How To Use E-Commerce Retargeting To Win Back Business

You’ve put in the hours and the spend to drive traffic to your online store. But what happens when customers visit and leave without taking an action? An interaction with a website visitor that doesn’t result in a lead, sale, inquiry or other step that might hold value is classified as a “bounced” user, meaning that the user bounced away.

But there is a way to still reach visitors who had an inkling to stop by but perhaps weren’t ready to make a purchase yet. It’s called “retargeting.""

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is actually nothing new in the online world. Marketers have been using it for years to earn back business.

The “comeback” model works a little something like this.

1. The retargeting service you choose will have you place a snippet of code on your website for tracking visitors and conversions.

2. You’ll need to create ad language, and you'll also have access to add assets such as graphic design to woo customers back to your website.

3. When customers visit and bounce away, the retargeting kicks in, serving them text- or image-based ads on other websites they visit. The visitor may, for example, bounce away to a popular news site where they are presented with a special ad for a one-time savings, encouraging them to come back and close the deal.

What does the data say?

According to research by Monetate, conversion rates remain, on average, around 3%—with many visitors bouncing never to return. But by using various retargeting services, including Google’s, you have the ability to reach these bounced users on more than 2 million of the most visited websites in the world after the fact.

The propensity to reengage users after an initial visit can be profitable.

Research by Invesp indicates that:

• 75% of consumers pay attention to retargeting ads.

• Retargeted ads have an average click-through rate of 0.7%.

• Using display ads for retargeting can result in a 70% conversion rate.

• As many as 26% of consumers will click on a retargeting ad and visit the site again.

How can a company implement retargeting?

Now that you’re aware of the innate value of retargeting, how can you integrate it into your online store?

Well, the first step you’ll need to take is to identify what type of retargeting you need. This will all depend on your storefront. For example, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and other platforms have app stores that offer retargeting and remarketing plugins with varying features and options.

You can also use Google’s built-in remarketing (if you’re running Ad Words), and you can also consider using third-party services like Ad Roll and others.

Implementing retargeting is rather straightforward: Make sure you install any necessary plugins or code add-ons to the pages of your store, set up your ads and create and execute campaign.

What do you need to understand about the analytics?

Knowing what your money is being spent on and if it’s actually generating new sales is critical. That’s why it’s necessary to test retargeting after you set it up to make sure it’s all working. This means visiting your site, bouncing away, clicking an ad you set up and making a small purchase. Next, check your analytics and make sure that the traffic, the visit and most importantly the conversion are all being tracked properly.

Each retargeting service will provide you with an analytics dashboard so you can view real-time numbers and see what’s converting and what’s not. Use this data to make smart decisions about your various retargeting campaigns in the future.

Remember, every product or service you sell can be set up to independently serve retargeting ads. This means that you’ll want segmented ads that target users based on intent.

In other words, you may want ads that appeal to users who've bounced away from buying a new Xbox One. But you’ll need different and equally as appealing retargeting assets for visitors that bounced away from buying a dishware set.

Summing it all up.

Is retargeting the end-all, be-all of digital marketing? Nope. But it’s an important cog in the wheel for all e-tailers to consider putting it into place.

The best part about retargeting—at least with most services—is how it only requires you to pay when a user clicks back and actually visits your site, giving you a chance to earn a new sale in the process. Quite frankly, that seems money well spent at the end of the day.

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