Why are Retargeting Links so useful?
What is a Retargeting Link?
Retargeting (aka remarketing) is the advertising method used to “re-attract” visitors who abandoned the conversion funnel. When someone visit your website a cookie is placed in his browser. When he will visit Facebook, Google or websites "managed" by specific Advertising Networks like AdRoll, Criteo, Retargeter, etc..., your banner or text message is shown. This let you target only the people that visited your site hence (probably) are interested in your products/services.
To retarget visitors, marketers normally place a small Javascript code in their website or landing-pages, but not everybody knows that the code can be installed directly in a tracking-link. Retargeting codes on links create cookies and add the user to your retargeting lists even before the visitor land on the destination page so you do not need the access to the website HTML.
When are Retargeting Links so useful?
#1 You Want to Retarget Your Social Media Audience
In your social media campaigns most of the post point users to contents that are external to your website, mainly to news websites, other posts or your Facebook page. In this case you cannot place the retargeting code and using a Retargeting Link is a must!
#2 You Are an Affiliate
As an affiliate you send visitors to someone else’s website. Here too it's rare you can modify the landing pages.
#3 You’re an Agency Promoting a Client’s Site
Especially if you are working with larger clients is unlike you can change the content or add additional pages to make it more interesting. Or modify the layout to make it more enticing for visitors. And there’s simply no chance you would be able to add a retargeting script to it too.
#4 You Sell Products on Marketplaces or third party Websites
There are many places where you can present and sell your products but almost all doe not you modify part of the pages code and surely they do not let you "inject" javascript codes.
#5 You Need to Act Faster than Your IT Department Can
Just imagine that you work for a large hotel chain. You’ve just been given a go ahead to launch a last minute campaign targeting visitors looking for accommodation for an upcoming event. This is a time sensitive campaign and as part of it you want to use retargeting to increase your chances for getting those bookings. But the problem is that it would take the IT department a couple of days to install a tracking pixel on the site. And that’s the time you simply don’t have.
#6 You Want to Retarget Your Email Subscribers
Email is one of the best converting marketing channels. But the problem is that not every link you include in an email points back to your site. You could be using email to promote affiliate products. Or to share useful content from around the Web. In spite of that though you might still want to target them with relevant offers based on their behavior.
How can you create Retargeting Links
This marketing trend is quite new and is becoming more and more used since retargeting has become a common element in the marketing mix. There are few online services that let you to create retargeting links but I'll point you to ClickMeter since (full disclosure) I'm the Founder & CEO :-)
Here you can find detailed info on how to create retargeting Links with ClickMeter. This feature is available starting with a $29/month plan
On our Blog you can find a longer, but more detailed article about Retargeting Links