Remarketing vs. retargeting: The best ways to execute your next marketing campaign

Remarketing and retargeting aren’t quite the same thing. Both are marketing strategies that have some overlap, and sometimes their terms are used interchangeably, but the distinguishable differences mark them as two different techniques to reach customers.

Let’s outline these differences so you’re able to retarget and remarket with confidence.

What is remarketing?

Remarketing involves re-engaging customers who’ve already purchased or subscribed to you in order to entice them to return — hence, remarketing. Remarketing campaigns aim their sights and customers who’ve churned or who haven’t recently interacted with your brand.

You may notice this term being used interchangeably with retargeting. For instance, Google Remarketing Services offer retargeting. For the sake of clarity, we can use them distinctly.

How remarketing works

Collecting user data

To start remarketing effectively, consider a place to centralize, normalize, and activate your data. A good Cloud Data Warehouse paired with an even better CDP should give you all the tools to collect user data and use it effectively.

The data collection process is essential. Do you use zero- or first-party data to track user behavior? How about third-party cookies? Do you track campaigns with UTM tags to see who converts? These are all valuable data sources you can centralize in one place to identify users that are ideal for remarketing.

Segmenting audiences

Audience segmentation is key to effective remarketing. Your goal is direct response to your campaign, be that an email signup, a form fill, or a product purchase. You target the right users for each action by segmenting an audience by behavior.

For instance, dormant customers will benefit for an email to reengage them, and you can segment for dormant customers by looking for customers who completed a purchase months ago and haven’t returned. Or, you could interact with a churned subscriber through a paid ad asking them to come back. To do this, you create an audience segment for users who recently unsubscribed.

Creating the right ads

Effective remarketing turns one-time buyers and brief subscribers into loyal customers. This involves multiple touchpoints across several channels to engage customers.

This is where you need to know your customer journey. Where do customers hang out? How do the ads look there? And possibly most importantly, what’s your budget? Answering these questions can help you create standout ads.

Measuring success

Effective remarketing carefully measures each channel’s success. You can tweak campaigns live depending on whether users have taken a desired action. 

Remarketing relies on your customer data to gauge effectiveness. Are customers coming back? Which touchpoints are causing a renewal? To create these insights, you have to store customer data correctly.

Who uses remarketing?

Remarketing is an effective strategy if you’re looking to increase customer lifetime value (CLV) and drive repeat purchases. You’ll see these crowds using remarketing often:

• Ecommerce: Ecommerce uses remarketing to promote related products, offer post-purchase incentives, or get buyers back to their page with new sales and discounts.
• Subscription services: Businesses with subscription models use remarketing to upsell additional services to existing subscribers or win their churned subscribers back.
• Event-based businesses: Companies that sell tickets or register attendees for events can use remarketing to follow up with past attendees and encourage them to sign up for future events.

Remarketing examples

There’s no one way to do remarketing. Almost any channel you use for regular marketing can be for remarketing, too. Here are some thoughtful ways to approach remarketing.

Win back strategy

For customers who haven’t interacted with your business in a while, a remarketing email campaign might offer a special promotion or new product announcement to bring them back.

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In the case above, remarketing is particularly useful since the customer needs service regularly. So, Jiffy Lube schedules an email to send once a customer has lapsed an oil change for a certain number of months.

Paid ads

Have you ever seen an ad on social media enticing you to resubscribe? Paid media is a good place to keep your brand top-of-mind with users, particularly if your content includes enticing creative that meshes well with the feed:

SMS

Once a customer has given you their phone number, you can message them about exclusive deals. Just don’t abuse this power and text every day.

SMS can be a very effective channel. Most people will drop everything to check a text notification, so with the right incentive, customers might subscribe to texts to see your offers.

Reengagement emails

After a customer makes a purchase, a remarketing email might suggest complementary products or services. After all, the customer liked your brand enough to try it once!

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What is retargeting?

Like remarketing, retargeting is a form of online advertising that invites users to return to your product or service. However, retargeting focuses on users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your content but did not complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a contact form. Conversely, remarketing is for people who are already users of your product.

The primary goal of retargeting is to reengage potential customers and guide them further down the sales funnel.

How retargeting works

Collect user data

Like remarketing, retargeting relies on tracking technology, typically in the form of cookies or pixels, to monitor user behavior on your website. When a user visits your site, a small piece of code (a pixel) is placed on their browser. This pixel tracks the user on your site or app and records their actions. This is essential to find the users who enter their contact info on a sales or subscription page but don’t follow through!

Create retargeting event triggers

Event triggers are essential to effective remarketing; it’s important to strike while the iron is hot. You do this by working with a tool or integration that uses real-time data to identify users who don’t complete an action.

From there, you can tailor particular event triggers that will send the user social media ads, text messages, emails, and so on (though hopefully not all at once!).

Entice users back

Now, with the right triggers in place, your ads can work to entice users back and finish what they’d started. Enticing creative, contextual advertising, and the right incentives help bring users back.

Additionally, don’t underestimate the power of multichannel marketing in winning users back. Try running campaigns on more than one channel.

Optimize for success

Successful retargeting involves several potential points of failure. You’ll need to monitor CRO on the landing page, ROAS on paid ads, and set frequency caps to prevent frustrated users fatigued with ads. A good retargeting campaign requires carefully monitoring data and feedback.

Who uses retargeting?

Retargeting can be used by nearly any industry. Here’s where it’s most common:

• Ecommerce stores: As with remarketing, ecommerce stores benefit greatly from strong retargeting campaigns. Paid media and search ads cater to products with clear imagery.
• B2B marketers: For businesses selling high-value services or products, retargeting nurtures leads that slip through the cracks or aren’t ready to commit to a big price tag.
• Service providers: While you may have to get creative with the promos and messaging you use, service products can use retargeting to stay top-of-mind for potential customers researching their options.

Retargeting examples

Retargeting is tricky; the message is crucial in encouraging a user to finish a purchase. Here are some ways companies can use a multichannel approach to market to users who bounce.

Product-specific SMS

If you notice a customer eyeing a specific product, retargeting for that specific product can be powerful. You could choose to display the product dynamically on paid media, or you could use SMS to send a push notification to allow the customer to pick back up where they left off:

Cart abandonment emails

Email is one of the easiest bits of contact information to obtain. Because of that, many companies opt for email retargeting to get users back:

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Display ads

If your user is seeing a product everywhere, chances are they’ll finally reunite with it when they’re ready to buy. Display ads served on the websites they’ll visit give them a small push to reconsider a purchase:

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Retargeting vs. remarketing: When to use each

Bottom line, retargeting and remarketing and similar techniques to reach different audience segments. Here’s a quick guide on when to use each strategy:

The right decisions are with the data

Both retargeting and remarketing are what separate passive marketers from agile ones. By understanding the differences between these two strategies and knowing when to apply each, you can create more targeted campaigns.

These techniques require real-time data, audience segmenting, and advanced triggers to work out flawlessly. Consider using a CDP like Simon Data to activate your customer data and get the sales rolling in.

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