Have you ever received an email from a brand shortly after engaging with them? This is known as email retargeting. It’s a marketing strategy that works well for the following reasons:
👉 Retargeting emails typically achieve an open rate of 60% and a click-through rate of 15%.
👉 A series of abandoned cart emails can recover a return on investment (ROI) of up to 52%.
👉 Retargeting can improve your conversion rates by up to 10%.
👉 It extends customer lifetime value (CLV) and can quickly turn leads into results.
Email retargeting can be challenging to set up, so we’ve created a guide outlining the best strategies for getting this right. Following the five steps below can help you run killer email retargeting campaigns.
Let’s dive in!
How Does Email Retargeting Work?
Retargeting, also known as remarketing, involves reaching out to customers who have interacted with your brand but have abandoned the purchasing process at some point.
It uses a browser cookie—a small file dropped in a user’s browser when they visit a website. This saves the user’s information and allows you to engage with the user later through channels like email and social media.
You can execute remarketing email campaigns sent to your subscribers to target those who have already shown interest in your business and need more nurturing to turn into a sale.
You can also use email retargeting to upsell products. For example, if you’ve ever purchased a pair of sneakers and later seen a social media ad for socks that match those sneakers, this is an example of a retargeting campaign to upsell a product.
Email remarketing is often simplified with marketing automation tools—like your email service provider—that can help you set up campaign triggers.
A trigger is a certain event you define that initiates sending a marketing email. For example, when a user fills the shopping cart and gets to your shipping page, that could be a trigger to send an email with a shipping discount.
Here’s an example of how Green Chef offers a discount via email that was triggered by a user action:
What Are the Benefits of Email Retargeting?
Email retargeting is one of the most efficient ways to convert potential buyers into paying customers. Here are some more benefits:
✅ Better conversion rates
As mentioned above, the conversion rates for your business are higher than the average email marketing campaign.
You’re retargeting potential customers who have already shown interest in your product or service, which makes them more likely to convert if you nudge them in that direction.
Well-crafted personalized email campaigns can persuade potential customers to complete their purchase.
✅ Cost-effectiveness
Setting up an email retargeting sequence using the right tool is inexpensive. Getting these types of campaigns right also doesn’t require extensive resources.
✅ Reduced abandonment rates
Sending follow-up emails to potential customers who have abandoned their carts on your website is a powerful way to re-engage them.
Here is an example from Alex Mill of an abandoned cart email that includes a special discount to re-engage potential customers and close the deal:
✅ Customer retention
By sending the right retargeting emails, you can engage your current or past customers and encourage them to make further purchases with your brand.
✅ Staying top of mind
Even if one of your potential customers isn’t ready to make a purchase with you yet, sending them regular emails can help keep your brand top of mind. This could make your brand the go-to choice when they need your product or service in the future.
How Can You Use Email Retargeting?
Here are some of the best ways to implement an email retargeting campaign within your overall marketing strategies:
➡️ Convert inactive visitors
You can use retargeting if you have a lot of site visitors who take no action other than browsing.
Since they have already shown interest in your product or service, you can entice them with a retargeting email.
You could then send them a retargeting email that includes more content they might be interested in and helps them move down your sales funnel.
➡️ Upselling
A customer who purchased from you once and is satisfied with the product or service might make another purchase.
You can offer complementary products to these customers or sell them a more expensive version of the same service.
Here is an example of a retargeting email from Canva that encourages existing users to upgrade to the pro version of their tool:
➡️ Use lead magnets
A lead magnet offers valuable content in exchange for someone’s personal information, including their email address. This is a great way to grow your subscriber base and generate more leads.
Here is a lead magnet from Link Labs where people can download their case study by providing their email address:
If you offered a lead magnet somewhere on your website in exchange for collecting email addresses, you should engage those visitors with a retargeting email.
They’re at the awareness phase of your sales funnel now, but if you retarget them with a follow-up email, they could turn into paying customers.
5 Steps to Get Email Retargeting Campaigns Right
You now know the main reasons why you should implement email retargeting. Here are some email retargeting best practices to get you started.
Step 1: Collect user data and segment it
Before you start sending emails, you need to understand your audience. Using email remarketing services like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign can provide you with a lot of the data you need to gain a deeper understanding of your email subscribers.
You’d also need to use analytics tools to uncover your most popular products and determine which of your offerings website visitors respond to best.
For example, Google Analytics has a simple dashboard that can show you an overview of your visitors:
Facebook also has a similar overview that can tell you a lot about your audience:
Analyzing these metrics can help you create buyer personas and engage each person with a tailored offer.
You shouldn’t be sending the same retargeting email to all your subscribers. Instead, you should divide your recipients into various groups—known as segmented audiences—so that you can deliver the content that will impact them most.
Start by segmenting your audience into smaller groups, creating a buyer persona for each one, and crafting personalized email marketing campaigns.
Here are a few ways you can segment your audience for better results:
ℹ️ Demographics
Age, sex, and employment type are essential criteria for identifying different groups of users.
If you’re a fashion eCommerce brand, you wouldn’t want to offer the same products to teenagers, young adults, or elderly men.
ℹ️ Purchasing power
Do you have people in your audience who spend thousands of dollars a year on your most expensive products? If so, they should receive personalized messages with more of your high-end offerings.
On the other hand, your audience’s discount-seekers will likely want promotional offers for more affordable products.
ℹ️ Purchase history
You might have customers who prefer one type of product over the others. For example, a fashion store may have a female customer who loves your shoes.
If you have a group of these customers, you should target them with an email when you have a shoe sale.
Step 2: Consider your business goals
When setting up your email retargeting campaign, your goals will inform your execution.
You may think your only goal is to increase sales. However, retargeting emails allow you to aim for more. To run effective email remarketing campaigns, you must consider your business goals—not just your marketing objectives.
Let’s say a person saw your social media ad, browsed through your website, and closed the tab. In a second scenario, someone did the same thing but put three products in the basket and left your site.
From a commercial perspective, your objectives for these two visitors are the same: convert them into customers. However, these two users exhibited different behaviors, so they’ll need different retargeting emails.
You can target the first visitor with new products similar to those they’ve already browsed. Let’s say they browsed through sneakers. You can email them when you get a new collection.
The second visitor has no problem with your offer as they already displayed strong purchase intent. However, they may need to be engaged with a different email offering them a small discount or free shipping.
Once you know the commercial objectives for your retargeting emails, you can develop an email marketing strategy to help you achieve them.
Step 3: Personalize your emails
You know that effective email retargeting involves analyzing and segmenting your audience. The next step is engaging each segment with personalized content and offers.
Through your retargeting emails, you can establish a personal connection with your customers by using their names, job titles, and purchasing habits.
For example, starting an email with “Hi John, we love shoes almost as much as you do. Here’s our new collection!” to someone who bought shoes twice this year is a great personal touch.
To truly impress them, you can use personalized email content to elicit a reaction.
It may sound complicated, but a tool like Hyperise can simplify personalizing your retargeting emails.
Dynamic text layers let you add names, job titles, and company names to email images for a more captivating message.
Imagine an existing customer receives a personalized email with a tailored offer and an image that includes their name, like this:
Your approach will likely intrigue them even if they aren’t directly interested in your offer. Here’s the response we got when we used this technique. Note that the people we targeted weren’t interested in the offer:
Using the Hyperise toolkit, you can personalize your retargeting emails with custom text, images, GIFs, QR codes, and calls to action (CTAs).
Step 4: Offer something of value
If someone browsed through your website, put the products in their cart, and left, something happened along the way that stopped them from completing their purchase. They may not have liked your offer, prices, or shipping costs.
That’s why it’s not enough to simply send remarketing emails to website visitors, hoping they will appreciate the gesture and return to complete the purchase. Depending on when they left your funnel, you need to offer them something worth their attention.
If they add the products to their cart and then leave your site, you could offer them free shipping or a discount for the items in their cart. This is perfect for engaging customers in the last stage of the process.
If they browsed through your offer but didn’t put anything in the cart, you can send them an email with new, better products that they might have missed.
Offer them a complementary discount or a future promotion on a product from the same category in a few weeks if they have made a purchase.
For example, if someone just purchased a pair of shoes, sending them your new shoe collection that same day doesn’t make sense. You can do this in a few weeks.
Here is a good example of a retargeting email for eCommerce brands from BirchBox sent to their inactive customers. This email provides a discount and gives the reader a good reason to return to their site and go through with their purchase:
Step 5: Track your results and adapt accordingly
How will you know if your email retargeting efforts are paying off if you don’t analyze what you’re sending out?
Based on the platform you’re using for your email marketing, you should receive some useful insights into how your emails are performing.
You can use these metrics to determine what’s working (and what isn’t).
If you segment your audience effectively, you’ll be able to see which groups are most likely to convert.
That way, you can avoid spending time on segments that aren’t converting and focus your efforts on leads and subscribers who are more likely to purchase your product or service.
When you know how your retargeting campaigns are performing, you can adjust them to be even more effective.
The Only Tool You Need to Make Your Email Retargeting Personal
There’s one proven way you can make your retargeting emails stand out: personalization.
When people see hundreds of marketing messages each day, it’s hard to stand out from the rest. However, sending a well-crafted, personalized retargeting email can make all the difference.
The Hyperise toolkit can help elevate your email remarketing campaign by providing a simple way to personalize your messages.
Visit our website to sign up for a free Hyperise trial and learn how our tool can boost your email retargeting efforts.