Retargeting vs. Remarketing: What is The Difference

When comparing retargeting vs remarketing, it's easy to get confused by the nuances of terminology. Especially since the development of technology continues to blur the thin line between them, making their techniques interchangeable. 

Today, we will explain how these online business tools work, in which scenarios they are the most effective, and the difference between retargeting and remarketing.

What is Remarketing

Remarketing is working with an audience that has already had some interaction with a company, its brand, or its products. It aims to re-engage customers who have already converted by buying a product, ordering a service, subscribing to a service, or performing another targeted action based on their previous actions, allowing you to get the most out of your loyal customer base.

Remarketing campaigns involve running ads for users who are already in the business's communication channels. In most cases, these customers have voluntarily left their contact details and agreed to receive information from the company. Such conditions make it possible to use a variety of sales tactics, achieving a significant return at a reasonable cost.

Claspo widgets are a simple and effective way to collect contact information of website visitors:

• Choose a ready-made template for collecting email addresses and phone numbers from our library and easily customize it to your needs,
• Target your widget to new site visitors and stop showing it to those who have already subscribed,
• Invite your audience to share not only the contact details but also their preferences, favorite products, or wishes for your assortment to increase the effectiveness of future remarketing,
• Integrate Claspo with your ESP, CRM, or CDP to quickly transfer customer data into a single repository and build precise segments for remarketing campaigns.

How Does Remarketing Work

A classic example of remarketing is email campaigns. They can be aimed at:

• renewal of a service subscription - "Stay with us..."
• repeated purchase of a product with a limited lifespan or shelf life - "Don't forget to replenish your stock..."
• upselling without additional conditions - "We have selected for you...", "Check out the new products in our assortment...", "You may also like...", etc.

Another feature of modern remarketing is the use of contextual advertising on external platforms. If properly configured, it can target only the company's customers. This way, businesses can remind customers of their existence, inform them about new products, and motivate them to make a purchase using tools such as time-limited offers. 

Today, popular PPC platforms allow advertisers to create their own targeting lists, including specific users selected by email addresses or phone numbers. This approach significantly increases the effectiveness of remarketing campaigns. For example, this is how it looks like in Google Ads:

Regardless of the chosen platform, remarketing pursues one primary goal - to motivate the audience to visit your website and make a purchase. Claspo widgets will come in handy for this. You can set them up to be shown only to visitors who came to the website from a particular campaign (an email newsletter, contextual advertising, etc.).

This personalized widget welcomes visitors, reminds them of your offer stated in the advertising campaign, and conveniently redirects them to the right pages to take advantage of it. A simple example:

• You announced new products and offered to buy them at a reasonable price in your email newsletter,
• Your customers are interested but decide to visit your website later,
• On the next visit, they will be greeted by your widget with text like: "Try our new product before everyone else with an exclusive 20% OFF,"
• A clickable button on the widget quickly redirects them to the new collection page to view and purchase.

Thus, those customers who navigate to the website immediately after viewing the campaign can quickly find what they need and proceed to purchase. And those who receive your email but come to the website after some time receive a reminder of your offer and can still easily take advantage of it. In both scenarios, Claspo widgets strengthen your remarketing strategy and drive sales.

What is Retargeting

Retargeting is advertising campaigns for users who have already had an experience with a particular brand but have not completed the conversion. Mostly, we are talking about those consumers who visited the company's website or learned about its commercial offer but did not make a purchase for some reason. 

The difference between retargeting and remarketing is that the former focuses on the top of the sales funnel. Its target audience is informed but not included in the business's communication channels.

In most cases, retargeting is more effective than standard PPC campaigns. It's all about awareness. People prefer brands and products they have already heard about. 

Therefore, each subsequent advertising campaign will work with a well-prepared base, having a better chance of success. The only thing left to do is to plan them carefully, choosing the right messages and time intervals between launches.

How Does Retargeting Work

Contextual advertising is an exemplary example of retargeting. A user logs into a website, agrees to the processing of information, browses several products, and leaves without completing the conversion. During the visit, the browser creates a cookie recording the entire sequence of actions and related information. This piece of code is transmitted to the advertising platform, allowing it to be used to identify a person in PPC campaigns. It's very simple - you can target only those people who have visited a website or are interested in a particular product. 

But we should mention a current trend in online marketing. By the end of 2024, all major tech companies want to abandon third-party cookies that allowed them to launch such campaigns. Therefore, advertisers are already looking for alternative ways to retarget. 

One of them is social media. Meta allows you to select users on Facebook and Instagram who have interacted with a company in some way - through its official page, events a company has launched, products it has posted on marketplaces, etc. Those users have already heard about a particular brand or product and even participated in discussions or contacted business officials. This makes such campaigns very effective.

With Claspo, you can improve your results even more. Show your widget to users brought to your website by your social media retargeting campaign. It might offer a discount on a product they've previously viewed, include a promo code for free shipping on their first order, or simply feature your brand's bestsellers. By choosing the right tactics and using Claspo's smart toolkit, you have every chance to win new customers.

Use this template

Key Differences Between Remarketing and Retargeting

Above, we have already described how both methods work and their key features. But it's worth considering other differences between remarketing and retargeting:

It is worth noting that remarketing and retargeting are not opposites. They are two independent elements of advertising campaigns that can be used by businesses simultaneously. Retargeting focuses on the top of the sales funnel, allowing you to increase conversion rates and unlock the potential of your target audience. Remarketing is used in the lower part, consolidating the achieved results and building a loyal customer base. 

Today, it is still possible to draw a clear line between remarketing vs retargeting. But tomorrow, it may well disappear. For example, in its instructions for launching contextual advertising, Google already considers these terms synonymous, using them in the same context.