The term retargeting is well known in online marketing as a tool that addresses users again on other sites with relevant content after they have visited a website. That sounds effective, but also comes with some disadvantages: The many ads often get lost in the shuffle and up to 60% are even suppressed by Adblockers. Furthermore, it’s not registered when a customer has bought and the ad contents are displayed even after the purchase - again and again. But the main drawback is that the customer can not be identified as long as he has not been logged in the web shop, in other words the addressee is unknown. A disadvantage that doesn’t exist in retargeting via email.

Simple reactivation - relevant, personal, exclusive

This innovative process of retargeting via email creates not only the possibility to provide well-directed relevant content, but allows to reactivate shopping cart dropouts much easier. Compared to ads on websites, content via email actually reaches the recipient and Adblockers are irrelevant. By email, the audience is addressed personally and in an exclusive environment – weird content and annoying banner don’t exist.

The only requirements are that the visitor of the online shops is an active newsletter recipient and has clicked on a mailing at least once in recent months. In addition, a shop measurement (post-click tracking) must be integrated in the online shop that gathers and stores the page visits in the online shop, the composition of the shopping cart, and the purchases made by the customer in the database of the email marketing tool.

Profiles Enrichment and Lead Nurturing made easily

For a mail order company, all starts with a simple click on a link in the newsletter. Then, the receiver ends up at the store and gets marked with a cookie. Once the customer visits again the online shop of the dealer - within the cookie lifetime, e.g. within ninety days - he/she can be immediately identified by the cookie.

This method always works, even when not logging in there, as long as the cookie is not deleted beforehand. All information about the recipient (e.g. what products he viewed) is stored via a specific tracking procedure and transmitted directly to the email marketing software.

The sender can use this data for a number of individualized email campaigns: Customers and prospects are supplied at the right time with relevant product information, or recipients can obtain an automated mailing with matching product recommendations - for instance, right after the store visit. Shopping cart dropouts can receive a mailing with the products that they have already added to the cart, but not purchased yet, so that they can continue to shop right out of the mailing. Furthermore, the customer can be informed about price reductions of products he is interested in.

More clicks, more sales

Retargeting via email compared to retargeting in the classical sense brings numerous advantages. Customers can get identified by the sender without having to be logged into the web shop, so that information about the visitor can be saved and used for customized email marketing campaigns. A mail order company can gain, for instance,recurring shop visitors that can be identified by the method for retargeting via email, and even the opening rate of the sent retargeting campaigns are significantly higher compared to those of the standard newsletter. Of course, this success is also reflected in the sales figures of the web shop.

By Daniela la Marca