Sending emails to the same crowd with no improvement in engagement and click-through rates? Getting more unsubscribes than you’d like? Or, trying to improve the open rates of your emails to get your call-to-action across to your customer base?
These are all problems we as marketers face when using email to stay relevant with our audience. The good news is email is not the only way.
In this two-part post, we’ll look at some ways to enhance your prospect’s journey with a multi-touch approach that includes both email marketing and retargeting ads. In part 1, we’ll explore various retargeting strategies that foster a real multi-channel conversation to boost engagement. In part 2, we’ll discuss how Marketo’s new retargeting features simplify managing the multi-touch experience with both email and retargeting.
What is Retargeting?
Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a form of online advertising that allows businesses to promote its brand to people who have already visited your website or have entered your database. For example, I recently visited the Taboola website and now Tabloola advertisements are populating into my Facebook feed.
Retargeted advertising outperforms traditional PPC 10X (0.07% CTR vs 0.7 CTR) due to recognition and trust. Retargeter
For businesses that use Marketo, its Adbridge features let marketers handle and monitor retargeting and email campaigns all in one spot. The integration with different paid media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Ads makes it simpler to connect with your audience beyond just email. This guarantees that your email and retargeting efforts are aligned. We’ll explore the how in part 2 of this article.
Before You Get Started – Your Internal Processes
Multi-channel marketing sounds great in theory, but execution is sometimes a challenge due to internal staffing. In many cases, the team that manages email is different than the team that manages online advertising. Goals are sometimes different and the teams use different solutions to manage their day-to-day success.
The end result can lead to a disjointed experience for your audience as the retargeting and email messaging is not always in sync.
Bringing the two groups together is often a slight shift in internal process, so factor in that dynamic when adopting a multi-touch approach. If your organization is using Marketo, some of the new capabilities will help bring the multiple groups together.
8 Strategies to Increase Engagement with a Multi-touch Approach
Let’s dive into the 8 strategies to drive engagement using both email and retargeting.
#1. Add a Little Flavor to Your Email Campaigns
If an email campaign is the ice cream, consider the retargeting campaign the topping. When getting started, this is the simple approach with the widest net.
Rather than only sending an email invitation to your audience for this month’s webinar, consider using retargeting to deliver that message to the same audience. Combining email and retargeting ensures your audience is receiving your invitation via multiple channels.
#2. Reach Your Top Accounts and Segments
There’s no better way to reach those top accounts and segments than with a personalized ad. Retargeting this way allows you to personalize your ads based on the account you are trying to reach. Say Company A is more likely to be interested in Product B and Company B is more likely to be interested in Product A – personalize an ad towards both to not only get their attention, but also pull them back to your product in a different way outside of email.
#3. Target Your Non-Emailable Audience
According to MailChimp, the average unsubscribe rate sits at approximately .49% per email. That means a 100K database loses about 500 subscribers each send. Add in people that you are awaiting permission from (e.g. people added by Sales) and your non-emailable audience adds up.
What if you could reach this audience another way? Yes, reach the people that have unsubscribed from your emails. Cue retargeting.
Retargeting to your unsubscribers helps keep your brand and/or products top of mind for consumers in an alternative way and could get them re-engaged.
#4. Use Your Email Data for Targeted Messaging
Clicks, opens, downloads. Behavior all tells us something. So use this behavioral data to target your database in the way they interact. If you’re sending out an email to help boost attendance for a webinar but have a low open rate, target people who didn’t open the email with an ad – on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google.
Running concurrent ads along with your email campaigns and making the messaging relevant to your database is a good way to allow for that personal touch based on interaction.
#5. Reactivate Your Dead Leads
Your audience can get tired of receiving your message the same way over time and become unengaged. After a period of long inactivity, many organizations delete these inactive records to reduce data costs and improve results.
Before you perform this final database clean-up, how about incorporating a retargeting ad along with your Wake the Dead email? This is a good way to diagnose whether leads just might be better reached via advertising rather than by email–and really make sure you aren’t deleting people that still want to receive your messaging.
#6. Supercharge Your Nurturing
Already have a lead nurturing campaign in place that sends email? What if you could add a retargeting touch somewhere along the way in an evergreen approach?
Using this approach, build the retargeting advertisement right into existing nurture tracks to add a new dynamic to the conversation. Best of all, these retargeting advertisements are as easy to deliver as the sending of nurture emails–everything is automated to cut down management time. This process takes a little technical know-how that we’ll cover in part two of this post.
#7. Drive Customer Messaging and Add-on Sales
When a prospect becomes a customer, it’s time to begin the process of turning that customer into an advocate and hopefully drive additional revenues.
In this simple example, a prospect purchases a certain product like a printer. Once that purchase is made, retargeting advertisements begin promoting an add-on like ink cartridges for the printer. For B2B organizations, consider delivering on-boarding messaging that drives adoption with “Top Getting Started Tips” advertising.
#8. Guide Leads Down the Funnel
Most companies have some kind of funnel process that manages the lifecycle of a lead. If you find leads getting stuck at certain stages, try unclogging the funnel by reaching the audience with messaging based on where they sit in the lifecycle.
For example, when a lead reaches a certain age in a bottom-of-the-funnel stage like SQL, offer up a case study to validate your solution via both email AND retargeting.
Wrap-Up
If you are looking for new initiatives to drive engagement, consider adding a retargeting element to your marketing. This multi-touch approach ensures your message is delivered across channels to boost engagement.