Remarketing is a powerful bottom-of-funnel marketing tactic that often gets confused with retargeting. Let’s take a quick look at why these two tactics are so easy to mix up (beyond the similarities of their names).
Part of the challenge is that Google refers to remarketing as a way to reach past website visitors and app users. By most definitions, this is really retargeting.
Retargeting leverages the display ad network to serve ads to visitors who have been cookied on your site. Meanwhile, remarketing efforts leverage email for reengagement.
A Brief Example
You can use this tactic to—for example—recover abandoned carts by reengaging shoppers with a reminder email. These emails can be highly customized to include information like the recipient’s name or a picture or mention of the product they left in the cart. Plus, you can include a time-sensitive incentive (like a discount, or free shipping) to help convert action.
How It Differs From Retargeting
Check out the chart below for some key differentiators between remarketing and retargeting.
| Remarketing | Retargeting | |
| Delivery Method | Display network, commonly Google or Facebook | |
| Audience Identification | Email must be known | Cookied visitor |
| Goal | Bottom-of-funnel lead nurturing or post-sale customer nurturing | Conversion from an unknown visitor to a lead in your database |
| Reengagement Trigger | Could be triggered by a behavior or list upload depending upon the sophistication of your marketing automation capabilities | Visits your website, then starts getting served off-network ads |
You can use remarketing for a number of different campaign types and goals:
- Abandoned shopping cart
- Thank you for purchasing
- Follow-up campaign for people who complete a product demo
- Nurturing sequence designed to convert demos that are targeted at a specific audience based upon behavior or engagement
So there you have it (in a nutshell, at least): Remarketing is a bottom-of-funnel reengagement tactic that specifically uses email to reconnect with your customers or prospects. You can learn more about the differences between remarketing and retargeting in this post, where we really dive into the opportunities that these 2 critical tactics provide.