Remarketing is a new use for email marketing

Remarketing is when marketers target contacts again after they have started a key action, but not completed it. It offers a new revenue stream as it uses tracking technology to target those who ‘fell away’ as part of a ‘conversion rate’. For too long, this rate has been accepted as ‘waste’.

This waste can be down to a number of reasons, many outside marketers’ control – an urgent phone call, time for tea and a host of other distractions.

Perhaps the most serious of these is when the site fails, and remarketing allows you to send apology customer service messages to prevent negative brand perception.

The Business Case

The maths is easy and shows what a massive opportunity this is, especially for eCommerce sites:

If you have a 5% click through rate and a 20% conversion rate on your site that means for every five people that click through only one is converting.

Therefore, targeting the other four who have shown a clear interest with persuasive communications will increase the conversion rate and revenue significantly.

From a customer service point of view, understanding why people don’t complete key actions is fantastic information. Triggering quick surveys/ telephone calls can be one of the most effective ways of learning how to improve your on site experience.

Technical Requirements

Technically, it is fairly simple to build these segments. Most ESPs can integrate with your web site to track people and what they do on your web site by using cookies and a small piece of code in your web site.

You can then use de-dupe logic to select them based on whatever action people commit on your site without completion–those that start to buy, those that start to complete forms, those that simply browse certain pages, and fire off campaigns.

Remarketing in use

For example, companies such as Amazon target email marketing at those who abandon shopping carts part way through the customer journey and convert these ‘lost customers’ into real customers.

In the insurance market, remarketing principles have been used for a considerable time. Only 3 months ago after moving house, Endsleigh Insurance used telemarketing to contact me after I gave up on their application form half way through.

Barriers to adoption

Marketers looking to implement a remarketing program, need to balance any annoyance caused to the recipient versus the incremental revenues created. Many companies have considerable internal battles on this issue

On a tactical point of view, often decisions on what to say often hold back the implementation of test programs.

This is the same broadcast question many companies are facing on managing the frequency of email communications, and one that only testing will answer.

The barriers aren’t access to the technology or costs. You don’t need to invest in an all-singing, all-dancing automated and fully integrated email system. Testing remarketing can be very easy- simply choose a process you wish to test remarketing on, for example your ecommerce process or a multi page sign-up form.

Most ESPs can tag people who click through from your email messages and monitor which pages on your website they visit (Adestra screen shots available on request), allowing you to build lists of contacts to send to on a regular basis manually. Otherwise, most analytics packages will store this information.

Finally, remarketing is the tip of the iceberg. With 54% of consumers admitting to lying online (Source: Consumer attitudes to Disclosing Personal Data for Direct Marketing Survey, March 06) and 74% of UK consumers have one or more email accounts (Source: Marketing Sherpa) it is becoming increasingly difficult to guarantee the accuracy of traditional demographic segmentation techniques. Remarketing relies on actual user behaviour which is the best predictor of future behaviour there is.

More information about our email marketing broadcast services

Adestra provide welcome tactical advice and input on our client's email marketing program. For more information about how we can work together with you to improve your email marketing, please contact us and ask us about our email marketing services

Adestras Message Focus

Adestra have a proven track record in providing email marketing tools, technology, strategy and support for a number of large corporate players.

From product delivery for large publishers through to tactical direct response promotions for travel providers, all clients always benefit from the shared best practice and knowledge our team have gained working within email marketing since 2000.

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