Regaining the customers who (almost) got away
Online marketers will be working harder in the next 12 months to get back potential customers who may have begun and abandoned a conversion activity, according to an August 2010 survey by SeeWhy.
Asked about their usage of various remarketing techniques, almost half of US online marketers said they did not currently use any—but almost all will within a year.
The increase in retargeted advertising will be relatively small, but use of email remarketing will increase from about a third of online marketers to nearly three-quarters.
With reports of shopping cart abandonment as high as 70%, and marketers looking to boost customer acquisition and retention as the economic landscape continues to be shaky, going after web users who have already indicated an interest in a product is a smart way to get consumers’ attention at the right time: when they are already thinking about purchasing.
Email is a core retention channel for online retailers and, based on SeeWhy’s results, will see the most uptake. But retargeted display ads can also be very effective. A travel-industry remarketing case study reported by Tnooz showed positive results when Intercontinental Hotels Group ran retargeted ads on the Google Display Network to users who had previously shown interest in one of the company’s hotel brands but had not completed a booking.
In August 2009, nearly half of specialized marketers told Advertise.com and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) that remarketing and retargeting were the most underused advertising technologies on the web. Usage of retargeting seems to have remained flat in the past year, but marketers may be ready to reconnect and make conversion abandonment work for them.
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Check out today’s other article, “Are Twitter Followers Better Than Facebook Fans?”