Why Personalised Remarketing is Key to Increasing Conversion

March 5, 2015

Remarketing does not have to be so general. In fact, you have a better chance of increasing your conversion if you personalise your remarketing efforts and tailor them to meet the demands of your consumers.

So personalised remarketing is your key to increasing conversions and generating leads? Let’s find out. In this article we’ll talk about the overall benefits as well as how you can get started with personalised remarketing.

Keep the brand fresh

Let’s say someone is browsing your higher ed website. They look at several different courses, and then decides to go look on a few other websites. The consumer is obviously trying to find a course that suits them, probably planning for an enrolment date. When the consumer is looking at courses from other sites, how do you keep the consumer aware of your brand and your product?

Personalised remarketing can feature images of the same products (or in this case, courses) that your consumer was previously looking at. For some ads, you might be able to show multiple products at once to remind your customer of the variety your site offered.

When your customer goes onto certain websites, your ads will follow them. Depending on which company you are using to remarket, your ads will show up on certain websites that your pay-per-click ad company has a partnership with. Google Adwords, for example, has partnerships with hundreds of popular websites that your consumers are likely to visit after they leave your site.

Display network advertising

Display network advertising can be done through a variety of DSPs (demand-side-platforms). This where display ads are shown to users who have previously searched or visited specific sites or pages, or are part of a particular demographic. There are also many other ways you can choose to identify and target your particular audience.

Remarketing in Action

The following example is a classic case of remarketing. Having previously visited the Bankwest website (above) to investigate business banking, an ad specifically about business banking is shown to me when I am viewing the Business Insider website. Evidently, Bankwest is well aware of my recent browsing history and is targeting me on a website that is the same context as their offering (business).

Personal = trustworthy

Generic and automated looking messages rarely get the results you want. Consumers know that these come automatically and go to everyone. Consumers want that personal experience of shopping in a store in the online world. That means you have to treat your personalised remarketing efforts as if they were sales people.

Think of remarketing in terms of 1-to-1 marketing. You are trying to almost create a dialogue with your customer in order to build trust. When you remarket to someone, you should try to appeal to the emotion tied to the product. In the course example, perhaps this person is looking for an advanced diploma now that they’ve finished their diploma, or maybe they’re ready for post-grad.

Try to work in keywords into your remarketing that relate to what you think your consumers might use your product for. Are you focusing on career outcomes and advantages? Having just the right tone will make your remarketing efforts more personalised and less automated.

Benefits of email remarketing

Let’s revisit the same person looking for a course. In this case, let’s say the same person read the course information and click through to the enrolment page. Then the consumer left the site before submitting. Maybe they got distracted, or perhaps they had to leave for work. Before the consumer completely forgets about your product, how do you remind them to purchase?

According to Forrester Research, remarketing emails can lead to four times the revenue as well as 18 times greater net profits overall. In comparison with marketing that goes untargeted, this is a huge difference and a great reason to create personalised remarketing emails.

Need some more convincing? Check out these facts, according to Forrester Research’s reports:

• 90 percent of all leads generated for e-commerce will actually go cold in an hour’s time.
• 7 out of 10 customers will leave their shopping carts before checking out.
• The top reasons that people do not buy are either the price is not right or the timing is not right.

Remarketing through email is one of the best ways to remarket to consumers who are almost through the sales funnel. All they need is an extra push, and they will be ready to buy. An email is a gentle remind without being too pushy.

Always include a photo of what was placed in the cart. Let the consumer see the product one more time and see why he or she loved it in the first place. Make it easy to get back to your site.

Timing is key with email remarketing. You want to make sure you remind your customer soon after they leave, usually within a few hours. It could be that the consumer was planning to come back anyway, and now you have given them an easy way to do so. The great thing about email marketing is that you can do multiple reminders and space them out.

The recommended timeline of remarketing emails is as follows:

• First email – Immediate: For the first email, it is best to ask your consumer whether or not there was a problem. Provide a quick link to customer support for convenience.
• Second email – Within 23 hours: This email is all about reassuring the customer. You might include a few positive reviews from websites or details about the product. Do not bother suggesting new products or similar ones. Keep the same links to the customer’s shopping cart as well as the customer service links.
• Final email – Within 7 days: If no registration has been made within this time period, send one more email. You might include a small discount, maybe 10 percent, to entice the person even more.

Think of your emails as if they were a sales representative approaching a consumer in person. The emails should be helpful, not pushy, and they should always offer a way for the consumer to ask questions.

Personalised remarketing is perhaps one of the best advancements in digital marketing. Not only does it offers businesses a second chance to push their products, but it also allows consumers to have that tailored, one-on-one experience. This builds great loyalty among your consumers, as they tend to view your company as one to rely on, and it also creates a strong trust between you.

Generic is out and personalised is in. Create a one of a kind campaign for your consumers, and you will never have a problem convincing them to return to your site.