Taking the Bait: A Day of Retargeting
Imagine investing your time and money
into a product that only works 1-3 percent
of the time. Most of us would stop pouring
our resources into said product and look
for better options.
Unfortunately, most Internet retailers are getting this return from their
e-commerce sites — a 1-3 percent conversion rate — which is why
they are turning to retargeting in droves. In fact, a recent study by
Chango and Digiday revealed that brand marketers strongly believe
(3.98 on a scale of 5.0) that retargeting is so standard that it is budgeted
for regularly.
Most Website Magazine readers are familiar with the concept of retargeting,
but Ted Schuster, director of advertising at Resolution Media,
describes it as using display and search campaigns to “target the 97 out
of 100 visitors who came to a site but didn’t convert.” Like in all digital
initiatives, however, there are best practices to leverage, players to
know and obstacles to avoid.
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In order to get some real-world examples of retargeting in action, and see what went right and wrong, I spent a good part of a Friday trying to bait companies to follow me around the Web. Here are the companies who bit, along with some strategies advertisers should throw back.
Nordstrom via TellApart
Online shopping isn’t typically how I start my
workday (really), but in the name of research,
I decided to visit Nordstrom.com. Once there,
I added a pair of wedges into my shopping cart.
I ultimately left the site, went about my Website
Magazine business, and within minutes was
presented with the ad in Image A, which includes the shoes I had just
shown interest in, but ultimately didn’t purchase, as well as a pair of
boots I viewed several months ago and didn’t purchase. Using TellApart,
Nordstrom was able to marry my past viewing behavior and
current intent with real-time incentives (the boots in the ad were now
50 percent off) to deliver a highly personalized advertisement.
There is little risk for merchants who are looking to do the same.
TellApart does not charge upfront costs and is only paid when shoppers
click on retargeted ads and go on to make purchases.
Retailers who are on the fence about retargeting can start simple by
focusing on shoppers who have abandoned their shopping carts and
then expand their retargeting campaigns, as they feel more comfortable
or learn more about the practice. Additionally, merchants who
are already familiar with paid search, can leverage the Google Display
Network, according to Katie Johnson, associate director at Resolution
Media, and do text-based ads, kind of like retargeting training wheels.
Alex and Ani via AdRoll
After my Nordstrom experiment, I received a case study on Kenshoo’s
Facebook advertising successes with Alex and Ani, an eco-friendly jewelry
retailer, which prompted me to visit AlexandAni.com for the very
first time. They later retargeted me (Image B). More impressively, when I clicked through the ad, AdRoll sent me to a near-identical landing
page (certainly a best practice many merchants are aware of from
their experience in display advertising) featuring one of the two products
shown in the ad (Image C). Exceedingly more notable, however,
is that later, when I logged onto Twitter on my smartphone (all other
activity was on my work desktop), Alex and Ani promoted a Tweet to
me even though I was on a different device and had never interacted
with the brand prior to the aforementioned website visit.
Turns out, in Dec. 2013, AdRoll announced support for retargeting
on Twitter and Alex and Ani (along with business-to-business companies New Relic and Salesforce), were “alpha test” participants. These
companies saw engagement increase by as much as 170 percent and acquisition
costs decrease by up to 74 percent. As early adopters, AdRoll’s
Twitter retargeting allows Alex and Ani to have broader reach to high-value
customers by using customer intent data and re-engaging site
visitors on Twitter, desktop and mobile, using a Promoted Account or
140-chararacter Promoted Tweet (Image D). Users don’t stay on one
device all the time, neither should retargeting efforts.
As for costs, AdRoll’s retargeting campaigns have a CPM range of
$1-$2.50, which it states is the industry’s lowest.
Volkswagen via Google’s Display Network
After unsuccessfully trying to get high-end luxury vehicle companies
like Bentley and Porsche to retarget to me (basically to try and prove a
point that not all browsers are buyers and not everyone should be retargeted),
Volkswagen, using Google’s Display Network, picked up my
auto-buying intent, as well as my location. The ad in Image E is a good
example of the proper use of geotargeting (showing a Chicago dealership
to someone in a Chicago suburb). Additionally, once I clicked
through, the landing page showed the same-exact creative, providing a
consistent experience. As I showed more intent (clicking through the
original ad), VW increased the frequency of my ads, but not everyone
thinks this is always a good thing.
Schuster of Resolution Media, actually says that one of the concerns/
misconceptions that retailers have about retargeting, is that they are
going to bother consumers too much. For them, Schuster recommends
“frequency capping” to not send out quite so many ads. A retailer can
say, for instance, “I only want to show this ad five times a day or five
times a week.”
While these retargeting examples displayed many best practices,
I saw a few notable mistakes in my day of retargeting. For instance,
Comcast delivered an ad to me with an incentive to purchase services
I already have, making me ineligible for the promotion. Both Johnson
and Ben Plomion, VP of Marketing at Chango, recommend using an
exclusion pixel to avoid targeting people who have already converted
on products, especially those with long purchase cycles, like cable and
Internet. Wrong or mismatched creative and incorrect geo-targeting
also top the list of retargeting mishaps, according to Plomion who
recommends retailers hire the right people, put the right processes in
place, and make sure that vendors are accountable and working 100
percent on their behalf.
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Image A
Image B
Image C
Image D
Image E
By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor


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