If you run an eCommerce platform, you may already know that, on average, only a small percentage of visitors on your site, app, or digital property clear the conversion funnel and complete a purchase.
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While there are many ways to boost your conversion rates and improve sales, retargeting is one of the most efficient. It provides opportunities to reach previous visitors and convince them to return and convert.
Discover what retargeting can do for your eCommerce business, and find out about today’s most successful platforms to make retargeting visitors boost your conversion rates and grow your business.
What is a Retargeting Platform?
Retargeting is a marketing strategy aimed at previous visitors to a website, application, or other digital property, such as an eCommerce business. Retargeting gives these businesses a chance to reach potential customers and secure a conversion after an initial visit didn’t result in a sale.
A company looking to conduct a retargeting ad campaign needs a dedicated retargeting advertising platform. first They contain features and functionality designed to retain information about previous visitors and display targeted ads, typically based on the products and services these visitors browsed during their initial visit.
A retargeting ad campaign is generally Pay-Per-Click (PPC), making it one of the many aspects of PPC advertising.
Most retargeting platforms use browser cookies to acquire visitor information, such as product pages visited, interests, and other elements of the visitor’s online activity.
Why eCommerce Businesses Need Retargeting Platforms
According to a 2022 WebSell study, the average conversion rate for global eCommerce platforms is 4-5%. This shows that 95% to 96% of an average eCommerce site’s visitors do not complete a purchase before ending their session.
Understanding why visitors leave before completing a conversion and improving your site to encourage additional conversions is an essential aspect of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Retargeting is one of the many CRO tools available to boost conversion rates and improve your return on investment (ROI).
Retargeting platforms are essential for eCommerce marketers because they come with numerous tools, options, and features necessary to start a retargeting ad campaign. These platforms can also help you launch multiple types of retargeting ad campaigns.
While retargeting ads can take on various forms (video ads, static ads, dynamic ads, shopping result ads, email offers, etc.), they are typically inexpensive, cost-efficient, and highly personalized.
Top 5 Best Retargeting Platforms You Can Run Ads On
Although eCommerce business owners and marketers can choose from many retargeting platforms, these five solutions rank among the highest-performing and best suited for developing an effective retargeting plan.
1. MailChimp
MailChimp is a retargeting platform specializing in email marketing. The platform’s dashboard is intuitive, easy to use, and packed with numerous features to help marketers and eCommerce site owners create efficient retargeting campaigns.
As an email marketing and retargeting platform, MailChimp is ideally suited for eCommerce platforms that have integrated email into their marketing strategy. The platform is designed to collect customer data and email addresses, making it most efficient for retargeting customers with a registered account.
Once MailChimp has collected data on a registered member, the platform detects whether they have started the conversion process but abandoned it before completing a purchase. If it does, MailChimp will notify the member by emailing them at the address they used to sign up.
For example, if a potential customer has abandoned a shopping cart, MailChimp will email them and display a reminder of the cart’s contents, inviting them to resume shopping.
2. Criteo
Criteo is a dedicated multipurpose PPC platform that serves over 18,000 worldwide clients. This platform allows marketers and eCommerce business owners to launch advertising and retargeting campaigns, centering all relevant functions in one place.
Criteo’s advertising and retargeting functions can fully utilize your customer data and are supported by advanced technologies such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Like many other retargeting and remarketing platforms, Criteo’s retargeting and remarketing campaigns function by embedding customized code on your site. However, unlike standard retargeting platforms, Criteo uses an AI-powered engine to monitor customer engagement and activities, using the data to recommend relevant products through dynamic ads.
3. Perfect Audience
Perfect Audience is a fully dedicated retargeting platform with multiple integrations and a focus on multi-channel marketing. This platform allows marketers and eCommerce managers to manage all their retargeting ad campaigns from a single dashboard, including web, mobile, and Facebook campaigns.
Perfect Audience’s dashboard also lets you launch cross-device, dynamic retargeting campaigns, ensuring you reach users regardless of their devices to visit your eCommerce digital property.
Perfect Audience is committed to providing its clients maximum peace of mind with an array of convenient features, such as an easy-to-use platform, no setup fees, no minimum ad spend, and an extensive knowledge base for newcomers. The analytics suite is fully detailed, updates automatically every two hours, and can email you reports and notifications at predefined times.
4. Meteora
Many eCommerce retargeting platforms are primarily aimed at online businesses operating on a large scale, sometimes offering features or functions that aren’t adapted for local marketing. Meteora is a Texas-based retargeting platform that aims to provide marketers and eCommerce business managers with a local retargeting solution. This approach makes it possible to reach visitors based on the real-life stores and physical locations they previously entered.
Meteora employs a technology known as geofencing, which targets potential customers within a pre-defined geographic area. Geographically-centered retargeting campaigns, sometimes called geofencing ads or geo-retargeting, are efficient solutions to help you boost sales and foot traffic to physical locations.
The platform primarily leverages mobile data to power retargeting campaigns, such as cell phone GPS or Wi-Fi-based location data.
5. AdRoll
AdRoll is one of the most popular remarketing and social media retargeting platforms. It is also one of the oldest and longest-established, with over 15 years of industry experience serving over 15,000 clients.
AdRoll is primarily intended for marketers and digital property owners looking for a comprehensive all-in-one solution. It features a single dashboard for all aspects of their marketing and retargeting plans. For instance, AdRoll’s dashboard lets you start new ad campaigns and remarketing campaigns, configure targeting parameters, and customize ad creatives from a single point.
The platform supports a wide range of retargeting options for custom audiences, such as contextual targeting (displays ads and showcases your brand next to relevant content), demographic targeting (displays ads to audiences based on demographic data, such as age, gender, or revenue), and behavioral targeting (displays ads to audiences based on the products they previously viewed).
Retargeting Ads You Can Use to Boost Revenue
Regardless of the platform you use for your retargeting efforts, it is critical to know about the different types of retargeting ads and how they can help you reacquire site visitors to ensure they complete a conversion. Here are six of the most efficient retargeting campaigns marketers can use to boost eCommerce conversion rates.
- Site retargeting: This type of campaign is the most common form of retargeting. While it primarily targets users that have already returned to your website, it uses data collected on the user’s previous visit to display relevant ads and encourage them to complete a purchase.
- Email retargeting: Email retargeting ads leverage emails to re-engage leads, allowing you to reach potential customers directly from their inboxes. This method is most suitable for eCommerce sites that already include email in their marketing or have access to user email addresses, such as user accounts.
- Engagement retargeting: Although it is a less-used retargeting ad campaign type, engagement retargeting allows you to target potential customers based on the social media content they interacted with (e.g., posts they liked on Facebook).
- Search retargeting: Search retargeting employs a user’s browsing history and search engine data to determine their intent to purchase and the most relevant products to display.
- Creative asset retargeting: Creative asset retargeting, also called click creative retargeting, is a unique retargeting ad campaign type that primarily targets users that clicked or interacted with your ads in the past 60 days.
- Cross-channel retargeting: Cross-channel retargeting leverages data from all of the devices used by your audience, including desktop, mobile, and connected TV (CTV). Cross-channel ads let marketers and eCommerce site owners keep their brand at the forefront, maximizing engagement rates.
Maximize Your Conversion Rates and Boost Sales with CodeFuel
Whether you are looking to optimize your existing customer base, prospect new businesses, or enhance the effectiveness of your advertising and retargeting strategies, CodeFuel’s team can help. Our digital marketing experts can review your eCommerce platform’s current performance and help you create and optimize the best marketing, dynamic remarketing, and retargeting strategies for your needs. Contact us today to get started.
FAQs
What is an example of retargeting?
A typical example of a retargeting scenario on an eCommerce platform involves a customer visiting the site, browsing specific products, and adding them to the virtual shopping cart. However, for one reason or another, the customer does not complete the purchase and exits the site before payment. This situation is a typical example of an abandoned cart scenario.
Retargeting lets you notify the user, remind them of the cart’s contents, and encourage them to complete their shopping. The retargeting method used depends on the campaign and strategy. For example, email retargeting sends an email to the customer after a set timeframe. In contrast, site targeting opens a notification to show the cart’s contents when the user returns to the eCommerce site.
What platforms can you retarget on?
There are numerous platforms marketers can use to retarget customers. Most fall into two categories: all-in-one marketing platforms and dedicated retargeting platforms.
- All-in-one marketing platforms are large, fully-featured digital software solutions that include retargeting options but are primarily used to manage all aspects of the site’s marketing activity.
- Dedicated retargeting platforms are smaller but more focused software containing fewer functions than an all-in-one platform. They typically only include the necessary tools and functionality to launch and manage a retargeting ad campaign.
Which is the best retargeting campaign for eCommerce conversions?
There is no single best campaign type to improve your eCommerce digital property’s conversion rates. The best campaign for your strategy depends on your business objectives, how your users engage with your site or brand, and where you display your ads.
Does Google do retargeting?
Google Ads offers retargeting features through its Google Remarketing function. It allows you to add website visitors and app users to remarketing lists, then create ad campaigns using these lists as your target audience.
Does retargeting work?
A properly adjusted retargeting ad campaign launched from a powerful platform is one of the most effective solutions to boost conversion rates and increase your campaign’s ROI.
According to data compiled by Siteefy, retargeting ads experience ten times higher click-through rates than standard ads and boost online sales by approximately 20%, resulting in an efficiency rate exceeding 1,000%.
How do I create a retargeting ad campaign?
The retargeting ad campaign creation process varies depending on the platform you choose. For instance, creating a retargeting campaign on Facebook requires you to create a list of contacts, feed them through Facebook Audience Manager, and segment your ads for a tailored audience. In this case, your target audience is the users you want to retarget.
Once you have launched your retargeting ad campaign, managing it should be no different than any other campaign.
