Retarget Your Email Marketing List Using Performance Display for SEM

When Yahoo, Google and MSN offered the introduction of basic display, many search marketing teams were able to specify the exact parameters to identify their prospects. Search engine marketing or SEM has been around for years and each year the competition for keywords gets harder and more expensive increasing the cost-per-click (CPC) numbers across the board.

Many search marketers still work with the creative limitations they had back in 1996 with text-only ads, but they don’t have too! Traditional SEM can still be just effective when used with new dynamic path routes.  I am talking about performance display!

You may ask what performance display is and why use it? The base line of performance display is targeting campaigns with direct response goals rather than the usual awareness or branding. Among the many forms this can take the most commonly used are site retargeting and search retargeting and they are the two most misunderstood marketing tactics.

Site retargeting can be very effective and can achieve brilliant results when you calculate lots of data points. Site retargeting is when you serve display ads to customers who already have visited your site in the hopes of luring them back again. There is a data-intense version called ‘programmatic site retargeting’ which retargets visitors based on information on the referral site, the on-site behavior, CRM data and the time and date of the visit. This collective date creates a sophisticated history on each individual site visitor and concludes if it is worth trying to lure them back.

The rise of search retargeting has created a massive response for the traditional SEM marketers, because search retargeting goes beyond the text-only listings that are visual around the search engine results. In essence, when users leave the site on which they have actioned a search say in Google, Bing or any other search site, search retargeting can then target them, using the keywords they have just used, with display ads. Hence, the traditional SEM marketers can still use the power of intent tactic by creating search retargeting campaigns based on the same keywords used for the traditional SEM campaigns.

Basically, performance display is good news for marketers as it combines the power of intent with the scale of display, also with the added effectiveness of well-designed creative’s. Because many of your customers use a browser to read their emails you can take the opportunity to drop a retargeting cookie in, creating a specific segment or treating the customers individually. Retargeting is a positive way to reinforce your brand while strengthening response and sales. You may not have even thought of using this for your email marketing because some of the recently new leverage you have with your customer email list.