'Net Features : remarketing

Convert Visitors into Customers with Behavioral Data

Allison Howen — Wed, 30 May 2012 01:05:00 GMT

Data solutions provider RedEye has launched a behavioral remarketing platform for e-commerce merchants called the Conversion Solution.

The Conversion Solution monitors customers across multiple visits in order to increase conversions. The product gathers valuable data from registered visitors, the browser and the shopping cart so that merchants can improve their remarketing efforts and therefore increase their ROI.

“Conversion solution can help companies be more relevant and send targeted email messages sooner, and that can increase the likelihood of a return visit to purchase,” says Brian McConnell, RedEye's U.S. commercial director.

“The more information that you know about a customer, the more you can use dynamic content to target a customer with relevant and engaging communication. The end result is converting more customers.”

Remarketing With Amazon (and Triggit)

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:18:00 GMT

Amazon has selected ad technology provider Triggit (a demand side platform) to power display advertising on its own site and on third party sites.

Amazon will use the data it collects during customer visitors to create pools of potential marketing targets. Thanks to Triggit, Amazon will be able to display advertising to Web surfers after they leave the site through tracking “cookies” (retargeting at its finest and on a grand scale). Once Triggit locates those users, the company purchases ad inventory those users are looking at in real time. Amazon then uses the ad space to serve up an ad for the marketer it’s working with, and charges them for the impression.

Amazon has dipped its virtual toes in the advertising waters before with little success, but by using the massive amounts of data it collects about visitors, coupled with sophisticated remarketing technology like Triggit, Amazon could become a real contender in the battle for Web advertising dollars.

Triggit is current the technology of choice for several Fortune 500 brands inclyuding Kodak, Mazda and Orbitz.

MarketLive Merchants Get MyBuys Remarketing

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:30:00 GMT

Ecommerce software provider MarketLive has partnered with MyBuys, a profile-driven remarketing suite. Unless you've been living under a rock the past six months, you'll know that remarketing is the hottest thing in e-commerce since the rise of sophisticated product recommendation technologies.

The MyBuys Profile-Driven Remarketing Suite gives retailers multiple options (email and display advertising) for bringing shoppers back to their sites to buy for the first time, or to encourage repeat purchase. MyBuys, (much like other remarketing solutions, learns about each individual shopper and understands the brands, products, and attributes of interest, then uses those insights to send targeted emails and personalized display ads to each shopper, enticing them to return.

“We constantly look for ways to add value for our merchants by enhancing the already robust marketing, merchandising, selling, servicing, and analytics capabilities of our eCommerce platform,” said Mark Pierce, President of MarketLive. “The agreement with MyBuys builds upon and strengthens our long-term partnership and gives MarketLive merchants seamless access to the MyBuys Remarketing Suite. The solution will enhance merchants’ ability to generate repeat sales and increase customer loyalty.”

Ready for Remarketing? Google says Yep...

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 03 May 2011 18:20:00 GMT

Display advertising has the potential to reemerge as an essential promotional technique for online advertisers thanks to remarketing.

Google, on its Inside Adwords blog, makes the case today for remarketing on display advertising by showcasing a few advertisers that grew an average of 113% every quarter after launch using the technique:

- Yankee Candle Company used remarketing to re-engage shoppers and increased conversion rates by 600% while cutting cost-per-conversion in half.

- Lenovo PC manufacturers increased sales by 20% and lowered their overall expense-to-revenue ratio by 14% in a campaign that included remarketing and display across multiple networks.

- etrailer.com, an online towing parts retailer, saw twice the click-through-rate at a 75% lower cost-per-click with remarketing compared to their typical display advertising campaigns.

Google has made several key enhancements to Adwords remarketing including the ability to show relevant ads right after a potential customer leaves a site (when they are actually most likely to click based on Google's analysis) and says it has improved the algorithm that in real time helps in the determination of how much advertisers should pay for an impression.

Google launched its remarketing capabilities across its display network one year ago and grown the reach of the Google Display Network - now reaching 84% of the people on a typical remarketing list, serving hundreds of billions of ad impressions to over 500 million internet users worldwide. As you might imagine, publishers are seeing a revenue lift by serving remarketing ads on their sites as well.

Get Big Returns with Abandoned Cart Email Remarketing

Mike Phillips — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:30:00 GMT

Too often, merchants forget that shopping cart abandonment is not the end of the line. In fact, it can be a very small stumbling block toward an increase in sales. That's what Dungarees has discovered.

In just 30 days, and using iGoDigital personalized product recommendation software, Dungarees realized a 490 percent increase in abandoned cart email revenue. Implementing this software within their existing email service provider (ESP) solution, Dungarees is able to send an email, triggered by an abandoned cart, that makes recommendations based on the abandoned item, while using that item in the subject line. Those emails had a 55 percent open rate, 17 percent conversion rate and the aforementioned 490 percent abandoned cart email revenue increase.

"In a content-driven world, the number of messages consumers receive on a daily basis continues to increase, making personalized marketing messages that much more important," said Eric Tobias, president, iGoDigital. "By injecting product recommendations into remarketing emails and mentioning the name of the abandoned item in the subject line, Dungarees has seen an improved customer shopping experience, ultimately generating more purchases and return visits to its website."

SeeWhy, another provider of remarketing solutions, recently concluded a study that found customers who abandon shopping carts spend 55 percent more than those who purchase straight-away. Why? There are many reasons, including that heavy online shoppers are accustomed to price comparison shopping before making a final purchase – hence the abandoned cart. Another factor is that some customers are using shopping carts as virtual lists, saving items for purchase later while they shop around. A remarketing email reminds them of that list, as seen in the Dungarees example of mentioning the original product in the email's subject line.

SeeWhy also found that timing is critical. In the first 24 hours following abandonment, 54 percent of returning customers who make a purchase will do so within the first few hours. After 48 hours, that number climbs to 64 percent and rises again, to 82 percent after seven days. In other words, more than half of customers will abandon the cart for good if not remarketed within 24 hours of the abandonment. SeeWhy outlines four key metrics when analyzing remarketing:

Recovery rate – percentage of visitors that abandon, are remarketed to then return to make the purchase.
Open rate – SeeWhy's analysis shows an average 46 percent open rate for remarketing emails, more than double most standard email marketing campaigns.
Clickthrough rate – the rate of those who click to the site from a remarketing email. SeeWhy shows 15 percent, more than triple standard email marketing campaigns.
Unsubscribe rate – the proportion of shopping cart abandoners who subsequently unsubscribe from future remarketing emails.

While the monetary returns are most impressive, developers should keep in mind that retargeting is not just limited to e-commerce.

When unsubscribing from Groupon email lists, you might see this page. It asks you to punish "Derrick", the person responsible for keeping Groupon subscribers active. Click the video and Derrick gets chastised, ending with a splash of hot coffee in the face, followed by a button to re-subscribe. Of course, Groupon is known for its edgy, witty atmosphere so this approach is not for every business. But it does highlight a unique approach to remarketing.

Email remarketing could be used to gather feedback. If a user unsubscribes, why not ask a couple of questions? Why did they unsubscribe? Were you sending too many emails? Are the products or content no longer relevant to their interests?

Another option might be to introduce a new product. Perhaps they have unsubscribed because of a relevancy issue – but do they know about your new product or service? That might be just what they were looking for. In the same vein, maybe you have another website that more closely matches the user's needs? Consider including a little information about that site, along with a link to a page describing the benefits and, of course, a subscription button.

By all accounts, remarketing with email is an opportunity available to just about every business using any sort of email marketing system and can be tailored to fit any unique business model. If the customer is all but lost, why not make an effort to get her back?

Retailers Lack Cart Abandonment Strategies

Linc Wonham — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:34:00 GMT

It’s not surprising that shopping cart abandonment rates continue to rise as today’s online shoppers have more resources than ever to compare prices and scour the best available deals. The latest figures show that 7 out of every 10 potential customers place items into carts they later abandon, costing the e-commerce industry a staggering $18 billion annually in lost sales.

What is surprising, however, is the number of retailers that are willing to accept those lost sales without implementing a shopping cart abandonment strategy. Email marketing firm Listrak has been studying the problem for the past two years, and the overwhelming majority of merchants are missing opportunities to convert on 20 to 35 percent of their abandoned sales through remarketing.

Only 13 percent of the top 500 online retailers currently utilize a remarketing campaign to address shopping cart abandonment. Many of the companies that do employ such a strategy are falling behind in their campaign tactics – such as sending personalized emails to customers (down 2 percent since 2009) and offering incentives to help complete the purchase (down 9 percent since 2009).

Of those retailers offering incentives, only 5 percent have been offering free shipping – despite the fact that shipping charges have been cited as the cause for nearly half of all abandoned carts. Only 14 percent of the merchants that use a remarketing strategy said that it includes more than one attempt to reach the customer and convert the sale.

The top 500 retailers did fare much better, however, in at least one of the best practices for reducing shopping cart abandonment. The vast majority (95 percent) now ask shoppers to enter their email addresses in the first step of the checkout process, up significantly from 2009.

But the results of the study seem to indicate that only a fraction of those merchants are actively using customer email addresses to recover their abandoned sales. Listrak provides more information in its free whitepaper on automated cart abandonment strategies, and here are five additional suggestions for reducing cart abandonment rates.

Listrak Release Puts Emphasis on Remarketing, Reporting

Linc Wonham — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 22:55:00 GMT

Thanks to deeper integrations with Omniture and Google Analytics, the latest release of Listrak’s Web-based email marketing platform is one that online retailers may find particularly useful for planning their strategies around the holidays and the year ahead. One area of focus in the new version greatly enhances merchants' email retargeting capabilities, a tactic that many consider to be underutilized at the moment but predict that it will become commonplace for retailers in 2011.

Highlights of the new release include an eCommerce Conversion Template Library, Omniture Remarketing Reports, Google Analytics Campaign and Content Definition, Conversion Tracking and Reporting, SecondPass automated remarketing campaigns and Fusion Apps custom applications portal. Merchants using the Omniture Remarketing Reports can import targeted segments such as shopping cart abandonment, product views and purchases to automatically deploy campaigns to customers to encourage sale, up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

SecondPass enables emails to be automatically redeployed within a set number of days to all recipients who did not open the first message, which has been proven to generate response rates equal to 80 percent of the original send. Deeper integration with Google Analytics allows merchants to customize campaign name and content definitions for easier reporting capabilities and better tracking of revenue to specific campaigns.

Three in Four Merchants to be Retargeting in 2011

Linc Wonham — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 18:11:00 GMT

Online remarketing techniques have been a hot topic of debate in recent weeks, including our own take on The Cost of Retargeting. Retargeted advertising has been the hot-button issue for marketers and consumers alike, but a new study indicates that the biggest increase in remarketing efforts this year will occur by way of retargeted emails – by a substantial amount.

An August 2010 survey by e-commerce solutions provider SeeWhy indicated that 74 percent of U.S. merchants will be engaging in email remarketing campaigns within 12 months, whereas only 34 percent are sending retargeted emails right now. The survey revealed that the jump in retargeted advertising will be much less significant, from 31 percent in August 2010 to 36 percent in August 2011.

The adoption or continuation of some type of remarketing strategy – the practice of reaching out to potential customers who have visited a website but left without engaging in a conversion activity, or possibly abandoned a conversion activity – was in nearly every merchant’s plans for 2011. Almost half of the respondents stated that they do not currently use any remarketing techniques, but almost all of them have plans to within the next 12 months.

Many marketers and retailers have lowered their shopping cart abandonment rates and increased conversions through different forms of remarketing. Providers of retargeting and geotargeting services and technologies abound throughout the industry, including Criteo, FetchBack and ChoiceStream, to name just a few. But the prevalence and frequency of retargeted ads on the Web has gained some attention from the mainstream media in recent weeks, leading to a fair amount of debate about the practice and even some concerns over consumer privacy.

A year ago, retargeting was identified in one report as the most underutilized advertising technology on the Internet, and today it has become one of the most talked about. The results of the SeeWhy survey tell us to expect remarketing to be an industry standard by this time next year, with retargeted emails leading the way.