What Sets Remarketing Apart from Retargeting in Digital Advertising?
Digital advertising is an essential part of most businesses' marketing strategies. As companies invest more in online ads to grow their reach and sales, two terms that often come up are remarketing and retargeting.
These two strategies are frequently confused, but they are distinct concepts with different goals, techniques, and tools. Understanding the differences between them is crucial to making the right decisions for your digital ad campaigns.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explain what remarketing and retargeting are, highlight the differences between them, and show you how to use them to boost your marketing efforts.
Whether you’re just getting started with online advertising or looking to refine your existing campaigns, this guide will help clarify these important concepts and how you can use them to reach your business goals.
Defining Remarketing and Retargeting
What is Retargeting?
Retargeting is a digital marketing technique that aims to re-engage users who have interacted with your website or app but did not complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form.
Here’s how it works:
Tracking Users: Retargeting relies on placing cookies (small pieces of data) in the browser of a user who visits your website.
Targeting Ads: After a user leaves your website, retargeting ads follow them across different websites or social media platforms. These ads serve as reminders to encourage the user to return and complete the desired action.
For example, let’s say someone visits your e-commerce website, browses products but leaves without buying anything. A day later, that same person sees ads for your products on their Facebook feed or while browsing another site. This is retargeting in action. The goal is to remind them of your brand and encourage them to take the final step towards conversion.
What is Remarketing?
Remarketing is often thought of as a more focused subset of retargeting. While retargeting focuses on bringing users back to your website via display ads, remarketing goes further by directly engaging with people through more personalized channels, particularly email marketing.
Remarketing is about re-engaging customers who have already interacted with your business, whether they made a purchase, abandoned a cart, or simply visited your site. It targets individuals who have shown interest in your products or services, but instead of just showing them ads, remarketing often uses emails or tailored messages to reignite that interest.
For example, imagine a customer adds products to their cart but leaves your website without completing the purchase. With remarketing, you might send them an email with a personalized message, a special discount, or a reminder to finish their purchase. In some cases, remarketing can also involve showing personalized ads across platforms based on past interactions.
Key Differences Between Remarketing and Retargeting
At this point, we’ve defined both terms, but it’s important to highlight the key differences between them. While both strategies focus on engaging previous website visitors, they have distinct characteristics.
1. Channel Focus
Retargeting primarily uses display ads to bring users back. This means showing banner ads, video ads, or other types of display ads on third-party websites or social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google Display Network.
Remarketing, on the other hand, focuses more on email marketing and direct communication with users. Remarketing might involve sending personalized email messages to customers who have already interacted with your business, encouraging them to return to your site.
Example:
Retargeting: A user who visits a product page on your website but doesn’t make a purchase sees a banner ad for that same product later on another website they visit.
Remarketing: After abandoning a shopping cart, the same user receives an email with a reminder of the items they left behind, possibly including a special discount code to encourage them to complete the purchase.
2. Target Audience
Retargeting typically focuses on any user who has visited your site or interacted with your content but didn’t take the desired action (e.g., making a purchase, filling out a form, or signing up for a service).
Remarketing targets users who are typically closer to conversion—such as customers who have already engaged with your business or made a purchase. In many cases, remarketing also involves re-engaging existing customers, asking them to return for repeat purchases, renewals, or upgrades.
Example:
Retargeting: A user who visited your website’s homepage but did not proceed to a product page or checkout page.
Remarketing: A customer who has purchased something from your website in the past, and you send them a personalized email offering a discount on a related product.
3. Ad Delivery Methods
Retargeting uses cookies to track visitors across websites and deliver ads to them based on their past actions.
Remarketing primarily works through email lists or customer data, making it more personalized and direct.
Example:
Retargeting: Ads for a pair of shoes follow a user around the web after they visited the product page but didn’t make a purchase.
Remarketing: The same user receives an email saying, “Hey, you left these shoes in your cart. Come back and complete your purchase for 10% off!”
4. Goal and Intent
Retargeting focuses on bringing non-converting visitors back to your website and encouraging them to complete an action, like purchasing or signing up.
Remarketing is more about re-engaging customers and strengthening relationships. This can involve upselling, cross-selling, or encouraging repeat business from previous customers.
Example:
Retargeting: An e-commerce business retargets people who added items to their cart but didn’t purchase, with the goal of converting them into customers.
Remarketing: A SaaS company sends an email to a user who used their trial version to encourage them to upgrade to a paid plan.
Strategic Applications in Digital Advertising
When to Use Retargeting?
Retargeting is best used when you want to bring back people who have shown interest in your brand but didn’t convert. It’s useful when:
A visitor came to your website but didn’t purchase anything.
A user started a purchase or registration process but abandoned it.
Someone interacted with your ad but didn’t take the next step.
Best Use Cases for Retargeting:
E-commerce: Display ads reminding customers of products they viewed but didn’t purchase.
Lead Generation: Retarget people who clicked on an ad but didn’t fill out a form.
Tools for Retargeting:
Google Ads: Use the Google Display Network to show display ads to users who visited your website.
Facebook Ads: Retarget users who interacted with your business through Facebook or Instagram.
When to Use Remarketing?
Remarketing is more effective when you want to re-engage existing customers or highly interested prospects. It’s ideal when:
You want to remind past customers about related products or services.
You want to re-engage users who signed up for a trial but haven’t converted to a paid plan.
You’re trying to recover abandoned carts or remind users to finish their previous actions.
Best Use Cases for Remarketing:
E-commerce: Send email reminders for abandoned carts with an incentive to complete the purchase.
SaaS: Email reminders or promotions encouraging users to upgrade from a free trial to a paid plan.
Tools for Remarketing:
Email Marketing: Platforms like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and HubSpot help you send personalized emails to segmented lists of previous customers.
Google Ads: Google’s remarketing list tools help you display personalized ads to users who have already interacted with your website.
Measuring Success: Metrics for Retargeting vs. Remarketing
When running retargeting or remarketing campaigns, it’s important to track metrics that help measure their effectiveness. Below are key metrics to watch for each strategy.
Key Metrics for Retargeting Campaigns
Click-through rate (CTR): Measures how many people clicked on your retargeting ad after seeing it.
Conversion rate (CVR): Tracks the percentage of visitors who took the desired action after being retargeted (such as making a purchase or filling out a form).
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Measures the return you get from the money spent on your retargeting campaigns.
Key Metrics for Remarketing Campaigns
Open rates: For email remarketing campaigns, this measures how many recipients opened your email.
Click-through rates (CTR): Measures how many people clicked on a link in your email or message (for example, a link to a product page or offer).
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This tracks how much revenue a customer generates over the long term, helping you evaluate the success of remarketing in fostering repeat business.
Engagement rate: Measures how users interact with your remarketing emails or other messages, such as clicking on links or using coupon codes.
Challenges and Best Practices for Both
Both remarketing and retargeting can be powerful, but they come with their challenges.
Challenges in Retargeting
Ad Fatigue: Showing the same ads repeatedly can make users tired of seeing them, leading to reduced engagement.
Privacy Concerns: With increasing concerns about privacy and regulations like GDPR, tracking users across the web can be tricky.
Over-targeting: Bombarding users with too many ads can be overwhelming and even annoying.
Best Practices for Retargeting:
Frequency Capping: Limit the number of times a user sees your ad to avoid annoyance.
Segment Your Audience: Show different ads to users based on their behavior on your site (e.g., cart abandoners vs. page viewers).
Use Dynamic Ads: Personalize ads to show the exact product a user viewed or added to their cart.
Challenges in Remarketing
Overloading Customers: Sending too many emails can overwhelm users, causing them to unsubscribe.
Data Segmentation: Segmenting your audience effectively is crucial, but it can be difficult to manage if your database is not organized.
Personalization: To succeed in remarketing, personalization is key, but achieving effective personalization requires detailed customer data and insights.
Best Practices for Remarketing:
Offer Value: Always provide value in your emails or messages, whether through discounts, valuable content, or exclusive offers.
Segment Your Lists: Group users based on actions they’ve taken (e.g., past purchases, abandoned carts) to send more targeted messages.
Test and Optimize: Continuously A/B test your subject lines, offers, and messaging to see what resonates best with your audience.
Conclusion
Both remarketing and retargeting are incredibly effective strategies for engaging users who have already interacted with your brand.
While they share some similarities, they use different methods and serve distinct purposes within your overall digital marketing strategy.
Understanding the differences between the two allows you to choose the right approach depending on your goals—whether it’s to convert potential customers or build long-term relationships with existing ones.
By leveraging both techniques effectively, you can optimize your ad campaigns and increase your chances of success in the competitive digital landscape.