Taking into consideration that 96% of people that visit your site are not ready to buy, In previous articles we’ve talked about the importance of implementing retargeting strategies for online businesses. We’ve specifically compared using web push notifications VS. retargeting ads with the purpose of bringing customers back, connecting with anonymous users and, ultimately, retaining clients and increasing revenue.

There are many channels available to include in the digital marketing mix to accomplish this purpose. Social media platforms have become the top choice for many brands to connect and engage with users. They offer many possibilities, are very versatile and people spend lots of time there. According to Statista, “As of 2019 and 2020, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 145 minutes per day, up from 142 minutes in the previous year.”

No wonder most brands seek to have a strong presence on, at least a couple of social media platforms. However, building a follower base and cutting through the noise in these channels nowadays is a daunting task. Social media is great to engage with users but has become a jungle of content in which everyone wants to stand out from the crowd. Actually reaching people, getting their attention and urging them to take action is an uphill battle. That’s why social media platforms are almost obliging you to use their ads to even reach your own followers. 

That’s why it’s so important to don’t rely on just one channel to achieve your goals. In this case, we want to talk about how to mix and match social media retargeting with web push notifications retargeting strategies. Combining multiple channels and creating a multi channel marketing strategy can do marvelous things for your online business.

But first, let’s take a look at some stats (considering paid posts for social media not exclusive for retargeting):

With info from Q1 2020 Paid Media Benchmark Report – https://www.adstage.io/

*It’s an estimate, because push notifications are not based on bidding. Amount calculated based on the average of millions of web push notifications sent by Frizbit’s clients

Now, let’s break down a little bit more and talk about the benefits of each channel specifically. 

Social Media Retargeting

Social media platforms offer a pathway to reintroduce a product to a user. If someone visited your site and liked something, you can retarget him/her through social media and offer a special incentive, like a discount, to encourage him/her to come back and finish a purchase.

By placing a cookie on users when they visit the site, it’s possible to show them an ad on social media platforms, like Facebook or Instagram when they’re browsing later on. These ads offer many possibilities for brands, making it easier to create engaging content like videos, photos or image carousels. 

Social media ad campaigns allow brands to work with all kinds of budget, segment the audience based on location, likes, interests, gender and age and choose daily spent on a period of time. Setting up social media retargeting ad campaigns is very simple and doesn’t add a lot of workload, once you have already designed the pieces you want to use. However, optimizing them and making them as best as possible, involves a great deal of analysis and time. 

These platforms also allow brands to connect with customers through organic non-paid content. However, as time passes, it’s getting harder and harder to get non-promoted posts to reach people. According to Hootsuite “On Facebook, the average reach of an organic page post hovers around 5.20%. That means roughly one in every 19 fans sees the page’s non-promoted content.” So when it comes to social media retargeting strategies, paid posts are the way to go. 

Benefits of social media retargeting

• Brand awareness: as we mentioned earlier people spend a lot of time of their days on social media and everyone has at least one social media account. In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, according to Statista. As this number is expected to increase over the next few years, having a social media presence increases the chances for brands to be present in their consumers’ minds. 

• Availability: nowadays there’s practically one social media for every interest, taste and demographic. We have LinkedIn for business and professional relationships, Twitter for news and world-events, Facebook and Instagram for entertainment, Tik-tok for younger audiences and now even only-audio chat rooms with Clubhouse. Every time a user accesses one of these platforms they do it during a time they’re open minded to consume said type of content. This makes it a golden opportunity for brands to try and connect with them when they’re available to engage with the content. 

• Versatility: continuing with the previous thought, every social media platform offers a different and versatile way to create retargeting content. Videos, photos, reels, stories and influencer marketing offer a range of different possibilities for brands to create engaging content. 

• Adaptability: one of the main advantages of social media retargeting is that you can do a lot with little money investment. Social media allows you to set up campaigns with even just 1 euro a day and reach around 15,000 people and have complete control of the amount spent. This makes it ideal for new business, entrepreneurs and small companies to reach a lot of people with very little budget. 

Web Push Notifications Retargeting

Web push notifications are a very pretty new digital marketing retargeting channel. When users visit a site that has enabled them, it’s possible to send them messages relevant to the actions they took while browsing, inviting them to come back once more.

By asking users to accept and subscribe to web push notifications (opt-in), it’s possible to send them a hyper-personalized message based on their behaviour when they are browsing online later on. This channel offers brands the opportunity to reach non-registered users on both mobile and desktop with engaging messages. 

Depending on the provider you work with, web push notifications allow you to segment the audience with all types of demographic data and use dynamic parameters to make the message as relevant as it can be. The setup of the campaigns only needs to be done the first time and then everything basically runs on autopilot.  This means there’s not any extra workload that needs to be done through time. 

One of the main attractions of web push notifications is their reach. Unlike social media, this channel has a deliverability of 100%.  If users opt-in, the next time they open up the browser, it’s guaranteed that they’ll receive the message. With web push notifications you don’t have to fight against social media algorithms that almost randomly choose whether to show or not your post. With web push your message will be delivered. 

Benefits of Automated Web Push Notifications Retargeting

• A message for every step of the funnel: web notifications are set up to be triggered by events you define on your site: category viewed, product viewed, product added to cart or any other you wish. This means you’ll have multiple opportunities to connect with users that leave without completing an action with a specific message related to the step of the shopping process where they abandoned the site. 

• Hyper-personalised messages: web push notifications are 100% based on user behaviour. If someone who accepted them visits your site and takes any action that triggers a notification, he/she will receive a message containing the image, product name, brand and even price of the article. You can also put your own brand’s personality to the notification by adding emojis and customizing the text. 

• Guaranteed deliverability: as we mentioned before, web push notifications have a deliverability rate of 100%. These messages are browser based which means that, as soon as a user opens its browser, the notification will be delivered. They also work for both mobile and desktop. With one campaign you can reach users on any device they own. 

• Time efficient: web push notifications automated campaigns only need to be configured one first time. Frizbit offers its clients ready-to-use templates that allow brands to start sending messages right away as soon as the implementation is done. Of course, you can customise said templates as much as you want and modify them through time as well, but it’s not something that needs to be optimised and analysed on a regular basis in order to achieve great results. 

• No CPM/CPC cost: when using web push notifications as a retargeting channel with Frizbit, you don’t have to worry about CPM and CPC costs like in the case of social media promoted posts. With automated web push notifications you have unlimited messages to send, with no costs for impressions or clicks. 

What retargeting strategy should I use for my online business?

Social media platforms and web push notifications are inherently very different channels. Nonetheless, both of them are used by big and small brands in the pursuit of  reaching and engaging with users with retargeting strategies. 

When it comes to planning a digital marketing strategy to retain users, the ideal scenario is to combine channels. In this case both social media and web push notifications, present very clear and unique characteristics that can greatly complement each other in a well-thought communications plan. 

There are many big brands and online businesses that invest a lot of their budgets on working with social media ads agencies to promote their products and services. Most of these companies haven’t considered including web push notifications campaigns in their marketing strategy because they don’t even know the benefits of this new retargeting channel. 

If you would like to try it out, get in touch with us and we would gladly introduce you to the world of retargeting with automated web push notifications campaigns.

Since we got your attention, you might also like to read:

• Web Push Notifications: A Complete Guide for all Levels
• How to Conduct Successful A/B Testing: Go from Beginner to Pro
• Guide: How to use Push Notifications for Online Stores