Email remarketing

Email remarketing refers to the email systems used by merchants to follow up with website visitors who
do not make a desired purchase action.[1] It is a development of email marketing that aims to re-attract
website viewers or customers. In other words, the whole idea of email remarketing is attracting customers or
users back for purchase, growing repeated customers.[2]

Types of email remarketing

Email remarketing can be done through various kinds of emails, such as:

Browse abandonment emails

Browse abandonment emails reconnect merchants with website visitors who quit the site without purchase
action, giving chances to turn window shoppers into actual buyers. Browse abandonment is on the upper
side of the purchase funnel,[3] and the next abandonment which stop customers accessing to check-out is
cart abandonment. Instead of contacting everyone, marketers are more likely to send email to the people
who have shown obvious interest on the products. For example, they are the ones who browse key pages of
the website or who begin a process such as registering an account or downloading a white paper but then
stop the action, without purchase any products or services.[4]

Usually, browse abandonment emails are edited based on the receivers' browse and search history. In this
case, the emails would be personalized, more targeted on individuals, compared to marketing emails.
Browse recovery emails could make approximately 36.63% revenue and rise 2.79% sales effectively.[5]

Cart abandonment emails

As mentioned, cart abandonment is the second prevention. Cart abandonment emails are worked as a
reminder of what items the receivers have abandoned.[6] They are sent to customers who have added
products to their shopping cart but failed to check-out. In order to prevent shopping cart abandonment,
marketers would send remarketing email to customers.[7]

According to the research by Experian Marketing Services (https://www.experian.com/marketing-services/),

simply sending an abandoned cart reminder increases purchase rate by 1.53% and open rates by 41%.[8]
Compared to the promotion and advertising emails, uncompleted order reminder increases purchase rate at
19 times higher.

Some people are worried that sending cart abandonment emails will annoy people, and while that make be
the case, research shows that 69% of people found the 'reminders' to be helpful in some way.[9]
Traditional cart abandonment emails require the advertiser to have contact information already in place to
send the email. This requires that website visitors that abandon their carts must have previously subscribed,
purchased, or otherwise provided their contact information. Newer technologies allow marketers to first
identify anonymous website visitors using a cookie-based identification system,[10] and then to follow-up
with those visitors directly via email to convert them.

Retargeting anonymous website bounces

When individuals visit a website without converting there are tools available to identify anonymous website
visitors, match them with their email address and follow-up directly to convert. Similar to cart abandonment,
this type of email remarketing is done prior to the cart - with follow-up sent even if the visitor hasn't
provided their contact information.

Post-purchase emails
After completing orders, merchants would send a review emails to consumers. Some of those emails are
telling them what they have bought before, some are post-purchase survey, etc. Before consumers make
purchase decisions, they are heavily rely on the customer reviews about the products. Here is an example.
Sephora, a leading beauty retailer, thanks the customer for their recent purchase while simultaneously
asking them to review their new products. Within the email they also give the shopper an additional reason
to engage by promoting other content resources including Sephora TV and beauty news. This review
campaign appears to be extremely successful. In addition, in the first quarter of 2015, the read rate for these
campaigns was 58% higher than their average read rate and the deleted unread percentage was 44%
lower.[11] To sum up, post-purchase emails could not only help the companies to strength the brand identity,
re-engage the existed customers, but also help attract new customers with advertisements and promotion.

Order follow ups, rewards or loyalty programs, inactive customer follow ups, and so forth...

Comparison to email marketing

Email marketing is more similar to newsletter which is broad and impersonal, like sending a direct email
to existing customers or potential customers. On this stage, marketers may have little information about the
receivers. The purpose of Marketing email is solely to deliver promotional messages. Companies usually
collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses to send direct promotional messages.

On the other hand, remarking emails should be much more personalized. As vendors probably have
collected information about the customers on the first stage that the customers exposed, they are taking the
information they already have and using them to send relevant emails. For instance, when a customer
bought an item at his first visit, vendors would probably ask him to complete a form about his contact
information. Afterwards, marketers would use those contact details to do their remarking campaigns.
"Remarketing is so powerful because it allows marketers the opportunity to continue the conversation, that
otherwise may have only been a 30-second decision on the part of the consumer," said Jason Hobbs,
founder and president of digital marketing company The Found Group.[12] Furthermore, Forrester Research
found that remarketing emails can generate nearly four times more revenue and 18 times greater net profits
compared with marketing using simply untargeted mailings.[13]
Email marketing gives vendors a chance to promote their products at the beginning, but email remarking
allows the company to continue the business but targeted at less customers. In conclusion, email marketing
covers wider area of customer group, while email remarking methods are more targeted and
effective.

How email remarketing works

Benefits
The principle of advertisement[14] is basically to give a persuasive argument for a product then put it in
front of the public. With the development of technology, it makes advertising much easier. The word 'easier'
means convenience and lower cost.[15] In the past time, marketers usually printed the promotion messages
into brochures then delivered them to thousands of mailboxes. Nowadays, marketers just design and edit the
content into emails, then send those emails to countless email addresses in one second automatically. With
no shipping fees, delay, and printing cost, companies definitely have decreased much of their advertising
costs in the present decade. Lower cost leads to higher revenue sometimes. Moreover, the data displayed
above proves that email remarketing are bringing vendors brand loyalty, financial return, and so on.

How it works
By definition of 'remarketing', it restricts the volume of customer group that the marketers could reach.
However, instead of direct emails, email remarketing are reaching the customers whose purchase intent is
highest. The remarketing email receivers are existed customers and potential customers who have shown
attention and obvious interests on the products and services. In this case, a persuasive argument on the items
could easily drive them to buy. When to send the remarketing emails is a substantial problem. Experian
Marketing Services found that emails sent closer to the abandonment is more likely to make lifts in revenue.
Generally, it can be as early as 30 minutes to 1 day. For the promotion and reactivation emails and the other
emails, they are suggested to be sent at 2 p.m. on every Tuesday and Thursday.[16]

What to send should be given careful consideration as well. For cart abandonment emails, the items left in
the shopping cart should be shown in the email directly, as it leads to highest rate of transactions. The
continue bottom to check-out should be shown in the obvious position in the emails, as well as the option
for the transaction tools, such as 'via PayPal' or 'Paid by MasterCard'. For the Thank You for Purchase
email, it works better if it includes a discount information for the next purchase.

Frequency is the key. Experian Marketing Services recommends that cart abandonment emails should be
sent at least twice after the first attempt, because the survey shows 54% lift in revenues when the second
reminder email sent.

Further reading
Email marketing
Email retargeting

References
1. Vangie, Beal (2 August 2010). "ecommerce remarketing" (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/
 E/ecommerce_remarketing.html). webopedia.com. webopedia. Retrieved 2015-10-29.
2. Jenkins, Simms (2008-07-31). The Truth About Email Marketing (https://books.google.com/b
ooks?id=0SIyOq9qu68C&dq=Email+remarketing&pg=PA153). FT Press. ISBN 978-0-7686-
8597-8.
3. Hannah, Stacey (2015-03-18). "An Introduction to Browse Abandonment Emails for
Ecommerce" (https://www.ometria.com/blog/browse-abandonment-emails). ometria.com.
OMETRIA. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
4. Loren, McDonald (2013-02-12). "Browse Abandonment Emails: How You Can Use Them to
Bring Browsers Back to Buy" (http://www.silverpop.com/blogs/email-marketing/browse-aban
donment-emails.html). silverpop.com. Silver Pop. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
5. Pete, Austin (2013-12-28). "Real-Time Marketing Report For December 2013" (https://www.fr
eshrelevance.com/blog/real-time-marketing-report-for-december-2013). freshrelevance.com.
fresh relevance. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
6. Dan, Wang. "13 Amazing Abandoned Cart Emails (And What You Can Learn From Them)"
(https://www.shopify.com/blog/12522201-13-amazing-abandoned-cart-emails-and-what-you-
can-learn-from-them). Shopify Inc. shopify. Retrieved 2015-10-28.
7. Kukar-Kinney, Monika; Close, Angeline G. (2009-03-17). "The determinants of consumers'
online shopping cart abandonment". Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. 38 (2):
240–250. doi:10.1007/s11747-009-0141-5 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11747-009-0141-5).
ISSN 0092-0703 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0092-0703). S2CID 55915990 (https://api.se
manticscholar.org/CorpusID:55915990).
8. Andy, Werner; Justin, Orgel. "Email remarketing: Simple reminders for big time returns" (htt
p://www.experian.com/marketing-services/email-remarketing.html). experian.com. Experian
Marketing Services. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
9. "9 Ways To Ensure You Don't Annoy Customers with Abandoned Cart Email Reminders" (htt
p://rejoiner.com/resources/9-ways-to-ensure-you-dont-annoy-customers-with-abandoned-car
t-email-reminders/). Rejoiner. 2015-03-12. Retrieved 2017-11-03.
10. "Identify anonymous website visitors, capture & convert with email remarketing" (http://www.r
eachdynamics.com/reachdynamics-direct-mail-retargeting-email-remarketing/email-remarket
ing/). ReachDynamics.
11. Alexandra, Braunstein (2015-04-21). "The Importance of a Post-Purchase Review Email" (htt
p://blog.returnpath.com/the-importance-of-a-post-purchase-review-email/).
blog.returnpath.com. Return Path. Retrieved 2015-10-28.
12. Nicole, Fallon (2014-05-05). "Digital Remarketing: What It Is and How to Use It" (http://www.
businessnewsdaily.com/6354-digital-remarketing-tips.html). businessnewsdaily.com.
business news daily. Retrieved 2015-10-29.
13. Steven, MacDonald (2013-10-23). "The Power Of Email Remarketing" (https://moz.com/ugc/t
he-power-of-email-remarketing). moz.com. MOZ. Retrieved 2015-10-29.
14. John, Fuller (2008-05-12). "How E-mail Marketing Works" (http://money.howstuffworks.com/e
mail-marketing.htm). money.howstuffworks.com. HOWSTUFFWORKS MONEY. Retrieved
2015-11-01.
15. Wiseheart, Emily (2019-03-29). "How Much Does Email Marketing Cost?" (https://blogs.cons
tantcontact.com/how-much-does-email-marketing-cost/). Constant Contact. Retrieved
2020-09-14.
16. Megan, Marrs (2014-09-04). "Perfect Timing: The Very Best Time to Send Email
Newsletters" (http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/09/04/best-time-to-send-email-camp
aign). wordstream.com. WordStream. Retrieved 2015-11-01.

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