strategy to boost your digital marketing activity and improve your bottom line.

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Example of remarketing

Here’s a fictional example: Joan visits the “Shoes R’ Us” ecommerce site, looks at a particular pair of shoes, but doesn’t purchase them. Later, Joan visits another website – say, her favorite entertainment news site. Shoes R’ Us is running a remarketing campaign via an ad network that works with this entertainment site. Joan sees an ad by Shoes R ‘Us featuring the same or similar shoes to the ones she was looking at the other day. The aim of the retargeting ad is to remind Joan of those shoes she was interested in, and maybe by seeing the ad, she will be convinced to click and make the purchase she didn’t make previously.

How Remarketing Works?

It’s not difficult to set up a remarketing campaign for your website. What it requires is pixel installation. When you create a campaign with a particular ad network, the network will provide you with a small piece of code (called a pixel tag) to add to your website. Every time a new user visits your site, the code will drop an anonymous browser cookie and the user will be added to your retargeting list. When the same user visits another site that hosts display or native ads from your ad network provider, the system will serve your ad to this particular user. This will occur as long as you have an active campaign running. Google’s move to shut down the use of third-party cookies will impact the ability of marketers to remarket. That’s why it is important to advertise on platforms based on the use of first-party data that allows tracking. Although the move to a cookieless world has been somewhat delayed, it is still important to start planning now for tools and tactics that will allow you to remarket in the future.

What are remarketing pixel tags?

Pixel tags are those small pieces of code on a webpage that enable websites to place cookies. Cookies are ‘crumbs’ left by website visitors. Every visitor has a unique yet anonymous ID, so their website activity can be tracked by their trail of cookies. In remarketing, the ad server can access the visitor’s ID and save it to the relevant remarketing lists. What is a remarketing list? A remarketing list is a list of website visitors who perform a certain action or on your site. For example, a “Homepage” remarketing list comprises all the visitors to your homepage over a specified period. As the visitor lands on your homepage, their cookie is added to the remarketing list. Then, you can remarket only to the list of people who visited your homepage. You can create all sorts of remarketing lists, and tailor your ad messages to each list.

Benefits of Remarketing

• Capitalize on lost website traffic
• Target people who have already visited your site and shown interest in your offering
• Target audiences who are more likely to convert
• Keep your brand at top of mind by strategically showing ads to interested audiences
• Affordable marketing tactic available on a range of platforms and channels
• Suitable for every industry and vertical
• Comes in many ad formats, including display ad, search RLSA, dynamic carousel and more
• For e-commerce – dynamic retargeting enables marketers to serve personalized ads for different users based on products or services they viewed on your website

Your website may be attracting lots of traffic, but the fact is, the average conversion rate for first-time visitors is low. According to research on ecommerce sites, the conversion rate is just 2.86 percent. What does this mean? Although you’re getting the traffic, you’re not getting the sales. Remarketing is your best option to capitalize on all that lost traffic. Targeting people who have already shown an interest in your business is one of the most effective ways to remind them to come back to your site. Retargeting can be used in all verticals and industries, though it is obviously an important tactic in e-commerce. Check out this success story of a European fashion retail and e-commerce chain that saw a 66% increase in conversion rate by retargeting their customers on the Outbrain network.