Retargeter

Holiday Retargeting: Something To Be Thankful For

November is a crucial time for holiday shoppers to get their gifting done, and retailers should be ramping up their efforts accordingly. The National Retail Foundation projects 2012 holiday spend to rise 4.1% from last year, which could mean $586 billion in holiday sales. Don’t you want a piece of that $586 billion? Shoppers want the best deals and they’re ready to spend. This is an excellent time to recapture and re-engage your customers.

You have numerous options to both drive new traffic and re-engage existing customers during the holidays with audience targeting and email retargeting. Show your customers how well you know them with personalized advertisements during the holidays.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fast approaching. Don’t miss out on this invaluable opportunity to remind your customers that you have what they’re looking for– and at a great price. Using highly targeted display, you can drive traffic and build up your customer base with specific holiday promotions focused on your ideal customers. With audience targeting, you can place banner ads right in front of the right audience, virtually anywhere online. Demographic, geographic, and other targeting parameters mean your ads will be shown only to relevant audiences with whom your messaging is most likely to resonate.

Using email marketing and email retargeting, you can drive your existing customers to buy early and buy with you. Make the experience easy and enjoyable with free and extended returns and exchanges during the holidays– an aspect of online shopping with room for improvement, according to 42% of online shoppers.

The Rise of Self-Gifting

We’ve all worked hard this year and we deserve something new, right? Self-gifting is becoming a holiday tradition among online shoppers. As a retailer, this is your opportunity to thank your most loyal customers by encouraging them to treat themselves. You can offer your best customers exclusive discounts to be used on Black Friday, or even earlier. Providing early, exclusive access to your inventory, or an extra discount, adds that personal touch and ensures you stay top-of-mind. Promotions that let customers buy a second item at a discount are also a great way to encourage self-gifting.

Abandoned Shopping Carts

Holding online shopper attention during the holidays can be a challenge. Shopping cart abandonment is already a pervasive trend year-round. Typical reasons for abandonment include window shopping, saving the item for later, or not wanting to pay high shipping costs. During the holidays, retargeting can help you recover abandoned shopping carts with personalized reminders and shipping deals. Pay attention to why the customers abandoned, deliver exemplary customer service, and showcase your strengths with a follow-up email. Retargeting also comes in handy here as you can stay in front of those shoppers who have abandoned and encourage them to return to complete their purchase. Even if you can’t compete on pricing, make your point of difference the experience.

Display Ads for Brick-and-Mortar?

Your customers are researching online before hitting the malls. Make sure your online ads inform them of any special offers they can get in-store. With more and more e-tailers extending their holiday offers and promotions beyond Black Friday, you need to find ways to incentivize your customers with exclusive offline deals. You also have an opportunity to capitalize on the current complaints of online shoppers. For example, comScore has reported that 58% of online shoppers would like to see free or discounted shipping. Not having to pay for shipping is just one of the many benefits of shopping in-person. Highlight the positive sentiments associated with in-store shopping — shoppers can actually see what they’re buying, try things on, and they don’t have to worry about items not arriving in time. You can even serve different ads to shoppers in different locations, pointing them to the nearest store.

Personalized ads offer a more suitable and memorable experience. Whatever your holiday strategy may be, make sure you are showing ads that are both relevant and sensitive to your customers’ desires, habits, and price limitations. Audience targeting, email, and retargeting afford you the opportunity to capitalize on those warm and fuzzy holiday feelings by speaking directly to your ideal customer, thanking those who have remained loyal, and bringing back those who may have expired.