The key points in the marketing strategy: retargeting and remarketing.

We often forget the complexity of a purchase flow or a "decision" to make when you are a potential customer (Google coined the term "Messy Middle" to explain this chaos).

There are many variables involved to consider: the perceived value of the product/service, the competition, the cost, the time required to obtain it, the degree of conviction with respect to the purchase at that given moment, the limited time available, the interrupted by other things to do, etc etc.

All elements that lead many users and potential customers to abandon the intent to purchase or to postpone a decision. And that make retargeting and remarketing essential elements in online marketing strategy. But we get there…

This physiological indecision also translates into very long conversion paths, both in terms of time and the number of digital touchpoints needed to convince the user to act.

An old view of Universal Analytics with the multiple steps needed to convince the user to buy – in a home improvement e-commerce.

All the tools and initiatives that try to "recover" all these lost carts online fall under the remarketing and retargeting activities. And they are damn effective.

Today we see a couple of quick and very concrete ideas to improve the conversion rates of your e-commerce.

Remarketing or Retargeting? Both

It is customary to use the two terms interchangeably, without defining them precisely.

It's not a question of preferring one or the other, both can be used with great success.

Let's see two even trivial cases, within the reach of any online project, both e-commerce and B2B company.

A small case of remarketing: 11% conversion rate

Remarketing can be activated easily thanks to e-mail marketing automation tools, more or less complicated, using CRM.

Already the simple Mailchimp can be programmed to produce automatic communications to users, but there are also many WordPress Woocommerce plugins (to mention a widely used CMS), Prestashop modules and Shopify Apps to do the same thing.

Let us cite a case we followed, on a very small e-commerce that sells books and courses .

The plugin used in this case is AutomateWoo , it costs €99, and allows users to remember the products left in the cart, but not only: it sends specific communications based on certain conditions (e.g. user who hasn't purchased for a few days; communications to users who have spent above or below a price threshold; etc).

In our case, in just 90 days, the plugin largely paid for itself, as can be seen from the image below.

Retargeting: the campaigns not to be forgotten in the pay per click strategy

Advertising tools such as Google Ads and Meta Ads, to cite the most famous examples, allow you to set up effective retargeting ads, starting from user interactions with web pages and various ads, as already mentioned.

Also in this case the results are traceable and tangible.

In just over a year of activity, the conversions recovered through retargeting campaigns with Google Ads are numerous, with average CPC and low conversion cost.

In this specific case, we are not talking about an e-commerce but about a company whose goal is to obtain requests for information – therefore leads – which will be followed by a quote for services worth thousands of euros.

Returns, therefore, are essential and really make the difference in an effective and measurable online marketing strategy.

Remaining with the example of Google Ads, it is possible to "chase" target users in various ways: by exploiting the audience segments collected through Google Analytics and Google Ads itself, by setting up display campaigns or campaigns which exploit Google's artificial intelligence such as recent Performance Max , which occupy all available placements in the Google ecosystem (Search, Display, Discover, YouTube, Shopping, Gmail and other Google properties).

Performance Max which, we remind you, automatically includes retargeting and can also be very effective for B2B lead generation objectives .