eCommerce cart abandonment is a problem that businesses cannot afford to overlook.
The actual abandonment rate depends on your industry, but the Baymard Institute puts it at around 69.57%.
It simply means that of every 100 potential customers that visit your site, 70 leave without buying anything.
Therefore, as you prepare for the high holiday season sales, you need to develop a way to reach out to the leads you cannot convert by creating an effective retargeting campaign.
Learn everything you need to create an effective retargeting campaign for seasonal holiday promotions here. But first, let us explain some key things you need to know about eCommerce.
Outline
- Ecommerce And Its Influence On Customers
- What Is Ecommerce Retargeting?
- Retargeting campaigns in ecommerce: how it works and its different uses
- Benefits of retargeting ad campaigns
- Retargeting campaign strategies for seasonal holiday promotions
- Ecommerce retargeting: best practices to keep in mind
- Essential tips for best retargeting campaign results
- Conclusion
I. Ecommerce And Its Influence On Customers
Ecommerce has almost completely changed how many people shop nowadays. According to a study published on Statista, over 2.1 billion people purchased products and services online in 2021, and e-retail sales for the year surpassed the $4.9 trillion mark.
From these numbers, it is clear that eCommerce has had a massive impact on how people shop. Its influence is expected to grow further in the coming years as eCommerce becomes an indispensable part of the global retail network.
While many factors make eCommerce popular with customers, the following are the most common ones.
- Ecommerce provides simple and comfortable shopping as you never have to leave your home/office to buy something.
- Freedom to choose from various products as eCommerce stores do not have limitations like physical ones.
- Products in eCommerce stores are generally cheaper.
- Customers can shop and order anytime.
- More detailed information about products and brands.
II. What Is Ecommerce Retargeting?
Ecommerce retargeting entails using external sites to reach out to customers or potential leads that leave your site without buying anything and those that abandon carts.
With retargeting, the aim is to show special ads to users who have already engaged with your eCommerce business. These customers have hence shown some interest in what you are offering. This group of customers only needs a little more convincing to convert.
Interaction with your eCommerce will not only occur when the prospects visit your website but also through other ways such as watching your explainer videos on YouTube, going through the learning material, and visiting one of your product pages.
Retargeting is often more effective at increasing conversion rates than broad-based marketing strategies. And this is because it only targets individuals that already know about your eCommerce business and have shown interest in what you are selling.
The strategy has been proven to increase conversion rates significantly, and although the actual rate varies greatly, retargeted visitors are up to 70% more likely to convert.
01. Retargeting campaigns in eCommerce: how it works and its different uses
Retargeting in eCommerce is a straightforward process that any business can execute. It works in a few simple steps or stages, and here is an overview of the main ones:
Stage 1: A customer visits your website and leaves without buying anything after adding items to their cart or after viewing a particular landing page.
Stage 2: Your eCommerce website records some of the customer information using cookies or pixels. But remember that if you are planning to run a retargeting campaign, you have to install a tracking code/pixel on your eCommerce site.
The data that the website records will largely depend on your setting or what you want to target for your retargeting campaign. Here is a list of the typical things that are recorded:
- Gender
- Age frame
- Geolocation data
- Viewed pages
- Clicked offers
Stage 3: The marketer then creates an audience based on the recorded data, such as customers that viewed certain pages. You can also create a target audience using a customer or email subscriber list.
Each of the audience lists you create can be added to a retargeting campaign for your seasonal holiday promotion.
Stage 4: The last stage is to launch the campaign so that your target audience can start seeing your retargeting campaign ads on different platforms.
The ads will include the viewed items or what they showed interest in when shopping on your eCommerce site. Also, it can consist of other relevant material from the landing pages they interacted with on the site.
There are two broad ways that an eCommerce can use a retargeting campaign for a seasonal holiday promotion:
1. Upselling/Cross-selling to existing customers
A retargeting campaign allows you to collect important information on your customers. With this information, an eCommerce business can upsell or cross-sell to individuals that have already bought their products.
Since you already have their data, you only need to add the customers to your seasonal holiday promotion target audience. For example, if the customer has already bought winter boots from your eCommerce store, you can use retargeting ads to cross-sell their winter coats.
2. Converting site visitors
Retargeting provides an easy way to connect with visitors to your eCommerce site and makes it easier to convert them to customers. It is an excellent way to recover abandoned carts.
Converting site visitors is the most common use of retargeting ads, and here you use browser cookies to follow them up to promote further what they were interested in but left without buying.
02. Benefits of retargeting ad campaigns
Retargeting ad campaigns are helpful for any eCommerce business, and they should be part of your sales and marketing strategy for both seasonal holiday promotions and all-year-round promotions. Here are some benefits to expect when using these campaigns.
1. Increasing conversion rates
By following up on customers who show interest in your products and services, you will increase the chances of more of them purchasing. This increases your conversion rates, overall holiday sales, and business profits.
2. Improves brand image
Retargeting campaigns can help improve and strengthen your brand image, which is crucial for eCommerce success. These ads are more personalized, improving user experience and making them trust your brand, making it stronger and more credible.
3. Fosters customer loyalty
Ecommerce retargeting is highly effective at fostering customer loyalty. You can use the ads to promote exclusive discounts or offer special luxury products to a specific target audience through email retargeting. This can encourage them to visit your eCommerce site and buy more products.
5. Higher marketing ROI
Ecommerce retargeting allows marketers to target customers more precisely by segmenting them into groups using the collected data.
This precise marketing increases conversion rates, translating to higher ROI. Also, targeting a specific group reduces the wastage of marketing funds by targeting new leads that are harder to convert, leading to a higher ROI.
Effective retargeting campaigns for improving holiday sales
Retargeting campaigns for eCommerce can be highly useful for your seasonal holiday promotion, but this is only true if you employ the right strategy for the campaign.
03. Retargeting campaign strategies for seasonal holiday promotions
You can use different eCommerce remarketing strategies to push your seasonal holiday promotions, but here are some of the most successful holiday marketing strategies:
1. Segment the target audience
Segmenting your target audience makes creating a personalized seasonal holiday promotion easier. The more personalized the campaign is, the higher the chances of conversion.
For example, you can segment the target audience according to common factors like cart abandoners, recent site visitors, and the specific landing pages the leads visited.
Segmenting your target audience will make it easier to target them with incentives that make the most sense to them.
You can use different tools and plug-ins to segment the target audience for your eCommerce store. Some of the most effective ones are Google Analytics, Segment, and Kissmetrics.
2. Get the timing right
It is crucial to identify the right time to do the retargeting. Knowing the right time to retarget the customers will ensure they see the ad and are more likely to take action.
Google Analytics can be instrumental here as the tool will allow you to determine the days and times when your eCommerce site gets the most engagement.
This way, it is easier to determine the best time to retarget the customers with this data. For example, if most of your customers shop over the weekends, you should run a more intensive retargeting campaign during weekends.
According to 2022 Ecommerce Stats Report, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days for eCommerce sales as this is when most sites will get a lot of visitors. If you plan to run a retargeting campaign, you can focus more effort on these two days.
Also, keep in mind that this still varies from one eCommerce platform to the other. For example, as of 2021, Amazon gets the highest traffic and sales on Mondays. And so, a retargeting campaign on the platform would be more effective on Mondays.
3. Make good use of discounts and offers
Christmas sales and seasonal discounts are not uncommon to us. But how many customers take advantage of these offers?
Many customers that abandon carts during the holiday season only need a slight nudge to make the purchase. Including discounts and offers in your retargeting campaign can be the push your visitor needs to make the sale.
However, you need to be careful when offering discounts to push customers to buy, especially if you intend to use them only for the seasonal holiday promotion.
If customers get used to them, it will be hard to sell to them in the future when you do not offer these perks.
For example, Bonobos focuses on year-round strategies for retaining customers even when crafting their holiday offers and discounts. They offer high-value discounts and tiered offers to push their average order value (AOV) and capitalize on the peak season while easily reverting to regular prices.
4. Have the retargeting ad campaigns ready before the holiday season
While it might sound obvious, many eCommerce businesses will wait and only prepare the retargeting ads when the holiday sales start.
Preparing in advance ensures you have everything you need and know how to run the campaign long before the holiday season.
The earlier and more prepared you are, the easier it will be to execute your remarketing strategy.
Ideally, your holiday promotional campaigns should be running for at least a week or two before the festivities, and this is also the best time to start your retargeting campaign.
5. Choose the best ad channels
There are several ad channels that you can use for your remarketing campaign. However, the user base and reach vary, so knowing which will work best for your specific target audience is vital.
It is important to analyze different channels like Google AdWords and Facebook and choose what works best for your particular business.
In most cases, Facebook seems to work best for many eCommerce businesses as it has a wide reach. It is also quicker and cheaper, and easy to set up your retargeting campaign on the platform.
04. Ecommerce retargeting: Best practices to keep in mind
There are some practices that you should follow when running retargeting ads. These best practices will be relevant regardless of the ad channel you use.
Here is an overview of some of them.
1. Always keep the message relevant
A typical consumer has to interact with thousands of ads and other marketing materials every day. And so, if you do not want your retargeting ad to get lost in this noise, you have to make sure the message is always relevant.
If the message is not relevant, it can quickly come off as spam, and the target audience will not pay enough attention to it.
For example, if your target audience is women shopping for gifts for their partners during the holiday season, make sure your retargeting ad message is relevant to this specific group.
2. Pay attention to all ad elements
Like any ad type, a retargeting ad will include several elements. The main ones are visuals, the copy, and CTA. It is essential to pay enough attention to all the elements.
All the elements have a crucial role to play in the overall success of the ad. For example, a CTA like "Get a 10% discount on your first purchase" is very effective at drawing in customers.
3. Test and track your retargeting ads
It is essential to know how a particular retargeting ad performs by testing and tracking it frequently. Testing your ad allows you to determine what is working and what you have to improve or drop.
Tracking also allows you to measure ad performance, and you can do this in several ways. One easy tracking method is dynamic QR codes in the ad. Integrating them into your ads is now easy as you can easily create them with a QR code generator.
05. Essential tips for best retargeting campaign results
- Retarget using user behavior
- Focus more on retargeting high-value prospects
- Plan and schedule your retargeting ads to ensure they are not too incessant
- Combine onsite and offsite retargeting
- Make sure you always have a strong CTA
- Focus your retargeting on search terms
- Make good use of data from your CRM
III. Conclusion
It is always easier to make sales during the holiday season as everyone shops during the holidays. However, cart abandonment rates are also the highest during the holiday season.
So, you will still need to retarget these customers who leave without buying to increase your sales and profits further.
Retargeting can give your eCommerce business exceptional benefits, and it should now be easy to execute the perfect strategy with the pointers in this article to help you out.
Author Bio
Maria is a content marketer and community specialist with a strong passion for technology exploration, writing and everything under the umbrella of marketing.
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-b-44585b167/
