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How to Use eCommerce Retargeting to Increase Sales
April 17, 2024

How to Use eCommerce Retargeting to Increase Sales

Has your ecommerce organization been searching for ways to generate more sales? Retargeting is an extremely effective solution to boost your sales.

Below, we outline the benefits of retargeting. Additionally, we identify top retargeting strategies, including retargeting with SafeOpt. Keep on reading to learn more.

What Is Retargeting?

Marketing gurus love their lingo. Just about every specialized marketing tactic has its own intriguing name. The good news is that most of these terms are fairly straightforward. The same holds true of the phrase “retargeting.”

As the name implies, retargeting involves targeting consumers with follow-up ads and experiences. These ads are aimed at prospective shoppers who showed interest in a product. Marketers direct these ads to shoppers who visited your site but left before making a purchase.

Retargeting ads typically feature the same product category the prospect was viewing. However, they can be more generalized.

Retargeting can boost your sales because it should be more effective than standard advertising. Because you’re only retargeting shoppers who have, say, visited your website or added an item to their cart, it should be more effective than trying to convince someone to visit your site.

The end goal of retargeting is to get the shopper to make a purchase.

How Retargeting Works

Retargeting software uses “cookies” to identify targets of ad content. When consumers visit your website, their browser will store these tiny bits of data. This data documents what ads or pages the user visited. You can use this data to serve up a custom ad experience for prospective customers.

Have you heard about the impending ban on third-party cookies? If so, you are probably wondering if retargeting is a viable marketing solution. This ban will certainly impact some types of retargeting. However, you will still be able to use first-party cookies to fuel retargeting efforts.

First-party cookies are cookies that you place on your site. You can use these cookies to track customers visiting your web pages. After the ban, you will not be able to use cookies from other sites. A good retargeting strategy will help you reduce the negative impacts of the ban before, during, and after its implementation.

Why Is Retargeting Important for Ecommerce Brands?

Approximately 266.7 million Americans do at least some of their shopping online. Over half of U.S. consumers consider this their preferred shopping method. Even though ecommerce purchasing has been widely adopted, one consumer trend remains dominant. We are talking about “window shopping.”

Unfortunately, not everyone who visits your website will make a purchase. The majority of site traffic will browse your available products and services and then bounce. These customers may simply be browsing, or they might be comparing your prices to those of your competitors. Either way, you just lost out on a potential sale.

Retargeting provides you with an opportunity to salvage that transaction. You can retarget that prospect with targeted ad content while they browse the web. Who knows? You might even inspire them to head back to your site and complete that transaction.

Benefits of Retargeting

Retargeting prospective customers offers several benefits, including the following:

Boosted Conversion Rates

Retargeting can increase your conversion rates. Even slight increases in conversion rates can pay significant dividends. This is especially true if you can turn prospects into repeat customers.

For best results, pair retargeting with great content and a sound strategy. By doing so, you can convert more browsers into shoppers. You can also acquire new customers and encourage existing customers to spend more.

Improved Marketing Return on Investment

Retargeting is a proven digital marketing tactic that will help you compete in crowded markets.

With retargeting, you can improve the return on investment received from other marketing endeavors. Your other marketing efforts may be driving traffic to your ecommerce store but what good is all of that traffic if few visitors actually make a purchase? The answer is “not much.”

Retargeting allows you to advertise to prospects who have already shown that they’re interested in your products. It can also be a force multiplier for your other marketing efforts, as you can also retarget shoppers who were driven to your store from other marketing tactics.

Increased Sales

Increasing sales is a top priority for every ecommerce retailer. Higher sales lead to more revenue and greater profitability. These increased sales figures can ultimately pave the way for long-term business growth.

Retargeting can help you boost sales in several ways. It will increase your conversion rate and optimize brand awareness among new clients. Additionally, retargeting can boost the average lifetime value of existing customers.

Ecommerce Retargeting Strategies to Increase Sales

When it comes to ecommerce retargeting, you have four primary options available. These tactics are as follows:

Email Retargeting

Email retargeting is a great tactic for delivering ad content to existing customers. It is also useful for retargeting potential clients who provide contact information. For instance, you can target people who abandoned their carts before checkout.

You can use email retargeting to remind these individuals to complete their purchases or boost awareness about coupons, sales, and other deals.

Email Retargeting with SafeOpt

On its own, email retargeting can be quite effective. However, there are some shortcomings to traditional email retargeting. A few of the biggest potential downsides to regular email retargeting practices include:

  • Consumer privacy compliance concerns
  • Coupon leakage/abuse
  • No brand collaboration opportunities.

Fortunately, you can tap into the power of email retargeting and circumvent all these pain points by deploying modern solutions from SafeOpt. The dynamic platform allows you to increase conversions by being able to send emails to people who were browsing your site and didn’t complete a purchase.

Let’s say your shopper is browsing your online store and adds something to their cart but doesn’t complete their purchase. SafeOpt allows you to send them a promotional email encouraging them to complete the purchase.

You can do this even if that shoppers isn’t part of your established customer list. SafeOpt is compliant with all email regulations and best of all, SafeOpt works on a cost-per acquisition model — you only pay if you’re getting sales.

This has been a powerful tool for ecommerce brands of all sizes. In just one year, an online health brand generated an additional $2.7 million in revenue using SafeOpt. Try SafeOpt today.

Create Personalized Ads with Search

Email retargeting is one of the best methods for directing follow-up ads at customers. Yet, there are other options as well. One of the most popular retargeting tactics involves using search platforms like Google.

With Google Ads, you can create personalized retargeting ads for your ecommerce business. You can display these ads on search engine results pages. Additionally, you can display retargeting ads on other websites as long as they participate in Google's advertising program.

Google serves as the perfect launch point for your search-based retargeting program. The search engine behemoth dominates the global market share, with over 92% of consumers using Google as their search engine.

Create Personalized Ads on Social

Want to mix up your retargeting strategy even more? If so, then we recommend getting social.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have their own paid advertising capabilities. These platforms are best known for their traditional pay-per-click campaigns. But you can retarget consumers on these platforms as well.

Before choosing a platform, research your audience. This data will help you decide which platforms are most popular with your audience. Facebook users tend to skew older, while younger markets are easier to capture on Instagram and TikTok.

That rounds out our crash course on boosting sales with ecommerce retargeting. To learn more about how SafeOpt can help you launch a successful retargeting campaign, contact our team today.