Over the recent years, email marketing has grown to become one of the keystones of digital marketing. Anyone who is running an e-commerce business can attest to the difficulties faced when having to find an outlet to pass information to their clients. Consumers are being hit left right, and center with information from numerous outlets and the most that are being done is simply unsubscribing.

 

A study revealed that up to 77% of people would rather receive promotional and marketing materials through the email. The same study also indicated that once customers feel overwhelmed by the marketing emails that are rolled out. So how does one ensure that their email campaign strategy is right and effective to their consumers?

 

The answer to all these complications is email retargeting. It has been proven that supplementing the email with any other channeled outreach form tends to be more effective. Email retargeting either works through display advertisements or personalized email based tactics.

 

Email Retargeting: What it is and how it works

 

Email retargeting is basically when someone uses the information that they have about their clients to tailor-make the information sent to them through various channels. Marketers have always been in a conundrum on how to keep potential customers glued to their e-commerce sites. With email retargeting, they can use a Data Management Platform to collect cookies and other important information about their clients. Information such as the IP address of the site visitor is used to match with other ones that have been collected using forms from other websites that require the visitor to input their email addresses or personal preferences.

 

The two types of retargeting campaigns focus on a list based and pixel retargeting. The latter uses some types of software that enable one to track a user's online traits and behaviors. Therefore, the scenario is, once a visitor browses a particular e-commerce website, they basically look at products that tickle their fancy, and then leave the site. The cookies from that website work to match that specific user to details they have maybe filled before either on that site or other websites.

 

What this means is that Email retargeting aims to act as a form of remarketing that is bound to increase conversion rates on an e-commerce platform.

 

People tend to think that email retargeting is a complicated form of marketing especially for people with e-commerce sites. However, the truth is that is it not only supplements any email marketing campaigns; this digital marketing technique is the epitome of implementation simplicity owing to its targeting functionalities.

 

It works like the conventional email targeting, however, rather than targeting only site visitors, they are also able to target email subscribers. What this means is that one avoids rolling out numerous emails and risking mass unsubscriptions. Conversely, the person will be able to maintain the brand image and keep it at the forefront of the marketing strategy by personalizing the whole experience for the shopper or prospective shopper.

 

To ensure that the retargeting is a marketing success, some of the best practices that one can implement include:

 

• A marketer should focus on taking advantage of the abandonment period. What happens right after a potential client shows interest and almost makes a purchase on the e-commerce site? By rolling out the retargeting email or display ad within an hour after abandonment, one can maximize the interest in their product while it is still valid.

 

• One should also be able to use segmentation to send out retargeting emails that actually convert. By using audience segmentation, one ensures that the prospective clients only get messages that are relevant to them. A great way is by creating segments with the products that visitors browse on the site and where they are in the sales funnel model.

 

• The key is in personalizing the whole experience. Therefore, one needs to ensure that the email retargeting campaigns have been custom made for every visitor so as to increase engagement and ultimately conversion. For example, using the recipient’s name and details, help in increasing the performance results greatly.

 

• Finally, a marketer should be able to cap the email frequency and the retargeting ads. The end game should not be overwhelming the customer with too many emails or ads that target them with the same thing. This can be very annoying and will lead to the marketing campaign being ignored, and ultimately, the customer will unsubscribe.

Final Thoughts…

The email retargeting campaign needs to work so that one’s efforts culminate utmost success.  One needs to test and optimize the campaign to work for their e-commerce site. By doing this, the performance of this model will constantly thrive and the effort will be effective not only to the customer but to the website as well.