What is remarketing?

Remarketing is a marketing strategy that enables you to reconnect with lapsed users who have previously interacted with your site, app, or social media account. It involves targeting these users through direct contact channels (e.g. email, push notification, SMS) to encourage them to return to your brand. Remarketing messaging is personalized; its aim is to nurture leads, encourage repeat purchases, or re-engage inactive customers.

Note that when it comes to targeting inactive users, the terms “retargeting” and “re-engagement” also come up. These three Rs cannot be used interchangeably—while along the same lines, there are nuances that make each term unique. Re-engagement refers to all methods of re-engaging and converting lapsed users.  Within re-engagement, retargeting covers the use of paid ads to target these users, while remarketing refers to targeting them via direct contact channels. Remarketing often refers to reconnecting with users via email, but other channels such as push notification and SMS are used as well.

Existing users are often the most valuable  app users. With studies showing that user retention drops significantly as early as three days after app install, a pool of lapsed users prime for remarketing could be sizable.

It’s a symptom of today’s digital environment that apps can swiftly grab and lose the attention of a mobile user, for many reasons such as sheer volume of apps downloaded and the competition this creates. So why not reinvigorate dormant users with specific creative or promotions to drive conversions? Remarketing campaigns allow you to hone in on defined user sets and provide them with a highly customized marketing experience, and possibly an incentive, such as a discount code.

Remarketing encourages brand awareness and loyalty, both of which can pay big dividends in the long run.

First, you need to use segmentation to create a group of users to target. Segments are created based on shared user characteristics, which in this case could include a certain amount of time lapsing since use of your app, previous purchase total, etc. The filters you use to create your segments will differ based on the remarketing campaigns you have planned. For example, if you intend to target users by email, you must have access to email addresses for the segment of users you’re targeting. These could have been gathered through app sign-ups or log-ins. Email can be an extremely powerful marketing channel because of the space you have to fully brand and personalize your messaging. Less easily dismissed than in-app marketing, email gives you a chance to really capture the attention of your app’s lapsed users.

Once you have finalized your personalized messaging and the content and creative of your email, your remarketing campaign can begin. Tracking campaign metrics such as email open rate and click-through rate is crucial, so you can understand how successful your outreach has been and hone future marketing efforts.

Remarketing, and email marketing in general, can offer a very impressive return on investment (ROI), with some studies suggesting that email drives an ROI of $36 for every dollar spent. Through every stage of your remarketing campaign, from audience segmentation to campaign measurement, Adjust’s suite of tools empowers you to optimize your strategy and accurately measure your campaigns’ success.

Learn more about email marketing for mobile apps, or request a demo to discover Adjust’s powerful remarketing campaign setup and measurement.