9 Remarketing/Retargeting Services which Drive your Online Sales

There’s no doubt about it: retargeting works.

Kimberly-Clark, a global leader in selling paper products, reported 50-60% conversion rates from their retargeting efforts.

It makes sense to sell to consumers who have already expressed interest in your product than pitching to someone who is not familiar with the brand.

To understand how retargeting (sometimes called remarketing) works, Retargeter sums it up in a simple illustration.

When a potential customer browses your site, a cookie will be installed in his browser. This will ‘follow’ them as they browse on other sites and allow ad platforms to serve very specific ads – your site, or the product or service that they were looking at. This web retargeting strategy provides a way to re-engage anonymous users and is also called pixel-based marketing.

Another way to do this is through list-based or email remarketing. Advertisers provide their platforms with a list of email addresses (for example, those who abandoned their carts) so users can see ads of the same products the next time they browse on the internet.

These two are examples of how you can implement retargeting. Other retargeting techniques include retargeting on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), mobile apps, dynamic retargeting (personalized ads up to the specific product/service level), and search retargeting (retargeting based on keywords a customer used to search instead of website visits).

Advertisers can choose to get the services of a ‘middle man’ (Adroll, Retargeter, Perfect Audience, etc) or to go directly to the exchanges (Google, Facebook, Twitter) to run their own retargeting campaigns.

Here’s an illustration from Sitescout on the process of how advertisers can run retargeting campaigns through platforms:

Both have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost, manageability, and extent of reach. To help you understand different retargeting platforms, here’s a list of 9 retargeting/remarketing services:

1. Google AdWords Remarketing

Let’s start with what the search engine giant has to offer. Google makes it easy for advertisers with existing Adwords account to start with a remarketing campaign. With Adwords’ retargeting solution, you can re-engage your audience when they visit sites part of the Google Display Network/Google Adsense, browse on YouTube, and use Android apps. Google offers CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), CPC (Cost per Click), and CPA (Cost per Acquisition) pricing models.

First, you’ll have to create a remarketing list to define who should be shown the ads: are you looking at all visitors of your site or visitors of specific pages only? Next, create the new campaign and tag your site for remarketing. If you have a mobile site, you can also implement remarketing for your app.

Google offers different ways to remarket:

Static/normal remarketing - refers to the standard way of following customers on the web using a cookie after the visitor viewed a web page. Then the customer gets a banner ad on a third-party website with a static offer.
Dynamic remarketing - allows marketers to show ads up to the specific product level which the customer visited previously. Then the customer gets a banner on a third-party website, but in this case with dynamic banner, which contains visited products or items on visited pages.
Search Ads (RLSA) - Remarketing lists for search ads uses search keywords as parameters for remarketing. For example, marketers can use the keyword ‘hotel in Amsterdam’ so when someone goes on a search engine and uses that keyword, Google can serve them with your ad.
Video remarketing - Video remarketing works on YouTube. If you wish to reach out to previous viewers of your video or those who subscribed to your channel, use the video remarketing solution.
Email-list remarketing (Customer Match) - Upload a list of your customers’ emails. Once customers sign in to their Gmail account, they will see your ads.

Visit this page to view extensive instructions for setting up an AdWords remarketing campaign.

There are no additional costs for minimum spend and set-up fee to start retargeting with Adwords. You have access to a 24/7 support too in case you have questions. Google Adwords is a good place to start for businesses new in advertising and still testing the waters for remarketing.

Here’s a sample remarketing ad done on Google Adwords. If a customer visits a third-party website, they will get Dynamic ads with products they viewed.

Details:

Pricing: Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges on CPM, CPC, or CPA
Services: Standard, Dynamic, Mobile Apps, Search Ads, Video, and email list remarketing
Network: Google Display Network, YouTube, Mobile Apps

2. Adroll

If you’re ready to take remarketing to the next level, it’s time to evaluate Adroll. Adroll has access to advertising partners such as Google, Facebook Exchange, Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter. That makes up for about 95% of the web; imagine the size of audience you can reach on the platform.

Adroll offers CPM pricing model and as stated on their support page, the company believes that CPM paired with a no minimum spend model maximizes the benefits for the advertiser. They recommend starting with a budget of $25 and from there, you can start gauging how much you will need for your campaigns.

Advertisers on Adroll cite their user interface as a big plus. It is simple to use and advertisers can easily do customer segmentation, ad management, and report generation on the dashboard. Here’s the sample page where you can create campaigns for the web or for FBX:

To learn more about how to create campaigns on Adroll, visit this page. Adroll also provides online and phone support and once you start spending more than a specified amount ($5K), you’ll be provided with a personal account manager plus access to additional capabilities for A/B testing.

Details:

Pricing: Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges on CPM
Services: Web, Twitter, Mobile, Facebook, CRM, Instagram, dynamic, email marketing, and AdRoll Prospecting
Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, AdBrite, OpenX Market, RightMedia, Appnexus, etc.

3. ReTargeter

Built in 2009, ReTargeter is a fairly new player in the industry yet they have already gained traction with clients such as Zendesk and Hireology. ReTargeter has a wide portfolio of remarketing solutions for sites with bigger volume. Choose from web, Facebook, CRM, Audience, Search, and Dynamic Retargeting solutions.

For sites with less than 40,000 unique visits in a month, advertisers can avail of Site Retargeting or Retargeting for Facebook services. For websites with more than that number of visits, they can also avail of CRM Retargeting solutions, a Custom Audience tool, as well as the services of a dedicated account manager.

Packages start at $500/month for Site and Facebook Retargeting. What’s good about ReTargeter is that they have a variety of strategies to choose from. For example, you can use their CRM retargeting service for your contact/list-based remarketing goals while running a Facebook Retargeting campaign.

Audience retargeting uses demographics, geographic information, interests, and contextual data to pinpoint your brand’s users. It can be quite costly starting at $2500/month but a more targeted approach brings in more conversions.

Here’s how you can keep track of conversions on ReTargeter’s dashboard:

For a comprehensive guideline on how to create campaigns, visit this link to Retargeter’s FAQ.

Retargeter is ideal for websites with high volume of visits and who are looking to explore a mix of remarketing strategies.

Details:

Pricing: DIY packages starts at $500/month for Facebook and Web Retargeting. Managed Service includes additional packages that start from $1000 to $5000/month minimum
Services: Web, Facebook, CRM, Audience, Search, and Dynamic Retargeting
Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, OpenX, Rubicon, etc

4. Facebook Retargeting with Custom Audiences

With more than 1 billion people active on Facebook, the advertising possibilities are endless.

If you’re already running your Facebook Ads but there’s still room for more conversions, consider setting up Custom Audiences on Facebook. Create a Facebook pixel, put it on your website, and build your custom audience.

Custom Audiences allows for flexibility too as you can create a separate list for audiences who have visited a particular page on your website or a more inclusive ‘website visitor’ category. Your list will be ready for use as soon as the pixel identifies 20 or more customers.

Aside from website visitors, you can also create one based on your email subscription list and mobile app users.

Facebook Ads also allows creating a list of Lookalike audiences. It will help brands to reach out to new customers who are similar to your existing audiences. After collecting a list of visitors, create an ad, apply it to your custom audience and start re-engaging customers.

One of Facebook Ads main selling point with Custom Audiences is that it can generate more results than Google AdWords and it costs cheaper. This is according to a guide published by AdEspresso. Here are other success stories:

Look at how Custom Audiences work:

Details:

Pricing: No minimum spend. Charges per CPC/CPM.
Services: Facebook Retargeting (in-app and browser, newsfeed and right section ads)
Network: Facebook

5. Perfect Audience

Have you just started your business? If you’re running a small-to-medium scale business and are looking to explore remarketing techniques to increase your sales, find your right match in Perfect Audience, just like the way others such as American Apparel and 99designs did. These online sellers reported an increase in revenue and lower CPA (cost per action).

Perfect Audience offers solutions for Mobile, Dynamic, Web, and Facebook Retargeting. In terms of audience segmenting, the platform offers diverse choices, from website and specific page visitors, users who clicked on a JavaScript event, and mailing list subscribers who opened your mail.

For display retargeting, Perfect Audience also has access to other ad networks aside from Google Display Network. Here are more details on their Display Retargeting solution:

To reach out to a new group of clients, consider teaming up with your brand partners. Perfect Audience’s Partner Retargeting solution serves ads to your partner’s audience list. It’s the best way to highlight your brand partnership and it will open opportunities to gain new customers too.

Once you’ve identified which sites are performing well and which ones are getting poor conversions, you can choose to use the domain blacklisting functionality. By doing this, you can make sure that you are getting your advertising money’s worth.

Details:

Pricing: Free 14-day trial. Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges per CPM
Services: Mobile App, Cross-Device, Display, Partner, Dynamic Product, Hubspot, Twitter, Facebook Exchange, and News Feed Remarketing
Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, OpenX, Rubicon, Facebook, Hubspot, Twitter, Appnexus, Pubmatic

6. SiteScout

Retargeting is one of the features in Sitescout’s long list of advertising DSP (Demand-side Platform) solutions.

Create an audience list, get the pixel, and include it on your site’s landing page. The list will be populated once someone visits the landing page. Sitescout recommends having at least 1000 on the list before running a retargeting campaign. It will depend on how much traffic your site gets before you can populate a large enough audience list. You may want to employ other marketing techniques to drive customers to your site. Alternatively, you can use your conversion list as an audience list.

For mobile retargeting campaigns, your audience list will be based on Device IDs. Either upload a list or run SiteScout’s Audience Capture tool on your mobile app to start collecting device IDs.

Sitescout serves ads in numerous networks. Here are some of the 81 exchanges:

Details:

Pricing: Free to sign up but requires 500USD minimum deposit. Charges per CPM but has an auto-optimization feature where you can set CPC or CPA goals.
Services: Mobile and Web Retargeting
Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, OpenX, Rubicon, Appnexus, Pubmatic, etc.

7. Exact Drive

Exact Drive is a self-serve advertising platform that offers web, Facebook, and Search Retargeting.

The company, on their extensive write-up on retargeting, shared insights on how advertisers can further improve remarketing campaigns. Some of the points that need to be considered include proper audience segmentation, customized ads creation, and first-party data utilization. Aside from these, Exact Drive also recommends strategies such as giving your audience a good landing page and experimenting with your ads.

Exact Drive has a strong portfolio when it comes to search retargeting, with some of the known names in the industry as their clients.

Use search retargeting to maximize your SEM efforts. The solution works by keeping track of search keywords to detect potential customers. Unlike standard retargeting where you are re-engaging customers who have previously visited your site, this solution will enable you to introduce your brand to new customers who have shown interest in your brand’s field.

In terms of support, Exact Drive has a Support Center containing helpful links so you can easily create your own campaigns. For more questions, they offer email ticket support and for those with more than $5K spend, a dedicated account manager.

Details:

Pricing: Advertisers with more than $5000 USD spent each month get more features such as dedicated account manager and monthly customized reports. Pricing models are CPM and CPC. Visit their pricing page here for more details.
Services: Facebook, Dynamic, Standard, and Search Retargeting
Network: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Bing, Hubspot, etc

8. Twitter

Does your brand have an active following on Twitter? Are you already using Twitter Ads? To maximize your reach on the social media platform, consider running a remarketing campaign.

Twitter cites success stories from Hubspot, Krossover, and New Relic with increased engagement and conversion rates as well as a decrease in CPA (cost per customer acquisition).

To use Twitter for web retargeting, start by installing a Twitter website tag on your page. Once a user checks their Twitter account, they will see your ad on their feed. Here’s a sample of a promoted tweet:

Social Media Examiner discusses another way to use Twitter’s Tailored Audiences capability. Start by finding Twitter usernames of people who meet your target audience criteria. Next, do an automated search of your main list of users’ followers as well as whom they follow. This way you will be able to expand your list with a bigger group of users who have the same interests.

After collecting Twitter usernames, SME suggests to further segment your audience into smaller groups such as according to location or weather. Once you’ve finalized your audience list, start creating customized ads for each group and run the campaign.

Take note that Twitter users have the option to opt-out of ads. Add more usernames on your list just in case.

Details:

Pricing: No minimum spend. Price depends on your budget and bid. For an estimate, check this post from Penna Powers
Services: Twitter Retargeting (followers, conversions, video view, tweet engagement, app engagement)
Network: Twitter

9. Criteo

This Paris-born retargeting company is the go-to provider of big names such as Lenovo, Sony, and BMW.

Reach out to your customers regardless of the device they are using with Criteo’s cross-device advertising solution covering desktop and mobile sites as well as social media. For web retargeting services, Criteo has a direct relationship with publishers and purchases inventory with CPM pricing. As of writing, the company has 16,000 publishers and they ensure advertisers of a high-quality inventory.

Advertisers commend how Criteo prices CPC, taking the majority of the risk as they buy CPM-based from publishers. Here’s how CPC bids look like on Criteo’s dashboard:

Along with their retargeting services, Criteo also offers supplemental services such as Kinetic Design, which combines your own branding with personalized content sure to catch your users’ attention. The solution comes with a dedicated creative team.

If there’s anything that you need to know about running campaigns, check the knowledgebase or you may reach out to the support team via email ticket support.

Details: