A common component of any successful online marketing campaign today is retargeting, which involves repeatedly marketing or displaying ads to audiences that have expressed interest in your products and services or bought from you in the past.
The results of a recent study on retargeting campaigns uncovered similar behavioral patterns among different audiences -- these patterns extended to audiences as dissimilar in nature as e-tailers and insurance companies. These insights can prove invaluable to helping companies in these highly competitive industries determine how to most effectively use their remarketing dollars. The findings include:
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Don't retarget customers too soon
It is often assumed that retargeting needs to be done throughout all phases of the marketing funnel in order to ensure that customers convert. But in fact, research shows that retargeting someone still on your website has no impact on conversions. In fact, retargeting visitors within the first four hours was found to be detrimental, possibly doing more harm to your brand than good. On the other hand, these findings also show that retargeting potential buyers after the four-hour mark of the purchase consideration phase does improve conversions.
Don't wait too long
While retargeting potential customers or site visitors too early in the consideration phase can negatively impact your brand, waiting too long is also ineffective. The analysis of retargeting campaigns shows that the best time to re-market to potential buyers is between 16 and 32 hours. In addition, the longest amount of time to retarget a potential customer was 128 hours. Waiting any longer had little influence on converting visitors into buyers.
Know the ideal frequency
It would seem logical that if you show more impressions, users would be more likely to convert. The problem with showing more impressions means you're also spending more money. After some period of time, the amount of dollars invested in impressions ceases to be cost effective for any campaign and the conversion rates become saturated at 64 impressions. Evaluating user behavior revealed that it's most effective to show between two and eight impressions to each potential buyer in a retargeting campaign.
Understand when to use tailored vs. generic ads
Another common assumption among online marketers is retargeting with tailored ads works better than generic ads. It makes sense that potential buyers are ready to consume a more tailored message after the first impression, and data shows that the overall lift companies experience from tailored ads is higher. However, analysis also demonstrates that timing is critical. Tailored ads are only more effective as time progresses. In the first 16 hours of retargeting campaigns in the study, generic and tailored ads were equally effective. After 16 hours, the effectiveness of retargeting campaigns using tailored ads jumps considerably, resulting in as much as 200 percent more lift than campaigns employing generic ads.
Determining the right time frames and frequency to remarket in specific industries is an important undertaking. And establishing these simple guidelines can serve as a framework for helping all online marketers become more effective with their remarketing efforts.
Nina Marin is senior scientist of Adometry.
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