When building a retargeting strategy it’s paramount to identify the types of shoppers who visit your website. Prior to setting up a retargeting campaign there’s a few things you’ll need to understand and pay close attention to.

  1. How long is your buying cycle?
  2. Segment your customers and deliver the right message
  3. Awareness and consideration campaigns
  4. Conversion campaigns
  5. Loyalty campaigns
  6. Retargeting campaigns

1. How long is your buying cycle?

Products differ in the rate in which they are purchased. We know more expensive products have a longer buy cycle, while less expensive products have a shorter buy cycle. Seasonality also comes into play. We also know when the holiday season begins to wind down, shoppers become more likely to purchase and speed up the rate in which they purchase. For example, as the time between holidays shortens, the buy cycle shortens significantly.

2. Segment your customers and deliver the right message

Make sure the messaging in your ads are relevant to where the customer is in the buying life-cycle. The customer’s buying life-cycle or buyer’s journey, consists of 5 main stages:

  • Awareness
  • Research
  • Comparison
  • Conversion
  • Retention

Many businesses launch retargeting campaigns that aren’t effective and perform poorly. Under-performing campaigns waste valuable advertising budget if your marketing message does not connect with the customer. The main point here is that all users, in different stages of the journey, will react differently.

A common retargeting campaign might include an audience list that contains All Website visitors and only targets a segment of those visitors who entered the cart, but decided to leave and abandoned the cart. Your message will be different to this segment of users as compared to the message you might use to retarget users who only visited the homepage or another internal page such as a product page, but never actually entered the cart.

Being able to identify different users and customize your message to those users in different stages of the journey will increase your campaign’s performance. Your brand’s voice and messaging through those ads resonate with the customer and feel more personalized. Messaging is extremely important during each stage of the cycle.

Below we will layout each type of campaign that should be considered in your retargeting strategy.

3. Awareness and consideration campaigns

Online consumers will browse the Internet and research your brand as well as other products closely related to what you may sell. Intent is something these consumers will show based on their browsing behavior on your website even if they don’t take a desired action (submit a form, call, sign up for a newsletter, create an account or make a purchase).

These users have shown some interest in your brand or products and now is the time to re-engage them. To reinforce your brand and help drive awareness and consideration, you’ll need to launch campaigns with creatives that include the right branding and messaging.

Campaign #1: In-Market Users

  • Greater than 3 page visits
  • Greater than 1 site visit
  • 0 products added to their shopping cart

Who are these people and how to properly engage these users?

In the example above, this segment of In-Market users is still in the research phase of the customer journey. They’re researching and learning more about your brand, product or service.

Let’s say you’re an eCommerce store that sells physical products. The easiest way to showcase your different products to this segment of users might be through targeted Carousel ads.

Through your messaging you might offer this segment of users a slight discount, not your steepest discount, to create interest in your brand again and lure them back to your online store.

4. Conversion campaigns

This is where the majority of your time should be spent. Identify what’s working and get aggressive with your bids and messaging. Increase frequency! This means you’re reminding the targeted user about your brand with more ads to improve the likelihood they will remember your brand when they make their final purchase decision. It is extremely important to stay top of mind during this stage.

Campaign #1: High Engaged Users

  • Greater than 2+ views to a specific product page
  • 0 products added to their shopping cart

Who are these people and how to engage these users?

These are users who have shown enough interest to check out your products multiple times. This segment of users are the perfect candidates for dynamic retargeting campaigns that serve ads with the products they viewed on your website.

Campaign #2: Lingering Users

  • Greater than 2+ website visits
  • 0 products added to their shopping cart

Who are these people and how to engage these users?
These are users who have been to your site before, cared enough to re-visit, but haven’t converted. This segment of users might still be in the research or comparison stage of the journey. You’ve almost persuaded these users, but they still have yet to sign up or pull out their credit card and make a purchase. Rather than serving a modest offer, this is when you should consider promoting a more aggressive offer that will convince them to make the purchase and convert.

Campaign #3: Cart Abandoners

  • Greater than 1+ products added to their shopping cart

Who are these people and how to engage these users?
These users are your low hanging fruit, ready to buy (RTB), but didn’t complete the purchase. They considered buying your product, but what was it? Not the right price? Did they get interrupted and forget to come back?

We don’t know what happened, but we can target that segment of users with messaging letting them know they left a product in their shopping cart. Your message might also include a sense of urgency by offering a time sensitive coupon code or discount code. This lets those users know that you value their business, haven’t forgotten about them, and give them a slight nudge to come back and complete their purchase.

5. Loyalty campaigns

Don’t forget about your existing customers!!! These are people who know about your brand, made a purchase in the past and can re-enter the sale cycle at any time. Who knows, you can turn these brand loyalists into lifelong brand loyalists if your product is good enough. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool and loyal customers will help your brand grow significantly if they’re satisfied with your product or services.

Campaign #1: Brand Loyalists

  • Greater than 2+ purchases from your site

Who are these people and how to engage these users?
The messaging here should be the easiest. You know what these people previously purchased and cater your retargeting strategy around showing products similar to what they purchased before. Look at your previous customers and start formulating your messaging by specific product categories.

Campaign #2: Un-engaged Customers

  • Only purchased 1 item from your site

Who are these people and how to engage these users?
These are people that purchased from your site, but never made another purchase. They know your brand, but may have forgotten about it, or don’t know about other products you may offer. Give them a reason to return and check out your other products. This segment of users is perfect for trying to up-sell and even ask for feedback on how you can improve your product or services.

6. Retargeting High Intent Users With VisitorAI

We’ve made it easy for you to expand your audience lists and retarget them with different channels that have higher return on ad spend (ROAS), more specifically email campaigns with proper sequencing and messaging. Utilizing Visitor AI’s tech stack, you’ll be able to capture high intent users who visited your website and re-engage them through email. Take for example a typical remarketing campaign:

Remarketing Campaign:

  • Budget – $3,000
  • Avg. CPC – $0.50
  • Visits – 1,500
  • Conversion Rate – 5%
  • Leads – 75
  • CPA – $40

Using VisitorAI’s technology you’ll be able to create a digital fingerprint of visitors, grow your email list, and capture ~40% of those visitors. Let’s take another look:

Remarketing Campaign utilizing Visitor AI’s tech stack to build your list of leads:

  • Budget – $3,000
  • Avg. CPC – $0.50
  • Visits – 1,500
  • Conversion Capture Rate – 40%
  • Leads – 600
  • CPA – $5 (87.5% decrease in CPA!!!)

We can’t stress this enough. With VisitorAI, you’re complimenting your existing campaign strategy and building a list of high-intent users that you will be able to re-engage through other channels like email marketing. The money you’re spending to promote your business shouldn’t go to waste!

Utilizing Visitor AI’s technology, you’ll be able to compliment your existing retargeting marketing spend and re-engage users through email. Scroll to the very end to see how our tech stack can help you decrease your CPA by >80%