Are You Embracing Second Chance Marketing?

Right now, “retargeting” is a hot topic in online acquisition circles. And we’ve seen very good results with our clients in this area. We’ve also toyed with “abandonment popups” and other methods to reach consumers who have been to our clients’ websites. And email has been used for a very long time to nurture prospects and convert them to buyers

All of these fall into a category we call “Second Chance Marketing” (SCM). SCM didn’t really exist before the Internet: when you run a print ad, air a TV commercial or drop a postal mailing, either consumers responded or not.

Online, it’s completely different. You have a wide range of tactics, technologies and apps to get a “second chance” at consumers who visited your site but didn’t buy. We think second chance marketing is so important that medium and large companies might consider a full-time person handling SCM. Here’s why.

You spend a lot of money to acquire customers, regardless of which media you use. While you may get a lot of site traffic from these efforts, only a small percentage typically convert to paying customers. Since you’ve already spent the dollars (in many cases top dollar) to get consumers to come to your site, pursuing them is important because they have expressed an interest in your product or service. They have become familiar with your brand and products/services. You need to capitalize on that.

By virtue of various technologies, you have the tools to remarket to the non-converters and pick up more sales. If you take the time to figure out how to woo non-buyers, it will probably make your customer acquisition programs even more profitable!

Our definition of SCM is any process, technology, app or method by which you send marketing messages to consumers who came to your site. With the use of Yahoo’s Search Retargeting Platform, you can now send marketing messages to consumers who searched on terms related to your ad but never clicked on your ad.

The objective is two-fold, to convert non-buyers to buyers, and generate more dollars from buyers. You’ll see what we mean as we present specific SCM tactics, some of which we now use for our clients and the rest we’re planning to test.

SCM TACTIC #1: RETARGETING

Retargeting is a technology process, using cookies, that enables you to show banner ads based on pages visited on your site. You first keep track of what pages visitors to your site accessed, after responding to some outside stimuli. You then place “tags” (markers) on specific pages that basically instruct your web platform to display a specific banner ad based on the pages a specific consumer visited. You can also mirror this process on sites other than your own through third party retargeting platforms.

Let’s say you’re selling a flat-screen TV. You have your IT people set up your system to display a special flat-screen TV offer to all consumers who have previously visited any page that shows flat-screen TVs, but did not buy.

Retargeting Success Story

 

For our client Shark and its’ Navigator vacuum cleaner, we launched a remarketing program in February, 2011, and saw a 20% increases in conversions rates, year-over-year. For another product, the Ninja Master Food Prep, our retargeting efforts saw a 6% YOY lift. Now these numbers may not sound like a lot, but in this day and age, every sale counts, especially if you’re in a business with a strong back-end.

Examples of Retargeting

• Retargeting based on purchases made
  • Offer for future discount, especially for staples (office supplies, flea meds for pets) and services (subscriptions, phone plans)
  • Offer for additional product discount – consumer purchased a burgundy sweater – offer discount for sweater in same pattern but in a different color
• Retargeting based on pages visited
  • Purchase made on some products but not all
    • Offer for discount on product not purchased: “I see you looked at the sandals but didn’t buy them….here’s a special offer because you did buy the cargo shorts.”
  • No purchase made
    • Offer based on product pages visited
• Upsell and cross-sell retargeting
  • Offer based on product purchased but upsell not taken
  • Offer based on product purchased but cross-sell not taken
  • New upsell offer based on product purchased
  • New cross-sell offer based on product purchased

SCM TACTIC #2: ABANDONMENT POPUPS

A simple technology allows you to display pop-up windows when consumers leave your site. These small web pages can vary based on the particular page that the consumer left.

Examples of Abandonment Popups

• Offers
  • Abandoned shopping cart – offer based on items in cart
  • Visited 5 pages and then left – offer based on product pages visited
  • Clicked on a specific product information page but didn’t buy
• Surveys
  • Visited landing page but no others -- find out why they didn’t visit other pages (perhaps this leads to a change in navigation or design)
• Leads
  • Ask for email to send consumers future offers when they have not purchased

SCM TACTIC #3: UPSELL AND CROSS-SELL EMAILS

While email has been a workhorse for acquisition and retention, it can also be used successfully for SCM, especially for buyers where you have captured their email addresses.

• Offers
  • Offer based on product purchased but upsell not taken
  • Offer based on product purchased but cross-sell not taken
  • New upsell offer based on product purchased
  • New cross-sell offer based on product purchased
• Surveys
  • Overall satisfaction with company, product or service
  • Satisfaction with specific transaction
• Testimonial Requests
• Refer a Friend Requests

SCM ROI

Finally, let’s look at how SCM drops dollars to the bottom line. Most marketers will judge their campaigns based on the initial surge of orders, allocating expenses and revenues accordingly. Any SCM orders might be looked at as pure profit, since there is no acquisition costs associated with SCM tactics, and the cost to employ SCM in most cases is minimal. So SCM orders represent high profit, low expense sales.

CONCLUSION

Retargeting, abandonment pops and emails are all proven tactics to generate additional business. The goal is to create a Second Chance Marketing program that uses all of these in a tasteful and appropriate manner, leading to more sales, revenues and profits.

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