What is Remarketing?

What is Remarketing?

Do you ever feel like you’re being followed by ads online?

Consider this scenario: You remember researching for a workflow management tool. You recall clicking through to a bunch of relevant websites about workflow management tools. However, since no tool in particular really stood out to you, and because your need wasn’t that urgent to begin with, you decided to continue searching at a later date.

You resigned from your decision to purchase a specific tool, but some of the websites you visited had other ideas.

By some magic, the websites exactly what you were looking for. They knew you requested their help and tried to grab your attention by not just one, but multiple ads that continue following you online.

One of the ads addressed a specific qualm you had about buying a tool and you were convinced to click. The ad directed you to a post-click landing page that gave you the exact information you needed to commit — but you didn’t convert.

That sequence of events is known as remarketing:

Remarketing occurs on the Google Display Network or Bing paid search network when internet users search. It involves using technology like marketing tags and tracking pixels to deliver highly personalized ads to people who have already visited your website or post-click landing page but have not converted yet.

Remarketing helps keep your brand in front of your potential customers’ eyes (and on their mind) even after they navigate away from your website — persuading them to revisit your offer when they need it.

This visual by Retargeter aptly explains how remarketing campaigns work:

Why are Remarketing Campaigns Important?

According to Marketo, 96% of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy. That’s a huge chunk of website visitors that you’re essentially losing out on since they aren’t converting.

Remarketing campaigns allow you to target these visitors with specific ads with the specific goal of convincing them to convert for your offer. With remarketing campaigns, you’re reminding and convincing visitors that weren’t initially ready to convert yet.

These types of ads work because they allow you to serve people with ads who’ve already expressed an interest in your product. With the help of social media channels, search engines, and email you can remind them that they wanted to solve a problem and why your product offers the best solution.

To that point, WordStream claims that conversion rates increase the more online users see an ad within remarketing campaigns:

Chubbies experienced that firsthand when they launched a Fourth of July themed remarketing campaign that targeted past and present customers. The campaign included animated ads and custom post-click landing pages that featured time-sensitive promotional codes that changed every hour:

The campaign saw huge success, resulting in 35.5% ROI and 4.6 times the above average conversions within 12 hours.

Clearly, remarketing campaigns have the power to convince hesitant visitors to convert on your offer and get present customers to express interest in new offers.

What’s the Difference Between Remarketing and Retargeting?

Both retargeting and remarketing are two marketing terms which are usually used interchangeably. This next section will focus on explaining whether or not they refer to the same concept of reaching out to users who’ve already interacted with your brand.

Retargeting is most often used to describe the online display ads that are shown to visitors who’ve landed on your website and then exited without performing an action. This type of marketing is done using tracking pixels or cookies that follow the user around after they’ve left your website and show them targeted ads.

Retargeting ads are served to visitors through third party networks such as Google Display Network and Facebook etc., giving you the opportunity to reach out your potential customers on a multitude of websites.

For example, this is Pardot’s remarketing ad shown on Forbes, which attempts to persuade visitors who aren’t ready to sign-up yet, to download their ebook instead:

While retargeting involves reaching out to visitors via third party networks using display ads, remarketing refers to reaching out to visitors via email. So, to run your remarketing campaigns you need your visitors’ email addresses, which isn’t required for retargeting campaigns.

This is an example of a Fossil remarketing email, sent to a visitor who placed some items in a shopping cart, but then abandoned the website:

Most marketers, however, loop the two methodologies of remarketing and retargeting and simply refer to them as remarketing campaigns. The primary reason they do is because this is how Google defines remarketing:

Remarketing lets you show ads to people who've visited your website or used your mobile app. When people leave your website without buying anything, for example, remarketing helps you reconnect with them by showing relevant ads across their different devices.

The search engine giant groups retargeting display ads and email remarketing under a single terminology i.e. “remarketing”, which is why most marketers also do the same thing.

Remarketing campaigns have the power to improve brand recognition among potential visitors, recall them back to your post-click landing page, and convince them to perform the desired action.

The remaining chapters in this guide will focus on explaining how remarketing campaigns work in more depth, how to set up your own campaigns on various platforms, and why you should always connect your remarketing ads to relevant post-click landing pages. Finally, the guide concludes by discussing the success metrics to calculate for your remarketing campaigns.

Types of Remarketing Campaigns

Using targeted ads or emails, remarketing campaigns offer marketers the unique opportunity to reach out to visitors who have left their webpages without buying.

These remarketing messages can increase the likelihood that your visitors return to your post-click landing page and perform an action. This form of marketing helps you drive sales activity on your webpages, promote awareness for your brand among engaged audiences, and ultimately increase your ROI.

Remarketing campaigns can be categorized into five main types:

1. Standard Remarketing
2. Dynamic Remarketing
3. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads
4. Video Remarketing
5. Email Remarketing

Standard Remarketing

This type of remarketing involves showing display ads to past visitors (visitors who landed on your webpage and then exited) as they navigate their way through different websites that use the Google Display Network apps and social media websites such as Facebook. Standard remarketing also targets visitors who use search engines such as Google to search for terms that are related to the products or services that you offer.

For example, after searching Google for a heat map tool, we saw this remarketing display ad from Hotjar on Facebook:

The ad urges you to sign-up for a free trial with the help of a short video and ad copy.

Dynamic Remarketing

Dynamic remarketing involves serving visitors ads that are tailored specifically for them depending on how they have browsed a webpage. This type of remarketing includes ad messages that are created specifically for the visitor who’s viewing the ad, increasing their chances of coming back to your webpage for the retrieval of those abandoned items.

For example, ecommerce website dynamic remarketing ads can include the exact shopping item(s) that a visitor placed in their abandoned shopping cart, making them more likely to click the ad when they see that item again.

If a visitor spent some time on the pricing page and then exited your website, your dynamic remarketing ad should center around pricing, maybe remind them of a free trial offer or a discount.

You can also show remarketing ads to visitors who have browsed through your blog or other informational material and persuade them to download a guide or a join a webinar that relates to the information they’re interested in.

This is what Marketo does with their dynamic remarketing ad:

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs)

Remarketing lists for search ads is offered by Google AdWords that allows you to customize your search ad campaigns for visitors who have been on your webpage in the past. The search network lets you tailor your bids and ads to the visitors that have been on your website when they’re searching Google and other partner search sites.

You can use this type of remarketing ads for visitors who leave your website and then go on Google search to find similar solutions. There are two basic strategies to follow when it comes to RLSAs:

1. Set specific bids for your existing keywords for visitors on your remarketing lists. For example, you can increase your bid by 30% for users who have been on your website in the last 30 days. You can target visitors with specific ads who have either performed an action on your website (like visiting the pricing page or looking at the FAQ section) or put an item in their shopping cart.
2. Bid on keywords that you don’t normally bid on just for visitors who have been on your website, or have bought something from you in the past. For example, you can bid on more broad keywords just for the people who have previously visited your site, in order to cast a wider net to get them back to your brand.

To demonstrate, one of the best examples you’ll find is Tirendo, a European online tire retailer. The company used remarketing lists for search ads and saw a 161% conversion rate increase, leading to a 22% overall increase in sales.

Video Remarketing

Video remarketing involves showing those visitors remarketing ads that have recently seen your videos or to people who have been on your website.

You can display video remarketing ads on YouTube at the beginning or in-between videos your potential customers are viewing (where they’ll have the option to skip the ad). You can also display a remarketing ad on the right side margin where they find video suggestions.

For example, this is Grammarly’s video remarketing ad on YouTube shown at the beginning:

Email Remarketing

Email remarketing encapsulates two techniques:

• Serving remarketing display ads across different websites to users who open an email from you.

AdRoll, a retargeting agency, uses a Facebook newsfeed remarketing display ad to reach out to users who opened an email by the brand and clicked on the link but didn’t complete the purchase. The ad not only reminds the visitor about the visit to the AdRoll website, but also gives them an insight into how AdRoll can do retargeting for them:

• Reaching out to visitors who have left your website without completing a purchase with targeted follow-up emails that convince them to come back to your website.

Fab’s shopping cart reminder email is a perfect example of targeted personalized email remarketing, the email not only gives the visitor a written and visual reminder of the item they abandoned, but also provides a CTA for visitors who don’t want to go on the website and sift through other items to find what they wanted to buy:

And here is Chubbies email remarketing campaign. The email includes a CTA button that takes visitors directly to their shopping cart, letting them know that they have left a task incomplete:

Personalized remarketing emails can help businesses receive 10x more revenue than emails with generic content:

Regardless of the type of remarketing technique you use, it’s important to remember proper segmentation. That way you’re able to show visitors targeted, personalized email and ads which are more likely to convince them to revisit your brand and make a purchase.

The next chapter will discuss how you can gather data for your remarketing campaigns, what campaign goals you need to set, and how you should properly segment your remarketing audiences to increase the ROI of your campaigns.

How Do You Gather Data for Remarketing Campaigns?

To run your campaigns smoothly you need to gather data about who your remarketing audience is. And to do that, there are two primary ways to collect an audience list:

1. Pixel-Based Remarketing: This is the most common form of audience collection. It works with the help of a JavaScript code (a pixel) that gets placed on your website or post-click landing page. After the pixel is attached, every time a visitor comes to your website or post-click landing page, the pixel drops an anonymous browser cookie in the visitor’s browser. When the visitor exits your page and browses other websites, the pixel lets your provider (whether you’re using Google retargeting or a social network like Facebook) know that these visitors need to start seeing your ads.

Pixel-based remarketing guarantees that your ads get seen by people who’ve either looked through your website or clicked through to your post-click landing page. Another advantage with pixel-based remarketing is that it’s timely, visitors can immediately begin seeing ads that can convince them to back to your offer.

2. List-Based Remarketing: List-based remarketing involves using lists of your existing customers or visitors who have provided you with their email address, of which you can retarget specific ads to them. For example, maybe you want your blog subscribers to download an ebook whose pop-up ad they’ve been ignoring on your blog, or you want free trial users to upgrade to a paid plan. Both examples could be executed with list-based remarketing.

To get started with list-based remarketing, simply upload the list of email contacts you have into your remarketing platform, and your audience will start seeing your ads as they browse through web. You can also send your audience personalized emails that call them back to your brand.

Now that we’ve covered how remarketing works, let’s look into the goals you need to set for remarketing campaigns.

There are two basic goals for remarketing campaigns:

• Awareness: You can use awareness campaigns to retarget visitors about your product features and other announcements. This is a less targeted goal because it’s directed at visitors who haven’t interacted a lot with your business. You can run your awareness campaigns as a precursor for your conversion campaigns.
• Conversion: For conversion campaigns, you want visitors to recognize what your brand does. Beyond that, you want them to click on the ad, direct them to a post-click landing page, and convince them to convert on a form.

Whether the goal of your remarketing campaign is awareness or conversion, the ads and the pages used must be optimized since you want them to re-engage with your brand.

The key to creating optimized and personalized remarketing ads and post-click landing pages lies in proper audience segmentation.

Audience segmentation is the process of dividing an audience of potential customers into groups or segments, based on different characteristics such as demographics and interests. Segmentation helps you run your marketing campaigns smoothly because it enables you to create specific groups for audiences. Then, create laser targeted ads and post-click landing pages that have the power to convince these groups to convert.

For remarketing campaigns it’s best to segment your audience based on these three characteristics:

1. Remarketing segmentation by behaviour
2. Remarketing segmentation by time
3. Remarketing segmentation of existing customers

Remarketing Segmentation by Behavior

There are essentially two types of behaviors a visitor can showcase when they’re on your website:

1. Not Interested (these visitors spend less than a few seconds on your website, don’t navigate to any other page on your site, and immediately exit)
2. Interested (these visitors browse through the website content, maybe even look through to other pages — for example the blog, pricing page or the about us section).

The “Not Interested” segment have very low intent, so serving them remarketing ads will only add to your spend and not really favor your ROI. The “Interested” visitors, on the other hand, have high intent and a much higher probability of returning to your brand and actually buying something if they are served with the right ad messaging.

You can create further segments in the “Interested” audience segment and customize remarketing ads for people based on the exact behavior they demonstrated on your website.

You can use soft-sell remarketing ads (ads that ask visitors to opt-in to an email list in exchange for a free ebook or newsletter, etc.) for visitors who have read your blog, about us, or resources section. For those who have visited your product page and reviewed your pricing plan, you can move go for the hard-sell and show ads that convince them to come back and purchase your product.

Remarketing Segmentation by Time

This segmentation strategy refers to three things:

1. The time duration between a person’s visit to your website and when they see the first ad.
2. The frequency with which your visitors see particular ads.
3. The time duration between a person’s first visit to your website and the time when they stop seeing your remarketing ads.

For both Google AdWords and Facebook, the default time duration for when a visitor is added to your remarketing list and when they are bumped off the list is set to 30-days. Of course, the 30-day cycle is reset if they revisit the website within the first 30 days. You have the option to increase this limit depending on your campaign.

Be careful with any remarketing campaign, though. It doesn’t bode well for your brand if you show your ads too soon, especially with visitors who only spend a few seconds on your webpages.

Another thing to monitor is the frequency with which visitors see your ads. Showing the same ad more than once on a single website is not efficient because it comes across as spammy.

For example, in the image below, Hotjar shows two remarketing ads in very close proximity on Facebook:

Rotating personalized ads for the time duration you’ve set for your campaigns is the best approach you can take with your remarketing campaigns. This helps the audience explore new information about your brand and makes them more familiar with your messaging. Which can then persuade them to click through to your post-click landing page and convert on the call-to-action button.

Remarketing Segmentation of Existing Customers

Not to be left alone, this audience segment has the highest chance of clicking through to your post-click landing page and converting for your newest offer as they are already familiar with your brand and know your product well. In addition to display ads, personalized remarketing emails also work for this audience.

You can launch remarketing campaigns for existing customers when you release a new product feature; this works especially well for customers who aren’t very active on your platform. Any new feature update can convince them to become more active. Existing customers are also a great audience for remarketing campaigns to push upgrades to a higher pricing plan.

Properly segmenting your remarketing audience can be the deciding factor between the success and failure of your remarketing campaigns. Now that you know which audience segments work for your remarketing campaigns, it’s time to discuss how you can set up your remarketing campaigns on the three biggest advertising networks — Google AdWords, Facebook, and Bing Ads. Click through to chapter 4 for more details.

How Do You Set Up Remarketing Campaigns?

Three main platforms are available for remarketing campaigns: Google AdWords, Facebook, and Bing Ads. This chapter will provide an overview of how you can begin remarketing campaigns on each platform.

Remarketing with Google AdWords

When you run Google AdWords remarketing campaigns, your ads receive the most exposure across the internet. The Google Display Network Reach in the US is incredibly high, reaching over 92% of visitors across millions of websites, videos, and devices:

Follow these steps to successfully set up your remarketing campaign in Google AdWords:

1. Sign-in to your AdWords account.
2. Click the ‘Shared Library’ option.
3. Click ‘Audiences’.
4. Click ‘Set-up Remarketing’.
5. Click ‘View AdWords Tag for websites’.
6. Select and copy the provided remarketing tag code, the tag will work for both mobile and desktop websites.
7. Place the tag code at the bottom of the website pages you want to use for your campaign.
8. Save and publish your page.
9. You can check if your tag is working properly with the help of ‘Google Tag Assist’.
10. Click ‘Continue’
11. Click ‘Return to Audiences’

Within a few days your tag will start collecting the cookies of your website visitors, and the ‘All Visitors’ list in your account will begin to fill up.

When setting up your campaign, a few things you should take into consideration:

Creating Customized Lists

Google AdWords automatically creates a remarketing list for you, which consists of all visitors who arrive on your tagged pages. However, you have the option to create your own customized lists to deliver better targeted ads:

By adding rules for your customized lists you’re telling Google which visitors should be shown which specific ads. Doing this helps you create targeted ads, which have a higher click through rate. For example, you can create a separate list for people who visit your Resource Center or Support page, and show them ads that highlight your support team.

You should also set the membership duration to suit your individual campaigns. Membership duration refers to the period of time a visitor stays on your list, of which the default membership duration is 30 days. However, you have the option to prolong this duration to a maximum of 540 days.

Run Tests

To ensure the efficiency of your remarketing campaigns, it’s important you run the following tests:

• Ad Testing: Experiment with different ad messaging for the various audience lists you have created. Test ad copy and call to action button copy to see which combination produces the highest click-through rate.
• Custom Combination Testing: Try a different combination of membership duration with different audience lists, and see which audience responds well to each time duration.
• Frequency Cap Testing: Test the frequency with which you’re displaying your ads.
• Bid Testing: Monitor your bids for costs, impression share, and ROI and adjust accordingly.
• post-click landing page Testing: The messaging on the post-click landing page you connect with your remarketing ads is very important. Test your copy and design to see which combination brings in the most conversions.

When you run remarketing campaigns with Google AdWords you have the option to run the following types of campaigns:

• Standard Remarketing: Showing ads to past visitors as they visit Display Network websites and use Display Network applications.
• Dynamic Remarketing: The ads shown to visitors include specific products or services that they looked through on your website.
• Remarketing for Mobile Apps: Show ads to visitors who have either used your mobile app or mobile website.
• Remarketing Lists for Ads: Show ads to visitors as they do follow-up searches for what they need on Google.
• Video Remarketing: Show ads to visitors who have viewed your YouTube videos.
• Email List Remarketing: Upload a list of your customers’ email addresses, and when these visitors browse through different websites, they can see your display ads.

Google AdWords remarketing campaigns offer you the chance of reaching out to a vast number of visitors on multiple websites across the internet.

Remarketing with Facebook

To get started with your Facebook remarketing campaign you must have a Facebook account for Business ads. Once you’ve signed up for an account, you’ll find the option to select Audiences in the Facebook Ads Manager.

You should select the “Custom Audiences” option for remarketing as this allows you to reach out to visitors who have already been on your website with relevant ads.

From the list of Custom Audiences select the “Website Traffic” option — this lets you create a list of people who visit your website or view specific web pages:

Now you can select the audience you want to target your remarketing ads from the drop-down menu in the “Website Traffic” tab. You have the following audience options:

1. Anyone who visits your website
2. People who visit specific pages
3. People visiting specific pages but not others
4. People who haven’t visited in a certain amount of time
5. Custom combination

You can set a target date range for each audience option you select. 30 days is the default date range that you are given, however, you can increase the duration depending on the lifecycle of your remarketing offer.

After you’ve selected your audience options, Facebook gives you a pixel tracking code known as the Facebook Pixel that you place on your website in order to track visitors who come to your website:

Facebook remarketing campaigns offer the following advantages:

• Track Conversions: The Facebook Pixel lets you gather data on how people interact with other websites after viewing yours. You can track customer behavior across different devices, which helps you refine your ad strategy and run better, more informed campaigns.
• Serve Dynamic Ads: You can serve visitors ads that carry specific information about their website visit. Personalized ads have a higher click-through rate since they are created specifically for the visitor.
• Create Lookalike Audiences: You can run remarketing campaigns for Lookalike Audiences (people who have similar interests and demographics to visitors who have visited your website). This can help you expand your visitor base.
• Use Custom Conversions: Custom conversions use URL rules based on specific URLS or URL keywords. For example, instead of tracking a standard event, or all visits to a certain webpage, you can choose to track visitors for a specific section of a page. This helps you create further segments of your audience and create more targeted ads:

Running your remarketing campaigns on Facebook allow you to track conversions on your Facebook ads and optimize ads based on the data that you gather from your campaigns. Create a targeted audience for future ads based on the data that you’ve collected and remarket successfully to qualified and prospective leads.

The bonus point of using the Facebook Pixel for remarketing campaigns is that it can also be used to serve remarketing ads to your visitors on Instagram.

Remarketing with Bing Ads

You can reconnect with visitors who have left your website without performing an action by creating your remarketing campaigns on Bing Ads.

The network allows you to track visitors that visit your website with Universal Event Tracking (UET). All you need to do to start off your campaign is place the UET on the website pages you want to track. You can then create marketing lists of audiences who have performed certain actions on the website in order to segment them into lists.

The next step involves associating your remarketing lists to ad groups and optimizing and keywords on the search network. The ads you create for your remarketing campaign should be personalized for each audience segment, and they should be connected to relevant post-click landing pages.

Whether you choose to run remarketing campaigns on Google AdWords, Facebook, or Bing the ads you create for your campaigns must be optimized and they should always be connected to relevant post-click landing pages.

Click through to chapter 5 to learn how you can optimize your remarketing ads and post-click landing pages.

How to Optimize Remarketing Ads and Landing Pages

Everything we’ve discussed until now has mostly been focused on the behind-the-scenes stuff — things that your visitors don’t really care about.

Which platform you choose to run remarketing campaigns holds no importance for your audience; they are not bothered by your frequency cap or the number of segmented lists you have created. What they see in front of them are ads and corresponding post-click landing pages. These are things they care about.

It won’t matter if you run all six types of Google AdWords remarketing campaigns, if you haven’t created optimized ads and connected them to relevant post-click landing pages, each campaign will have a tough time delivering positive results.

How to Create Optimized Remarketing Ads

Remarketing campaigns essentially consist of display ads that use images, video, and rich media types to engage audiences.

To create effective display ads, make sure that the image and copy are relevant to the product feature or offer you’re trying to catch the visitor’s attention with. Creating different display ads for each remarketing audience segment will help you craft laser-targeted ads that appeal to the visitor you’re trying to target.

Visitors click ads because they’re looking for a solution to a problem and it’s your ad’s job to make it clear that your offer is worth investigating. To achieve this, you should think like your customer and craft ad copy that includes phrases that your audience are likely to pay attention to.

Another thing to review in display ads is branding. Make sure that your branding is on point so when people click through to the post-click landing page they know they’re in the right place.

The anatomy of an optimized remarketing ad consists of:

• An engaging headline The ad headline should be relevant to the visitors’ experience on your website and it should be crafted in a way that they pay attention to it.
• Relevant, visually appealing media: Whether you choose to include an animation or a static image on your display ad it should be relevant to the offer presented in your ad copy.
• A click-worthy CTA button: For your ad CTA button to get clicks it should be designed in a contrasting color and have actionable, personalized copy.
• Actionable Copy: Display ads have limited characters to explain your offer so be careful not to write too much. Ad copy that gets to the point immediately and offers visitors an incentive to click will likely produce higher click-throughs.

Freshdesk’s remarketing display ad checks all the optimization boxes:

• The headline immediately lets the visitor know what the service has to offer.
• The image conveys that Freshdesk’s customer support is linked to multiple platforms including email, phone, Facebook, Twitter, and live chat.
• The CTA button stands out from the other ad elements and gives visitors an incentive to click with the copy “Free 30-DAY TRIAL.”

Alliant’s remarketing ad on the other hand is not optimized for visitors:

• The headline is very vague, doesn’t tell anything about the service or what the visitor will get if they click the ad.
• No compelling imagery to convey the benefits of Alliant’s services.
• The CTA button is contrasting, however, the copy is not actionable, “Learn More” — about what, though? The ad doesn’t specify anything.

Another thing that’s absolutely vital is connecting each ad to a dedicated post-click landing page instead of your homepage.

Why You Should Connect All Remarketing Ads to post-click landing pages

post-click landing pages are dedicated standalone pages that promote a single offer without any distractions. All your remarketing ads should be connected to post-click landing pages instead of your homepage because post-click landing pages are more focused and inherently have a better conversion ratio than a homepage.

A homepage, on the other hand, is not dedicated to promote one offer (your remarketing offer in this case), and when visitors click through to it after looking for that offer they can easily get lost. When they don’t see what they expected to find on the page, they’ll simply leave again.

Let’s demonstrate this concept with two examples to evaluate the experience from both sides. One ad will take you to a post-click landing page while the other will take you to a homepage.

This is Pond5’s remarketing display ad:

The ad copy talks about captivating your audience with HD videos and clips. This is the homepage you’re directed to when you click the ad:

• The page headline doesn’t really talk about captivating audiences. Sure, it talks about videos but it doesn’t match the ad headline.
• The background video is a little distracting and makes it hard for the visitor to understand what’s written on the page.
• The page has too many links that navigate visitors away from the page, and distract them from joining the service.

Now, let’s look at Aha!’s display ad:

• The headline talks about roadmaps.
• The image depicts a product roadmap.
• The CTA button offers a free trial

Once clicked, this is the post-click landing page visitors are directed to:

• The page headline talks about creating roadmaps, which is what the ad copy promised- this leads to message match that assures the visitor they’ve arrived on the right page.
• The gif on the page showcases the service’s dashboard and how you can start creating your roadmaps from templates.
• The form fields are arranged properly making it easy to fill out.
• Below the page fold benefits of the service are mentioned in readable paragraphs.
• Customer badges improve Aha!’s credibility.
• No external navigation links that disrupt the conversion ratio and distract the visitor from completing the conversion goal.

Remarketing ads are created for segmented audiences; not everyone is interested in every single product feature you offer. So why would you risk directing your visitors to your homepage that talks about your entire brand and company and doesn’t promote anything specifically.

Dedicated post-click landing pages give you the unique opportunity to attract audiences with the same message that convinced them to click the ad. This helps them see what they wanted without any distractions and increases the possibility of them converting through the CTA button.

An optimized remarketing post-click landing page should have the following elements:

• The headline must be clear, convincing, empathetic and have a clear connection with your ad.
• All page media should be relevant and eye catching.
• The CTA button must be designed in a contrasting color and be specific to the offer.
• The form should have labeled fields and shouldn’t ask for unnecessary information.
• Trust indicators (testimonials, customer badges and statistical evidence) should be present on the page.
• The page should not include off-page navigation links.
• The copy must mention your UVP, and reinforce any claim that your ad makes.

Another important aspect of post-click landing page optimization is A/B testing.

A/B testing is a method of gathering insight to aid in optimization. It involves testing an original design (A) against an alternate version of that design (B) to see which performs better. That original design is also known as “the control” and the alternate version is known as a “variation.”

By performing A/B tests and collecting data on your post-click landing page, you can gauge which combination of page elements results in the most conversions.

Remarketing gives you another chance of reaching out to your potential audience. Don’t waste it by directing visitors to a page that’s not designed for conversions — like a cluttered homepage. Create optimized remarketing ads and connect them to laser-focused post-click landing pages to get the best out of your remarketing campaigns.

Proceed to chapter 6 to learn how to measure the success of your remarketing campaigns.

How to Measure Success in Remarketing

Remarketing helps marketers reach out to visitors who have navigated away from their website without converting. The ads and post-click landing pages created for these campaigns help you call back lost visitors and move them further down your conversion funnel:

Whether or not you have been able to convert lost visitors into leads or customers depends on the following metrics that help measure the success of your remarketing campaigns.

Lead Conversion (CPL)

Lead conversions are the number of leads that are directly attributed to remarketing ads. The leads are in the form of conversions on your remarketing post-click landing pages.
A high CPL indicates that your ads were successful at attracting visitors and your post-click landing page messaging convinced visitors to convert on your offer.

Nurture Touches

Nurture touches refer to the engagement from your existing contacts with your remarketing display ad campaigns with reference to late-stage or mid-stage ads and offers.

This metric helps you identify which lead is actually ready to click the CTA button and buy your product. Nurture touches help identify untapped leads that are ready to make a sale from your existing audience pool.

View Through Conversions

A view through conversion is a conversion that occurs when a prospect views your remarketing display ad, but doesn’t click, and returns to your website or clicks to your post-click landing page on their own.

View through conversions can be measured with the tracking pixel placed on your post-click landing page. This metric is important because it helps you complete the conversion funnel puzzle and allows you to figure out all the possible routes your marketing funnel can take to get a conversion.

Page Visits

Page visits measures the number of visitors that arrived at your remarketing post-click landing page from your ad. You can also measure page visits for your website in connection to remarketing campaigns because visitors may return to your website because of brand awareness, and not necessarily by clicking your display ad.

Email Opens

Reaching out to prospective customers through email is a powerful form of remarketing. Measuring email open rates gives you the opportunity to collect data that helps you write better email subject lines in the future.

Personalized nurture emails can increase user engagement. This metric gives you the opportunity to measure if the remarketing emails you’re currently sending out are working or failing to impress your audience.

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

Marketing qualified leads are leads who have been qualified by the marketing team as more likely to become customers in comparison to other leads. The MQL values are derived from lead scoring, audience behaviour, specific
prospect activities, and firmographics.

Now it’s your turn to create remarketing campaigns

Remarketing campaigns help you reach out to the 98% of visitors who leave your website without converting. When you create segmented audience lists and combine those with remarketing ads and post-click landing pages specifically for these lists, you not only increase the probability of customer conversion but also generate brand awareness.

Testing your remarketing display ads and post-click landing pages allows you to create campaigns that engage audiences and persuade them to convert.

Start creating professional and 100% customizable remarketing post-click landing pages today with Instapage. Sign up for your 14-day trial here.