First impressions are important, but in e-commerce keeping your customers coming back for more will bring you the real conversions.

Very few online shoppers convert during their first visit to a new website. In fact, recent statistics suggest that only 0.59% of first-time visitors place an order. The rest are getting to know the brand, browsing product pages, comparing prices and so on. Conversion rates increase once users return for second and third sessions, but there’s no guarantee that will happen. Unless you do something about it!

Retargeting tools let marketers follow visitors throughout the web and deliver ads that can recapture their attention and drive sales. It’s a cost-effective strategy, but only when optimized using customer data.

One size fits all campaigns fail to capitalize on behavioral information that visitors provide in the form of page visits, cart activity, session duration and more. Marketers who take advantage of the power of automation are able to create campaign flows that take prospects through the funnel with minimal friction.

Don’t rush it!

No matter the value, every sale moves at its own pace. Some take longer than others, but they all start with awareness, move on to qualification, and end with a conversion. Trying to skip steps will ultimately result in fewer conversions and wasted ad money.

Savvy marketers invest time and resources into building a campaign that advance prospects from one stage to the next only once they’ve demonstrated behavior that suggests they’re ready to move on.

General interest blog posts and other value-driven content pieces are appropriate ways to introduce new audiences to a brand. Only once you segment users who have derived value from their brand’s associated properties can retargeting begin. From there, it’s all about helping prospects learn more about the products their shown interest in.

Don’t forget about…!

Product page visits are highly indicative of conversion potential. That’s where the most detailed information is available, suggesting that the customer has moved well beyond the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey and into the final phase of qualification. Some of the most effective retargeting campaigns are those that simply remind the prospect of their interests and entice them to buy.

Thankfully, Google and Facebook have built functionality into their advertising platforms that allow marketers to automate product-specific retargeting efforts. With messages tailored to your audience, dynamic ads help you build leads and sales by bringing previous visitors back to your site to complete what they started.

Give them what they want!

Customer expectations have changed significantly over the last few years. Standards of personalization and value have increased. In response, successful marketers have learned to listen more attentively and build nuanced retargeting campaigns that consider unique customer variables without getting creepy. It’s a willingness to rise to this level of accommodation that will determine the digital marketing victors of years to come.

Effective retargeting campaigns maximize the efficiency by seeking out and eliminating waste. For example, it would be reasonable to assume that prospects who have only visited a site’s “Careers” page are more interested in getting hired than buying anything.

Rather than having a catch-all campaign that targets all site visitors, savvy marketers use functionality available in most major retargeting platforms to filter out these users. As a result, overall campaign performance metrics like return on ad spend increase.