If you own an online store or work on any branch of the digital marketing environment, you know and value the importance of advertising on the web to reach potential customers and bring back visitors. Nowadays, there are many platforms, media, channels and strategies to do so, but one of the most popular is definitely retargeting. 

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is a digital marketing strategy used by online stores to bring back customers that visited a site but didn’t convert, whether completing a purchase, subscribed or filled a form.  Even though retargeting is mainly known for ads, There are many possibilities within the retargeting scenario other than: ads:, email, sms and web push notifications.

What are retargeting ads?

One of the most popular strategies is retargeting ads. When a user visits a site, they usually get a cookie or a pixel that tracks their behaviour on the webpage. After they leave, said cookie helps brands follow the user and show ads related to the category or product they expressed interest in the site, with the objective of bringing them back and completing a conversion.

This strategy doesn’t require users to fill forms or leave any type of information such as email or phone number, since their actions are tracked based on browser and not personal data. However, for the residents in the EU, they should have allowed cookies first.

One of the main benefits of retargeting ads is that they are directed to users that have already expressed interest in your brand and products, hence increasing the conversion rates probabilities. It’s always easier to re-engage with people that already visited the site because of an own, genuine interest than by targeting potential customers that haven’t even heard of your brand before. That’s why retargeting ads have become such a popular and powerful tool. 

Should I use retargeting ads for my website?

Even though they have a well-deserved reputation, retargeting ads also have some downsides to take under consideration before deciding to use them as a part of your digital marketing mix. 

• Reach: One of the main advantages of using retargeting ads is that they allow you to reach almost everybody who allows cookies anywhere on the web. After a user visits your web, it practically doesn’t matter where they’re browsing next, either a blog or media website, social media or any other type of web page who shows ads open to ad exchange. If you’re using retargeting ads campaigns, you can reach them very easily and invite them to go back to your website. Consider that, even if you don’t get a conversion, by using this channel your brand will be on the top of mind of your target audience.

• People use ad blockers: Users tend to feel harassed and can find retargeting ads creepy because of the “following around” sensation they cause. According to Statista “In 2019, roughly 25.8 percent of internet users were blocking advertising on their connected devices” and that number is expected to continue growing in time. The overwhelming amount of advertisements displayed on websites, make navigation uncomfortable for users who ultimately decide to install ad block extensions in their browsers. This means that a bunch of the budget destined to online ads is lost and the message never reaches potential customers. 

• Dependence on deliverability: consider that people who don’t use ad blockers, are bombarded with ads on every website they visit. They are used to seeing a lot of advertisements and it’s very easy to overlook them to just focus on the content they actually want to see. On top of that, for users to come across that ad you put so much love into, they have to navigate a web site that belongs that reaches your display network, which minimizes the probability of the ad fulfilling its function.

• Uplift in sales: you can reach up to a 10% uplift with retargeting ads if you choose your bid targeting properly. If you bid higher, you generate more sales while being less profitable, or if you want to be more profitable you bid less and you reach less people and uplift will be more limited. The point with using this strategy is to re-engage with users that have already visited your site and have expressed interest in your product or service. Since you already got their attention once, it’s much easier to obtain a conversion with them, translating into an uplift of your sales. 

• Profitability: are retargeting ads profitable? The short and simple answer here is it depends. You have to keep in mind that it mainly depends on your CPC and ROAS objectives and also the quality of your campaign, your audience segmentation. The higher CPC you bid, you get more impressions but your ROAS decreases and vice versa. When retargeting the right audience you can see a great increase in conversion and end up with a great ROI. But one of the most important factors when it comes to using retargeting ads, is that you’re bidding against your direct competitors and if their CPC bids are higher, your ad won’t get the impressions that you expect. 

• Retargeting the wrong audience: If you don’t do the integration properly using the “tracking pixel”, you could be losing money by reaching a customer that already bought a product because retargeting ads are not behaviour based. When users enter your site and you leave a cookie on them, if they directly decide to purchase a product on that first visit, they’re going to get an ad later. Not only will you waste your budget by displaying an ad that’s going nowhere, your brand’s reputation will be negatively affected by appearing intrusive and irrelevant.

• Additional workload: depending on the platform you’re working with, your retargeting ads might need to be updated frequently, if you keep showing the exact same ad, with the same message and images to your potential customers, they’ll get bored. You need to dedicate time into designing and creating different versions of the ad that you want to display periodically so users don’t get used to seeing them or bored by them. This translates into an additional workload for you.

Is there an alternative to retargeting ads?

The brightside is that technology is offering marketers new, innovative ways to re-engage online visitors. The direct and best alternative to retargeting ads campaigns are automated web push notifications. They also don’t require users to provide any type of personal information, are browser based and take the lead when it comes to personalisation and reach. 

• Ad blockers don’t affect them: ad blocker extensions don’t block or affect web push notifications in any way. When a subscriber opts-in and consents to receiving them, the message will always be delivered when users open their browsers, on both mobile or desktop, and start navigating any site. Web push notifications have a much higher acceptance than retargeting ads, especially because you give people the choice to allow or block them and opt-out whenever they want to: you put them in control so they don’t find them creepy or inappropriate. Some extensions can block them.

 

• The right message to the right person at the right time: automated web push notifications allow you to create message sequences based on individual consumer behaviour. These messages are triggered by events the users complete on your website. For example, if a user browses a product page but doesn’t add the article to the basket, he will receive a retargeting web push notification as a reminder to continue with the shopping process. This triggered notification won’t be sent if the user ads the product to the cart and so on: one event excludes the other. This automation guarantees that users will receive the right message with a high level of personalisation that retargeting ads don’t allow. 

• Guaranteed deliverability: one of the biggest advantages of web push notifications is their reachability. Users who opt-in receive them on both desktop and mobile devices, regardless of the website they’re navigating on. Unlike retargeting ads, web push notifications are shown on any website, not the publishers or a network display one. This guarantees that your message comes across every time. As another benefit, when it comes to retargeting ads, as we mentioned before, it’s very easy for them to get lost in a jungle of ads displayed on a site. This will never be a problem with web push notifications, as they’ll appear on a corner of the screen (on desktop) or a regular app notification on mobile devices. Users just won’t miss them. 

 

• Automation reduces workload: the setup process of the campaigns has to be done just one time only. Service platforms like Frizbit take care of the integration process in just a day and hand over ready-to-use templates that clients can customise as much as they want. This means that you won’t have to be creating, designing and changing your campaigns constantly to keep it interesting for your potential customers. Web push notifications by Frizbit include dynamic parameters that fill in automatically to make the message as personalised and relevant as it can be by adding user name, product name, brand and images and more. There’s no other retargeting channel that allows as much customisation as web push notifications do. 

Should I use retargeting ads or automated retargeting web push notifications?

To sum up, the truth is that a great digital marketing strategy includes a mix of channels combined to get the best results and achieve objectives the most efficient way possible. Retargeting ads and web push notifications can easily coexist in the same online strategy. However, the pros and cons of each channel are very clear. 

Ultimately the decision will have to be based on your industry, type of products and budget. Between both channels, web push notifications have shown to offer greater results in terms of ROAS, click-through rates and conversion rates. 

You are welcome to read our clients success stories and see for yourself what an automated web push notification retargeting campaign can do for your online business. 

• Bidcom Success Story

• Primor Success Story

• Mi Cuento Success Story

The definitive elimination of third-party cookies is imminent. In less than a two year period, Google will join Safari and Firefox blocking them for good from their Chrome Browser. This means the digital marketing landscape will change dramatically and marketers need to start thinking outside the box and redefine the way they reach their customers. 

Even though third-party cookies blocking it’s not new, the fact that Google is deciding to join other companies, puts the final nail to the coffin. Chrome is the most used web browser in the world. According to data from StatCounter “Chrome holds 64.92% of the global browser market. If we compare that to the number of internet users worldwide, we reach a figure of roughly 2.94 billion Chrome users in 2019”.

How do third-party cookies work?

Third-party cookies are generated by a different website from the one the user is currently visiting, and its data is mainly used for cross-site tracking that allow actions like retargeting ads or contextual display ads. If you think about it, this can easily be interpreted as 3rd party cookies being invasive and represent a very poor reflection of the user, given that they did not actually express any interest in the brand or product they’re being presented with. 

On the other hand we have first-party cookies. These cookies are small bits of information gathered from users from the website they’re visiting at the time. The data stored, like language settings,  allows these website’s owners to enhance user experience on the internet. Their main goal is to recognize each user, remember their preferences and ultimately offer a more personalised navigation. 

Third-party cookies have been around for many years and have shaped the digital marketing world in many ways, helping brands to display ads to a more relevant audience. With their blocking, the biggest concern for marketers is the fear of not being able to reach potential customers, losing revenue and the overall alteration on how they track and retarget users.

Google has announced their intent to replace them with browser-based tools as part of their “Privacy Sandbox” initiative. They claim that “some data practices don’t match up to user expectations for privacy” and aim to build a more private web with this action. 

The Sandbox initiative is a solution that limits the amount of user data exchanged through websites by anonymously aggregating user information and still ensuring that ads shown remain relevant for customers, whilst keeping a lot of data on-device only. 

This initiative is still under development and Google is seeking industry feedback to keep on going. In the meantime and in addition to Google’s solution, since retargeting with third-party cookies will no longer be an option, what can be done about it?

The future of digital marketing without 3rd party cookies: How to face the cookieless Internet

The third-party-cookie-killing action that aims to create a more private and personal web experience for users, can even benefit publishers. Marketers could feel that losing them will leave an immense gap impossible to fill, but that might not be the case if they rethink first party cookies, optimize other marketing channels and create a multichannel marketing strategy. 

1. Rethinking first-party cookies

“The more the merrier” might not be the case for the future of digital marketing. While third-party cookies allow retargeting a vast amount of prospective customers, thanks to cross-site tracking, first-party cookies offer marketers the possibility of sending relevant messages to the right people. First-party collected data should become a priority from this point forward. 

Users that visit a site and agree to first-party cookies, are already saying that they find that content useful and of value, with an increased intent to buy or engage with the site when presented with a retargeting action like an ad. 

Even though marketers will have less people to send their message to, the data gathered from users that accept first-party cookies will be much more valuable for businesses. It will allow marketers to create users’ profiles with more detail and design tailored retargeting campaigns to reach them. 

The elimination of third-party cookies will make users feel they have more control over their experience online and how their personal data is handled and exchanged. This will translate into them being more open-minded to allowing first party cookies and this will benefit marketers in the long run. 

2. Optimizing existing marketing channels

Digital marketing professionals that have been relying way too much on running ads based on  the use of third-party cookies to reach their customers, need a mind shift. Mass targeted advertising will end as we know it and hopefully opens the door to a more personalised and comprehensive use of other traditional and diverse marketing channels that don’t require third-party cookies, such as web push notifications, emails, SMS, content marketing and contextual advertisement. If you have always been a 360° digital marketer, this won’t catch you off guard.  

• Web push notifications present an all in one retargeting solution for online businesses. They obviously don’t need third-party cookies to work, but also don’t require users to share any type of personal data to subscribe. With this channel it’s possible to retarget anonymous users through every step of their shopping journey, outside of the site, with hyper-personalised messages based on their behaviour. 

• Email and SMS marketing have always been very powerful channels to engage customers independently from third-party cookies. They offer the possibility of sending personalised information to users based on their behaviour on your site, such as abandoning carts. They’re also great to inform about special sales, promotions and discounts as a mass communication tool. Emails usually have great CTRs and are fairly easy to configure and use, as for SMS have very high open rates and great reachability. 

• Content marketing is aimed into generating traffic, leads and building audiences through the creation of high quality and valuable content. It’s an oldie but a goodie of the digital marketing strategy, and nowadays a must-have for any brand or business. The focus of content marketing is to draw the users’ attention, making them visit your site and finally engaging with them without any requirement of third-party cookies. 

• Contextual advertising is the digital equivalent of hanging a sneakers shoes ad in a sports store. It’s about being present where your customers are. One of the great benefits of using contextual advertising is that users find them more relevant and much less invasive than retargeting ads shown because of third-party cookies cross-site tracking.  These ads are based on the content the user is consuming at that exact moment, instead of their overall internet behaviour, which makes them a lot more pertinent. 

• People-based marketing uses specific data collected from one individual’s behaviour to identify them. It’s a more intelligent way to track customers and retarget them through relevant ads. Cookies are device-specific unless user id’s are merged, which means that, when a user browses a product in his work computer, and then purchases it from his phone, or changes browser, the retargeting footprints are lost. Businesses could be wasting a lot of money retargeting users that have already converted. People-based marketing avoids that by taking your customer’s data from your CRM and connecting it with all their online identities. 

3. Create a multichannel marketing strategy

All of the mentioned tools have greater power if combined in a seamless multichannel marketing strategy. It’s a practice where interaction between brands and customers take place throughout different communication platforms. Reaching out to users through a variety of channels increases the opportunities of engaging with them. 

A correct combination of different tools will allow you to connect with your customers on a deeper level. You have to be present where they are, and the best way to reach them is designing different messages that adapt to both the characteristics of each marketing channel and your user’s needs. 

If you depend too much on third-party cookies, your digital marketing strategy will fall short and you’ll be missing out on hundreds of possibilities to engage with your audience. Combine emails, web push notifications, content marketing and any other cookie-independent channel that fits you to increase your brand awareness, reach new customers and retain existing ones. 

Cookieless future is not so dark

The news of Google eliminating third-party cookies might have come like a hard blow to many digital marketers. However, we think of it as an opportunity to sharpen our strategist skills and seize the advantages offered by more detailed data of specific customers that are willing to share it with us. 

In times of hyper-personalisation, and with all the cookieless channels available, there’s no excuse for not doing our best as digital marketing professionals to better understand our customers’ expectations and respond accordingly. 

People are seeking a balance between privacy and personalisation. So, an internet without third-party cookies might be what’s missing from the equation. Users want to receive suggestions about services or products they might like, but they also want to have a say on how and why these messages reach them. 

Brands have to focus on being genuine and building trust with their customers. If users feel their personal data is used to actually improve their experience online, and not just for businesses’ private agendas, they’ll be more willing to share it. The disappearance of third-party cookies might help them understand why their information is so important for online businesses.

There’s still time to prepare for the final elimination of third-party cookies: focus on giving customer privacy the importance it deserves and on creating well-rounded multichannel marketing strategies to deliver relevant messages. 

Here are some articles that might help you reshape your digital marketing strategy and be ready for Google eliminating third-party cookies:

• How to Orchestrate your Marketing Strategy on Multi-Channel?
• Text Messages: Stronger than Ever with Automation and Behavioral Targeting
• Web Push Notifications Done Right – 7 Mistakes To Avoid!

A multi-channel marketing strategy is key to success for any digital business nowadays. Many companies opt for managing their communication with their customers over multiple channels, using different teams, third-parties or providers. This can result in customers receiving messages through a variety of channels that can easily overlap each other with repeated, irrelevant information and end up wearing users out. 

Companies should focus on personalisation and start to cater to their customers as individuals with personalised needs and interests, while managing their communications centrally. If you’re not engaging to your user’s preferences, they’re more likely to opt-out from all the channels you use trying to connect with them, due to finding your communication irrelevant and annoying.

In today’s day in age, customers have a lot of power over what type of communications they receive from brands by refusing to subscribe, refusing to share personal information and installing browser extensions such as ad blockers.  This leaves sellers constantly trying to find new and effective ways to get the end result necessary, which of course is to bring that customer back to complete a conversion. 

To adapt to this reality, businesses must strive to make it as easy as possible for customers to gain access to their site. This is made possible by the sheer orchestration of an automated, engaging, attractive and relevant communication strategy through different channels. This will allow you to interact with your users in the most effective way possible. 

Why should you use automated multi-channel marketing campaigns?

Value has more to do with being there for people, rather than selling the industry’s best. having this kind of mindset will result in an increase of customer retention. This is vital, because even a five percent increase in customer retention can raise profits by 25-95 percent. If you are not already sold by this statistic, imagine this: It costs from 5 to 25 times more to get a new customer, than it does to keep the one you already have. Therefore, it’s important to keep that user engaged by communicating through multi-channel marketing and a sequence of messages that’s relevant, useful and attractive.

The Performance Comparison of Each Channel (Email, SMS, Web Push, Ads)

Channel	Opt-in Rate	Deliverability	Average CTR
Email	1-3%	98.2%	17.2%
SMS	0.5-1.5%	>99%	35.4%
Web Push Notifications	5-10%	>98%	10.7%
Retargeting Ads	N/A	Depends on CPC	0.7%

Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy: Benefits of SMS, Email and Web Push Notifications combined 

• Reach more customers by offering multiple options for them to choose their preferred channel
• Engage customers through the channel of their preference
• Drive more traffic to your website/app, therefore generating more revenue
• Connect with anonymous users who prefer not to share their personal info, via push notifications
• Create a customer engagement journey through scenarios and templates designed for each channel to be sent at the best time
• Track performance of your campaigns on each channel through Frizbit user and campaign reports
• Optimize your communication and discover how to connect better with your customers on a more personal level with A/B testing and machine learning

Multi-Channel Marketing Strategies

1. Email Marketing

 

Email marketing has always been one of the most common and preferred channels for online businesses to get in touch with their customers. It’s a tool that offers many possibilities, especially if you use the correct provider platform to plan and send your campaigns:

• Ongoing communication: Frizbit is able to strategically build a sequence of emails that will grasp your user’s attention, bringing them back to visit your website once again. You can design messages series for cart abandonment recovery, product suggestions based on behaviour and much more to keep in touch with your customers during periods of time you can define yourself.  

• More leads: when a user decides to share their email address with you, you can easily start building a new leads database through email communication. With this information you have the possibility to get in touch with your customers on a more personal level. You can nurture those leads with inbound and content marketing campaigns that will create a more long-lasting relationship with your clients. 

• Hyper-personalisation: Customers appreciate and want to learn more about what you have to offer. Especially if you send a message with specific information that’s relevant and useful for them, helping you increase engagement. You can include their names, product name, image, price and more to make the email as personalised as you can, which will highly increase CTRs. ç

• Automation: Frizbit allows complete automation of the email sequences you create. this means you won’t have to invest lots of time to configure and send a campaign whenever you want, you’ll just have to do it once.

2. SMS Marketing

SMS marketing strategies have been around for a while, just like in the case of email marketing. There are many similar benefits of both channels, however SMS offer some additional ones worth revising that will help you take your multi-channel marketing strategy to the next level: 

• Immediate communication: SMS marketing provides an immediate channel of communication with your customers. If we keep in mind that most of us don’t separate from our phones for nearly 5 minutes a day, SMS is a great option if you want an almost immediate response from your customers. SMS also highly guarantees the delivery of the message, since you don’t have to wait for users to go online and check their inboxes like in the case of emails. 

• Closeness: Texts messages are an intimate channel of communication. They relate to close relationships which gives customers a feeling of a more personal and less commercial communication.

• Automation: As it does in the case of email marketing, Frizbit is able to send out automated and personalized text messages to each customer based on their actions on the site. The SMS can be scheduled to be sent after an exact amount of time after being triggered by an event on the web without adding additional work to your planning and execution.

 3. Web Push Notifications

Web push notifications allow a one click process to redirect customers back to your site. They’re short, direct messages based on users’ behaviour and delivered through their browsers when they go online. This is a very new channel, so its benefits are not so well known like in the case of email and SMS marketing:

• Reachability: web push notifications are delivered to the subscriber on both desktops and mobile devices, even if they’re not browsing your website. 

• Connect with anonymous users: in order to send web push notifications, you don’t need to request users to share any type of personal information like email address or phone number. Visitors only need to Allow them via  the opt-in prompt shown when they enter the website for the first time and, with just one click, they become subscribers. This allows you to connect with visitors, giving you the chance to turn them into customers. 

• Immediate traffic generation: with manual or bulk web push notifications sent to all subscribers, you can send flash sales alerts, out of stock availability, price drop alerts or special offer messages that can generate a lot of traffic to your site very quickly. 

• Full funnel communication: web push notifications messages can be completely automated and triggered by events for every single step of funnel. They offer a channel through which you can communicate with your subscribers with a specific message throughout the entire shopping process: first visit to the page, category viewed, product viewed and product added to cart. 

• Deliverability: web push notifications offer guaranteed deliverability. This channel is browser based, meaning that as soon as a subscriber opens up its browser, the message will be delivered.

4. Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads are one of the main channels used by online advertisers to try to reconnect and bring back users to their site. By using retargeting ads, brands “follow” users that didn’t convert to show them images and messages inviting them to come back and finish a transaction. The benefits of including them in your digital marketing mix are:

• Branding: usually, retargeting ads are shown multiple times to the same person. This contributes to increasing brand awareness by displaying the image of the brand, its logo and, maybe the slogan during a period of time making it stick in the users’ mind. 

• Reach: retargeting ads have great reach, since they allow you to get to almost every user that accepted cookies. This channel allows you to reach people practically anywhere on the internet after they have visited your site only one time. 

Integrating multi-Channel marketing strategies

It can take up to twenty impressions across multiple marketing channels to convince a potential customer to take action. Keep in mind that people are usually not ready to make the purchase the first time they visit a web. Users need to see the message you are trying to convey multiple times before they actually begin paying attention and more so, before converting. You can greatly increase the possibility of that happening by consistent messaging across multiple channels with a well-though digital marketing strategy. 

It’s predicted that people will likely interact with at least two marketing channels out of the many offered. Platforms such as Frizbit ensure that you’re consistent with the information you send across all marketing channels in order to create a great experience for your customers. 

Start marketing your brand with a  multi-channel marketing strategy by signing up for a Frizbit demo! 

Meanwhile you can also read, 

• Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies for E-commerce – Recover Lost Sales
• The Future of Digital Marketing Without 3rd Party Cookies
• Are Web Push Notifications GDPR Compliant?