Remarketing

What is remarketing?

Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is the process of reconnecting with users who already have a relationship with the product/service or app. Any type of interaction such as ad views, subscriptions, adding items to the cart, or completing a purchase are tracked and taken into consideration when building re-engagement efforts.

The target audience for remarketing could be current or past users, and the main purpose is to keep the brand on top of their minds. By using digital ads that reinforce brand value or emails that deliver personalized messages encouraging user activity, marketers aim to increase conversions and sustain their relationships with existing users.

Remarketing is a popular strategy today as the mobile app market grows exponentially and user engagement is more valuable than ever. Re-engaging with existing users is considered much more effective than acquiring new users, which is also why more apps prefer remarketing.

Mobile remarketing strategies

Deep linking

Deep links are links embedded within app elements that redirect users to a specific in-app or app install page when clicked on. If a user initially interacted with a brand using a desktop site and then transitioned to an online site on their mobile device, serving a display ad with a deep link will increase the chances of them engaging with the respective app. Marketers can also use deferred-deep links, which store user activity data for those who do not have the specific app installed yet. Once the user installs the app, the deferred deep link recalls the activity and directly takes them to the specific in-app page it is meant to show.

Placing ad frequency caps

Making sure the same ad isn’t served twice, or spacing out ads so that users aren’t bombarded with ads from the same brand is crucial for maintaining a positive relationship with users. Ads are often irritable and disrupt a user’s course of action to begin with, so marketers should be cautious about which retargeting ad to serve at what point. It is helpful to understand where each user is coming from and which ad format or creative they are most open to interacting with. There are a limited number of opportunities to rebuild conversion efforts, so marketers should plan wisely and ensure that their resources don’t go to waste

Using marketing automation + analytics tools

Marketing automation tools are widely used today to perform time-consuming but important marketing tasks. There is a wide array of tools that serve distinct purposes, but the most commonly used one in remarketing is email marketing automation. Most remarketing emails today are sent using email automation software that keeps track of user behavior and sends the most suitable message to each user. Marketers are able to draft multiple versions of marketing emails for different scenarios which are automatically sorted in the software. Using this tool is time efficient and enables a wider reach and conversion rate.

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Marketing analytics tools like mobile measurement partners (MMPs) can be extremely useful for keeping track of user data and ad performances. For mobile app marketers that rely heavily on digital ads, analytics software is a must in order to produce accurate measurements that can be attributed to remarketing. MMPs like Airbridge also offer advanced remarketing features that are integrated with major publishers including Google Ads.

Benefits of remarketing

Brand awareness

Remarketing or retargeting ads are extremely useful for increasing brand awareness and maintaining an active presence among users. For users who are about to churn or have only had brief interactions with your brand, remarketing ads can be useful for familiarizing them with your app. For example, let’s say that you are running an e-commerce clothing app. Since you now have access to user activity, if you were to remarket to a user that opened your app several times but never browsed different tabs, you could deliver a targeted ad that features specific clothing items the user may be interested in. When the user encounters this remarketed ad, it naturally educates them on what this app offers, and they are able to familiarize themselves more with the service, convincing them to fully convert. As this process occurs repeatedly to a wide range of prospective users, brands can widen their reach and gain an increased level of brand awareness.

Cost-effectiveness

One of the main benefits of remarketing is its ability to prevent huge amounts of marketing budgets and acquisition costs from going to waste. Remarketing targets a warm audience of users who have already expressed interest in your brand, making them more likely to convert into active users. Furthermore, the process of acquiring completely new users and guiding them down the user journey cycle is much more costly and time-consuming than reaching out to users who have already shown intent. Hence, investing in this group of audiences can be much more profitable than operating a completely new campaign without a definitive success rate.