72% of online shoppers abandon their shopping cart on average without completing a purchase. Without retargeting, only 8% of them will come back to buy(Source: wishpond). However, with retargeting, the average site can bring back 26% of abandonments to complete a purchase. According to Wishpond, 70% of web visitors retargeted with display ads are more likely to convert on your site. And the average CTR of retargeted ads is 10 times that of standard display ads.
It goes without saying that not retargeting your visitors is costing you conversions and sales. You can target your visitors with general offers, coupons, single and multi-product ads, etc. If you don't, chances are you're leaving a lot of money on the table. Facebook ad campaigns targeting a warm audience almost always have the highest ROI and don't require huge ad spend.
Why you Need Facebook Remarketing Strategies For Your eCommerce Store
Conversion rates between ad click and website purchase are often around 1-2%, which means 98-99% of people who visit your website after clicking an ad do not buy from that initial click. Why is it? Some reasons include:
- 94% of Facebook ad revenue comes from mobile devices. People surf Facebook while traveling or taking a break from work and don't always have time to complete the purchase, and it's harder to shop on a small screen.
- Even if the prospect wants to come back later and complete the purchase, Average number of 100 emails a day & countless Facebook posts makes them quickly forget your brand before they even manage to visit your website again.
- Even if someone has watched a long video and read the long text that came with it, a single piece of ad design cannot cover all the stages of the awareness, interest, consideration, intent funnel, evaluation and purchase in one go.
Understand How Pixel Events Work On Ecommerce Sites
First, we first need to consider the audiences we're going to display them to. For a standard ecommerce website, there are 5 pixel events on Facebook that tracks customer journey and are used to build custom audiences:
- Page View: This is the default pixel fire on every page of the website, we can create a Custom General Audience (WCA) from this.
- Show content: this event is triggered when a visitor lands on a product page.
- Add to cart: as you can imagine, this is activated when a product is added to the cart.
- Launch the order: when our potential customer has finished adding items to their cart, they go to the payment page which triggers the order launch event.
- Purchase: the last step in the buying process when the purchase is complete
1. Building Custom Website Audiences from Pixel Events
In the Audiences section of Facebook Business Manager, you are presented with a menu of options for creating a custom audience. If you select "website" as the option for the source, you can then choose a pixel event to use and also specify the time window, such as a 60-day purchase audience. Pixel audiences update dynamically and are free to create, so go ahead and create a range of different event audiences and time windows.
2. Audiences for engagement and video view
What if the prospect interacts with our ad and likes what they see, but for some reason don't click and visit the website? After all, this is common if we consider the classic sales funnel where a top-of-the-funnel ad is designed to generate awareness, with consideration and rating left for future interactions through remarketing. This is where three powerful sources of personalized audiences can be used:
Video Views:
Specify the videos, the amount of video watched, and a time window.
Facebook Page Engagers:
Select a Facebook page, type of interaction, and time window.
Instagram Page Engagers:
It Works The Same As Facebook Page Engagers
To sum up, we can retarget people every step of the way, from viewing a video to engaging with the ad, then visiting the website, then a specific product, and then adding the product to their cart, by starting the payment process and finally finalizing their purchase.
3. Dynamic Product Ads
Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) on Facebook allow you to retarget users by showing highly relevant ads that feature products that a buyer was browsing or adding to the cart. This advanced retargeting strategy is very effective in getting shoppers back to their cart or checkout to complete their purchase. So when a shopper visits your site, views products, or even adds some to the cart without purchasing, the next time they are on Facebook or Instagram, they will see personalized ads featuring those exact products.
In our example, around 68% of the conversions happened on the first day. However, you can also see that around 32% of conversions took more than a day. And more than 15% of sales happened between 12-30 days. So, without retargeting, this online store would likely miss out on around 30% of its sales. Facebook DPAs directly pull product images, titles, prices, and descriptions directly from your e-commerce store to create a carousel of products a shopper might be interested in. To run DPA on Facebook and Instagram you need to select the Catalog Sales objective during the campaign creation.
4. Shopping funnel retargeting
Shopping funnel retargeting means you divide campaigns based on shopping behaviour that indicates where users are in the customer journey. It is one of the most powerful Facebook retargeting strategies to segment Audiences based on the funnel stage. Based on shoppers’ interaction with your site, different offers will be presented to encourage them to finalize the purchase. For example, you can divide your retargeting campaigns into three segments:
- All visitors
- Visitors who added to cart
- Shoppers that initiate checkout
The idea is to retarget users with offers based on their buying intent.
Campaign #1
- Audience – All visitors
- Time window – 7 Days
- Offer – Free Shipping
Campaign #2
- Audience – Visitors who added to cart
- Time window – 14 Days
- Offer – $10 or 10% off
Campaign #1
- Audience –Shoppers that initiate checkout
- Time window – 28 Days
- Offer – $20 or 20% discount
Prospects may have lower purchase intent. You can't really tell if they're genuinely interested in buying. That's why you'll want to set a shorter retargeting window and only show ads 7 days after the visit. Target with a smaller incentive like free shipping.
Users who added a product to the cart expressed a strong intention to purchase. These are warm audiences. Because of this, they'll be more receptive to your retargeting, and you'll be able to run ads for longer. We recommend 14 days for users to add to cart. You'll want to raise the stakes as well. You can start with a $10 coupon or a 10% discount.
Those who have started the checkout process are closest to the purchase. These are very hot audiences that you need to get back into the buying mood. As a general rule, the longer a person is in the funnel, the longer you can retarget them. In the case of those who initiated the payment, you can go up to 28 days. This is where you need to present your strongest offer. This can be a $20 coupon or a 20% discount, depending on what attracts your buyers
5. Inspect your Google Analytics Time Lag report
If you are unsure whether retargeting is necessary for your online store, simply go to your Google Analytics account. Go to the Multi Channel Funnels - Time Lag report in the Conversion section in GA. The Time Lag report shows you the number of days between the first user interaction and the conversion. From there, you can observe how long (in terms of days) it takes for each sale from the day of the initial visit.
In our example, about 79.54% of the conversions took place on day one. However, you can also find that around 21% of conversions took longer than a day. And more than 5% of sales occurred between 12 and 30 days. So without retargeting, that online store would likely miss out on around 21% of its sales.
6. Thematic seasonal retargeting
Seasonal retargeting uses themed promotions that match the holidays and seasons to bring shoppers back to your ecommerce site and into the shopping mood. This is when you can use seasonal retargeting on Facebook and Instagram. Create promotions around holidays such as Canada Day, International Dog Day, Easter, Christmas, Black Friday, etc. You can also create themed promotions around seasonal events, such as spring sales, winter sales, etc.
7. Retargeting based on engagement
Retargeting users based on social media engagement is another powerful way to guide prospects to a sale. You can dynamically retarget audiences based on the following engagement types:
- Product titles optimization
- Facebook Page
- Instagram Business profile
- Video views
- Advertising engagement
- >Messages to your Page etc.
Since their intent is much weaker than products visitors or cart abandoners, use a shorter window of time for engaged audiences. Social media engagement as well as interactions on your e-commerce site involve the buyer being at the top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), or bottom of the funnel ( BOFU). Based on this, you can map the time windows and offers for each audience. Map the time windows and offers for the following levels:
- Social media engagers (TOFU)
- Website visitors (TOFU)
- Viewed product page (MOFU)
- Added to cart (BOFU)
- Initiated checkout (BOFU)
8. Retargeting based on Facebook/Instagram Shops
The latest advanced retargeting strategy is to re-engage users who have interacted with your Facebook or Instagram store. This is a relatively new feature that can help you increase your retargeting pool and provide more options to bring buyers deeper into your sales funnel. To execute this retargeting strategy, you need to create a custom audience by selecting the Shopping option in Facebook Ads Manager. From there, you can create a user-based retargeting audience who:
- People who viewed products
- People who viewed products and navigated to website
- People who saved products
- People who viewed Shops page
- People who viewed Shops collection
- People who added any products to their cart
- People who initiated checkout for any products
- People who purchased any products
Final Thoughts:
Retargeting on Facebook is one of the most essential e-commerce sales strategies that can increase your ROI. Most buyers are hesitant to buy after just one visit. So we need to create a system that automatically encourages them to come back and shop. However, keep in mind that adding all of your website visitors to a single retargeting pool will result in low returns, wasted advertising budget and poor performance.
You need sophisticated remarketing audiences that can generate consistent sales and income for your online store. Always keep in consideration, the audience you include and exclude, their membership length, and the offers and incentives you use to get them to buy. Map your entire remarketing campaign strategy thoroughly. However, if you need professional help setting up, managing, and optimizing your Facebook remarketing campaigns, Contact us. We maximize the value you get from your advertising campaigns and further extend that success.
