Retargeting is a beautiful thing. With the holiday selling season approaching, we’ll see it in action more than ever. During this time of year, there’s almost no better way to recapture web traffic and sales you might otherwise lose.
This year, less than four full weeks are between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Due to this shorter time frame, brands will spread out their holiday budgets more. With less time to play with, retargeting will be especially crucial, as it allows marketers to reinforce their messaging and deals to consumers they know are interested in shopping based on their recent web activity.
But we’re not talking about generic retargeting here. You know, the kind that annoys the heck out of consumers and leads them to block ads and ignore your brand. Retargeting done wrong leads to overexposure, which leads to ad fatigue and a negative impact on your brand perception. But with new channels, strategies, and data, you can get better results from your retargeting this holiday season—and all year round.
Don’t let your brand end up on the chopping (ad) block
According to eMarketer’s March 2024 forecast, U.S. digital ad spending will cross $300 billion for the first time. That’s a lot of ads—and a lot of digital noise.
There’s proof that consumers are burning out on digital. Ad blocking is again on the rise, and it is set to cause $54 billion in ad revenue losses worldwide. Frequency is one of the drivers of ad fatigue, and it is a top-five concern for media investments in 2024. Some 36% of U.S. brands consider managing reach and frequency across screens and channels one of their greatest challenges this year. In a survey by Optimove, 66% of consumers want fewer marketing messages, and 27% feel they’re bombarded by marketing messages.
Your brand needs to do these two things to make sure its retargeting ads don’t drive your target audience crazy and turn these fans into your brand’s foes:
- Combine digital with offline channels
- Scale beyond first-party data
Combine digital with offline channels
Using hybrid channels, or those rooted in offline channels that apply some digital features, to retarget this holiday season can complement your online channels.
These hybrid channels apply online behavioral data and automated workflows to execute marketing programs that are highly relevant (i.e., not annoying) and timely. For instance, in the case of PebblePost Programmatic Direct Mail (PDM), retargeting takes on new meaning because it involves sending physical mail to consumers who have already shown interest in your brand—usually within 12 to 24 hours of their qualifying. How’s that for hyper-targeted relevance?
This applies whether the target user is a customer or a prospect. Customer retargeting with PDM connects what’s happening on your website to the data in your CRM, making it possible to quickly engage customers with relevant, targeted offers at home, even if they aren’t logged in. Prospect retargeting uses online intent signals expressed across a consumer’s purchase journey on your website to determine the conversion potential of every visitor to your website. Either way, you can apply global frequency capping and pacing to ensure you never over-send to your best customers or recent purchasers.
By reaching consumers who are already well-versed in your brand with relevant physical media, you give them time to consider your offer in their homes before committing to making a purchase. And it doesn’t necessitate shunning digital. You can actually combine PDM retargeting with the immediacy of digital retargeting to account for consideration cycles of varying lengths without relying on a person being connected to a screen.
There’s proof that this strategy works. PebblePost found that households that were served digital retargeting ads and a piece of PDM retargeting mail had a 290% conversion rate lift, compared to households that were only served digital retargeting ads (45% conversion rate lift) and those that only received a piece of PDM retargeting mail (152% conversion rate lift).
Scale beyond your first-party data
You know what they say: one is the loneliest number. That holds true for first-party data because while it really is great, if you only use that information alone, you can only make retargeting decisions based on people who have logged on to your website. And what good is that when you’re trying to convert new customers?
At PebblePost, identity resolution is powered by proprietary, shared first-party to help brands match 60%+ site traffic to a household address. This lets you target customers or prospects better and deliver relevant, recent, and respectful retargeting messages.
Additionally, PebblePost doesn’t just trigger mail based on when someone visits a certain website page. We use AI-driven machine learning algorithms to drive the best performance, engaging and converting not only who marketers would expect but, more importantly, incremental consumers. Our algorithm ingests thousands of data points daily across your entire website, not just the cart abandonment page. That includes data points such as recency, pages visited, repeat site visits, time spent on page/site, browser, geo, etc., to continuously find those with the highest propensity to convert. Letting the algorithms evaluate all the website traffic maximizes the right balance of reach, ROI, and incrementality.
PebblePost’s ability to do that comes from the PebblePost Graph. It connects billions of shared first-party identity, intent, and transaction signals from 500+ brands and $150 billion in annual transactions to 98% of US postal addresses, leveraging additional enrichment sources to improve scale and fidelity.
The PebblePost Graph helps you determine consumer interest, how to engage them, and what they purchase. It allows you to identify better and engage decision-ready consumers and to match online and offline transactions back to exposed and control groups for performance and conversion rate lift measurement. In-place policies ensure no one brand’s data dominates any model built, whether it’s for prospecting, retargeting, or retention.
Rethink your retargeting strategy this holiday season
Nothing says Happy Holidays like a revved-up retargeting strategy that leverages hybrid channels and enhanced data sets like PDM. If you’re interested in learning how PebblePost can help you execute holiday retargeting campaigns for customers and prospects, contact us today.
