The Top 5 Best Retargeting Platforms for Ecommerce Marketing

Did you know that 98% percent of web traffic will depart your ecommerce website on their first visit without making a purchase?That statistic may make it seem like 98% is a lost cause — maybe they’re potential customers who either arrived at your website by mistake, or they visited once and will forget about your brand forever. Think about those in-and-out visitors as opportunities to capture more revenue and boost your brand recognition. The best way to do that? By choosing from this list of great retargeting platforms.

What is Retargeting?

In today’s world of digital advertising, retargeting is considered a critical marketing tactic that ecommerce brands can’t survive without.

Consider a shopper from that 98% statistic — they’ve visited your ecommerce shop, browsed through a couple of product categories, and submitted their email address for your newsletter, but they abandoned the shopping cart and left your website. But even without the sale, you have enough information on this customer to continue to pursue them and urge them farther down the conversion funnel.

With retargeting, you can use the information about a shopper to present them with more marketing content that directly speaks to their interests, demographics, and browsing behavior. Here are a couple of examples of what retargeting could look like in this case:

• Sending the user an automated welcome email that auto-populates specific products from the categories they visited

• Showing the user ads for your store on social media

• Presenting a banner display ad related to a product category in which the user demonstrated interest

Retargeting platforms can help you do these things and much more, using data to extend the brand experience to the customer through all of their preferred channels.

But if you’re at all familiar with digital marketing, you know that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of digital tools available to help brands level up their retargeting game. Here’s a rundown of the five retargeting platforms that you should consider integrating into your marketing mix.

The 5 Best Retargeting Platforms for Ecommerce

1. AdRoll

AdRoll’s Marketing Platform boasts a robust feature set that includes comprehensive retargeting tools to help you recapture audience attention and push conversions. With turnkey integration with major ecommerce platforms, AdRoll is designed for ecommerce brands of all sizes and utilizes an AI algorithm to review and analyze millions of customer touchpoints, targeting users with relevant ad content across millions of websites and mobile apps, email, and social channels. Email retargeting helps you retain and build loyalty with customers who have already interacted with your brand to some degree, while ad retargeting covers a wide swath of users who you haven’t connected with yet.

The AdRoll platform is all about personalization, which research shows is the key ingredient in any marketing recipe. Customers are far more likely to respond to content that reflects an understanding of their specific interests, values, and shopping behaviors. AdRoll’s personalization tools follow users across browsers, devices, and marketing channels, serving up highly personalized content wherever users are. AdRoll’s tracking tools provide real-time feedback on how well your retargeting strategy is working, allowing you to make instant adjustments to improve the customer experience.

Pricing:AdRoll offers a free Starter tier and a Growth tier that starts at $19 per month after a 30-day free trial.

2. MailChimp

Well-known in the marketing world for its simple email tools, MailChimp offers retargeting solutions that might be ideal if your business leans heavily on email for marketing (and keep in mind that email remains the most trusted way to communicate with customers). They also provide analytics to help you refine your email strategy and tools to create elements such as landing pages for customer acquisition. You can also create and send postcards as part of your retargeting strategy through MailChimp.

Pricing: MailChimp offers a free tier and several options for scaling up services at $9.99, $14.99, or $299.99 per month.

3. Criteo

Criteo offers one of the most feature-rich retargeting platforms on the market, using machine learning and predictive bidding technology to maximize the results of your ad spending. It also includes unique retargeting features such as personalized video ads and personalized shopping offers, helping bring customers back into the fold where they can be reengaged with relevant content.

4. Facebook Custom Audiences

While not a comprehensive marketing platform, Facebook’s Custom Audiences feature allows you to capitalize on the presence of over 1 billion active users. With this tool, you can create custom audience segments that correspond to key customer data points, from demographic information and past browsing behavior to geographic location and psychographic details. If you advertise on Facebook, using Custom Audiences is a must.

5. Google Ad Manager

Google’s advertising tools have been around for nearly as long as the search engine itself, and they remain useful for marketers hoping to use data to their advantage in crafting retargeting campaigns. Google Ad Manager provides a range of tools for creating ads, developing custom reports, and automated bidding, along with dynamic remarketing that surfaces relevant content without you needing to create individual ads.

Ready, Set, Retarget!

At its core, retargeting is about delivering the most personalized experience possible to your customers, using what you know about your audience to continue the customer journey after they’ve interacted with your brand for the first time. Explore these retargeting platforms and make your decision based on the size of your ecommerce business, and you’ll find that your ROI and return on ad spend will reflect the difference.

Last updated on November 17th, 2022.