Retargeter

How Email and CRM Retargeting Can Win Customers Back

Retargeting, the process of serving ads to people who have recently visited your website, has become a staple for many a digital marketer.

Though virtually every marketer out there can benefit from retargeting, there are always going to be some valuable prospects you won’t be able to reach with retargeting. Previous customers who haven’t recently visited your site are one of the best examples. Typically, email marketing can be an incredibly successful re-engagement technique, but what happens if you can’t get someone to click through an email?

This is where two lesser known forms of retargeting, email retargeting and CRM retargeting, can help.

When You Can’t Reach Them with Retargeting

Retargeting is so effective because it focuses on a highly qualified audience. By definition, it limits your outreach to people who have recently interacted with your brand, which helps you reach people when their purchase intent is highest.

But because retargeting is so focused, it precludes you from reaching everyone who might be valuable. For example, you can’t retarget someone who made a purchase a year ago but hasn’t been to your site in months. You can email those people, but how do you reach past customers who are no longer responding to emails? What about someone who’s signed up for email updates but hasn’t clicked through an email in a while?  What about someone who hasn’t even opened an email in a while?

Email Marketing and Retargeting

Email marketing is one of the best ways to keep in touch with people who have previously made a purchase or signed up for updates. It’s neither the shiniest nor the newest tool around, but it works. In a recent survey, an astonishing majority (77%) stated that they prefer email messages from brands to any other form of permission-based communications. Email won out over all forms of communication including social media, even within the youngest demographics.

Despite consumers’ obvious preference, email click-through rates are lower than ever. This is where email retargeting can help.

Email retargeting can help you get the most out of your email by supplementing email marketing campaigns with display. Here’s how it works: everyone who opens your emails is tagged with a retargeting cookie that allows you to serve them ads all over the web. With email retargeting implemented any and all email opens can create second chances for engagement all around the web, even in the absence of clicks.

But what can you do to reach past purchasers who don’t open emails or haven’t visited your website recently? Enter CRM retargeting.

What is CRM Retargeting?

CRM retargeting is an innovative retargeting technique that allows you to serve display ads to people with nothing but an email or mailing address.

CRM retargeting can help to reach a segment of your audience that you’re unable to reach by either retargeting or email marketing, namely people who made a purchase or signed up for updates but have effectively fallen off your marketing map.

Past purchasers are a highly qualified audience—they’ve previously engaged with you and you know there’s a strong possibility they will again. Sometimes, for whatever reason, past customers simply aren’t engaging with your marketing messages right now, but this doesn’t necessarily make these people unqualified. It just makes them elusive. But CRM retargeting can get you back in front of them.

CRM Retargeting as Part of a Multi-Channel Strategy

Marketing initiatives can no longer exist in a vacuum, and each digital campaign improves the effectiveness of others. In addition to running marketing initiatives that focus on driving initial awareness, marketers should look to retargeting to help awareness into sales, and email and CRM retargeting to turn past customers into current customers.

For companies already benefiting from site-based retargeting, email and CRM retargeting can fill a crucial gap in your outreach strategy by providing the opportunity to re-engage lapsed subscribers or long-lost customers.

Many marketers have found that marketing across channels boosts ROI, and building a strong cross-channel strategy is a strong priority for many more. Strategies like CRM retargeting (and even retargeting) are most effective as part of a larger piece of your marketing puzzle, and for most marketers can be a very important part of a multi-channel marketing mix.