Retargeting Clickers: My Favorite Way to Build Highly Engaged Audiences

At a recent job, I had 2 major ways that I would build highly engaged audiences:

1. I sent our promo email to our engaged list (recent purchasers or open & click) activity. This list was > 500K, but had decent performance as far as big lists like this go.

2. I targeted customers who had clicked on a specific category, brand (or really anything that I could parse out of a URL). These lists were anywhere from 10-100K and so effective – much more so than sending to our full engaged list.

   
   

Some platforms I used have a marketer-friendly interface for this where you can just click on past messages you have sent to create a list.

However, I like to query the clickview table and say something like SELECT %interest% from [ClickView] because then you can really pull anything from your URL that you want to target.

Since the customer has shown intent already on this specific topic, they are likely to engage again assuming the content is highly relevant.

To show effectiveness, I measured against our broader engaged audience, keeping in mind that that audience is much larger. I was surprised that the smaller audiences would still generate more revenue.

Why Retarget Clickers?

They have shown intent — capitalize on it! This is a wonderful way to make your content as relevant as possible and not exhaust your bigger list. I liked to use it for coupon reminders where I would send the initial out to a bigger list & then send reminders out to smaller lists & of course tie in creative to match their interests.

Clicks = more interest than opens, especially as measuring opens has changed with Apple. Your customers have clicked on content that they were interested in & now you have the chance to refine it even more!

This strategy works well across email and SMS. I used it the most with SMS due to how invasive customers may feel too many SMS messages may be and it also tends to be more costly to send SMS messages.

How to Build Retargeting Segments

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have a table that contains all your click information. It likely will have the full URL, plus a column for who has clicked so you can tie back to the customer.

Another thing that is important to note is you need to be planful about how your links are set up. URLs are usually quite descriptive for SEO purposes, so it is likely your URL structure will be set up well. You want to be able to pull any word that you want to target based on the URL content.

As mentioned in the intro your SQL would be something like SELECT %interest% from [ClickView] where (refine by date if that is a column you have available). You’ll get the most engaged if you target around 30 days, but I have noticed if I go smaller than that especially with SMS, audiences can be very small.

Audiences will also be smaller for SMS, so you may have to take a bigger timeframe than you would for email. However, since SMS is a more responsive channel, this way of targeting is usually highly effective in SMS.

If possible, make sure to classify your links with UTMs or link names to set this type of targeting apart from your other audiences to effectively measure performance.

Messaging & Campaign Ideas

Here are some messages that have worked well for clicker segments:

• Reminder + urgency (coupons, your largest offers)

• New: benefits, products, or offers

• Product-focused nudges – especially when there is a special deal on a brand and/or item for which customers have an affinity

I always try to alternate reminders between email & SMS (at least send at various times, but you can follow up on both) to ensure that I am communicating in the most relevant channel to our customers.

Measuring Success

The Key KPIs that I use to measure are CTR, conversion rate, and Revenue Per Email (RPE). I find RPE the best measurement to show how effective sending to a highly targeted audience is as it will blow your other list away! CTR and conversion rates should be extremely strong as well, so those are also important to look at.

I also compare the performance of this list against my engaged list, or a broader segment just to show how effective sending to such a small, targeted audience can be. As I mentioned earlier, much of the time, this type of audience outperforms my bigger engaged audience and it’s such a small number compared to my bigger engaged list.

How to interpret success: Are your clickers moving further down the funnel? That is a good thing to keep in mind, especially as you are winning over stakeholders as you move on to a new strategy.

Retarget Today!

This is a great strategy as your customers have shown intent, and you can really make your content relevant to this targeted audience. You also won’t exhaust your bigger engaged audience if you use these audiences as reminders or for more targeted content.

I would encourage you to test this in your own campaigns. A great place to start would be to use it as a reminder for a big sale or customer coupon. Have fun retargeting!