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 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 referred to 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 that’s 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 reactivate 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 used to upsell a product.
Email remarketing is often simplified with marketing automation tools—like your email service provider—that can help you set up triggers for your campaigns.
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 curious potential buyers into paying customers. Here are some more benefits of email retargeting:
✅ Better conversion rates
As mentioned above, the conversion rates for companies are higher than the average email marketing campaign.
Additionally, 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.
A well-crafted personalized retargeting email can persuade potential customers to complete their purchase.
✅ Cost-effectiveness
Setting up an email retargeting sequence using the right tool doesn’t cost much. Also, getting these types of campaigns right doesn’t require extensive resources.
Additionally, retargeting existing customers or potential leads who have interacted with your business before is less expensive.
The ROI on email retargeting campaigns is often higher than that of acquiring new customers, as you’re reaching out to a warmer audience.
✅ 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 keep your current or past customers engaged and encourage them to make further purchases with your brand.
Email retargeting can also help you build and maintain customer loyalty over time.
✅ 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 strategy:
➡️ To convert inactive visitors
You can use retargeting if you have a lot of website 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 clever retargeting email.
This is especially helpful if someone has been viewing specific products or pages on your website.
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.
➡️ Eliminating shopping cart abandonment
As mentioned earlier, if your visitors have abandoned a shopping cart, it may be due to shipping costs or the cart’s total price. This can be a good opportunity to engage these customers with discounts or periodic email reminders.
➡️ When you want to upsell
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.
You could also send them promotions they might like based on their previous purchase.
Here is an example of a retargeting email from Canva that encourages existing users to upgrade to the pro version of their tool:
➡️ Using lead magnets
A lead magnet involves offering a piece of content in exchange for someone’s personal information, including their email address. This is a great way to grow your subscriber base and reach 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 they could turn into paying customers if you retarget them with a clever follow-up email.
5 Steps for Your Email Retargeting Campaigns
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. A lot of the data you need to gain a deeper understanding of your subscribers can be found by using an email service provider like MailChimp or Active Campaign.
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 offers.
Here are a few ways you can segment your audience for better results:
ℹ️ Demographics
Age, sex, and employment type are important criteria for identifying different groups of users.
If you’re a fashion eCommerce brand, you wouldn’t want to offer skirts to people who identify as male, would you? You also 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?
They should get personalized messages with more of your high-end offerings.
Conversely, 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, in a fashion store, perhaps you 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. If you want to run effective email retargeting campaigns, you must consider your business goals—not just your marketing objectives.
What does this mean? Let’s discuss two scenarios.
In the first example, a person saw your social media ad, browsed through your website, and closed the tab. In the 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 from a campaign standpoint, so they’ll need entirely 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; they already displayed strong purchase intent. However, they may need to be engaged with a different email offering them a small discount, free shipping, or updated prices.
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 audience with personalized content and offers.
You can use your customers’ names, job titles, and purchasing habits to establish a personal connection with them.
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 from you twice this year is a great personal touch.
If you want to truly impress them, you can use personalized email content to elicit a reaction.
It may sound complicated, but a tool like Hyperise can make it simple to personalize 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, their name mentioned, and an image that includes their name, like this:
Even if they aren’t directly interested in your offer, your approach will likely intrigue them. Here’s the response we got when we used this technique. Note that the people weren’t interested in the offer:
As you can see, this digital marketing strategy rarely fails to get a reaction.
Using the Hyperise toolkit, you can personalize your retargeting emails with custom text, images, GIFs, QR codes, and calls to action (CTAs). These are the foundations of an effective personalized retargeting email.
Step 4: Offer something of value
This step is crucial for engaging users who have stopped their purchase process and exited your sales funnel.
If someone browsed through your website, put the products in the cart, and left, something happened along the way. They may not have liked your offer, prices, or shipping costs.
That’s why it’s not enough to simply send a remarketing email to a website visitor, hoping they will appreciate the gesture and return to complete the purchase. You need to offer them something worth their attention, depending on when they left your funnel.
If they put the products in their cart and then left 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 the offer but didn’t put anything in the cart, you can send them an email with new, better products that they might have missed. However, you may want to be cautious about sending them to the website to check out the same offer they’ve already seen.
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, it doesn’t make sense to send them your new shoe collection that same day. You can do this in a few weeks.
Here is a good example of a retargeting email from BirchBox for 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
Segmenting your audience, considering your business objectives, and analyzing your results are important aspects of successful email retargeting.
However, 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 retargeting emails and your 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 significantly improve your email retargeting efforts.