7 minutes
Have you ever considered buying a pair of shoes online and right before you check out you abandon the idea and then a week later begin to notice an ad for that very pair of shoes everywhere? It comes up while you’re browsing your favorite news site, or on Facebook.
It’s obvious this isn’t a coincidence. When you visited the site that sells those shoes, there is a program that installs a cookie in your browser files. This creates a direct link between this site and your browser. Ads can now be served to you within this browser and on any and all participating websites.
Remarketing is a powerful way to keep prospects in your sales funnel. With some strategic planning, you can go beyond reminding people of what they saw on your site and begin to develop a new kind of narrative for your products.
There are a few key areas where remarketing can prove to be incredibly powerful.
Converting Indirects
Indirect members—the holy grail for credit union marketing departments everywhere —are those who have only one product or service you offer and sometimes don’t even realize they’re a member.
Credit unions across the country have been trying for years to get the attention of these folks. And for many, it’s proven nearly impossible.
At James & Matthew, we’ve identified a way to retarget indirect members successfully across the internet by using nothing more than an email address. This process leads to success because: a) most credit unions have their indirect members’ email addresses, and b) up until now, the only way to reach them was through email. Email has its place in a marketing strategy, but it is no longer the most efficient way to market to indirects; remarketing is.
When indirect members see your ads on the websites they frequent, not only will they be reminded of your existence but you can use the opportunity to showcase other products and services and work to increase profitability of these members.
Building “Wallet Share”
A member’s profitability increases as that member uses more products and services that your credit union has to offer. This is another great angle for remarketing. If members are already using one or two of your products, then there’s a good chance they’re visiting your website often. This is an excellent opportunity to use remarketing to upsell these folks on your other products and services.
The other great thing about this tactic is that it’s completely scalable. If you have enough traffic on other pages of your site, you can serve different ads from there as well.
This is where understanding your members and their behaviors really can help you. For example, if someone visits your rates page, you could serve them ads with rates-based creative, as it is, of course, part of what they care about.
Likewise, you could serve ads about your mission and brand to people that visit your “about us” pages. Going even deeper, you could target people based on a specific action that they perform on your page such as starting a loan application or clicking a “learn more” button, etc.
Non-Interest Income
Interchange fees from credit and debit cards are a great form of non-interest income and one that is highly sought after by CFOs. With the holidays right around the corner, it’s a good time to think about driving more credit and debit card usage.
Increase the volume of card applications by remarketing to those that visit your card products pages. Encourage card usage by showing ad creative that showcases not just the card itself, but the benefits your current members get from the cards.
In 2014, we used a very similar tactic for one of our credit union clients to stimulate card usage around the holidays, and the client experienced a 20 percent increase in usage while the campaign was running.
It’s an Evolution
The greatest thing about almost any form of digital marketing is that you can adjust and make changes. It’s driven by your ambition and your ideas. In March, we developed more than 800 remarketing ads for one single campaign, because it was what made the campaign get the results needed to be a success.
Having a simple understanding of what your remarketing analytics are telling you allows you to pivot and adjust. You can start new ads very quickly and stop existing ads just as quickly.
Industry average click-through rates for remarketing ads are roughly .04 percent, so anything at or above that and you know you’re headed in the right direction.
Another place to monitor is your Google Analytics account. Here, it isn’t just about the quantity of visits or traffic that your site is getting from your remarketing ads—it’s also about the quality of those visits.
Pay close attention to the bounce rate and TOS (time on site), and assess the number of page views and unique pages views acquired.
As you run remarketing on social platforms, take the time in Google Analytics to analyze how each channel is performing—again TOS is a great reference point for quality.
Excellence in digital marketing is about being efficient, and that means being nimble as well as adjusting to any trends that you may see.
Frequency and Creative Really Matter
For a campaign to be effective, you’ll want to limit the frequency of impressions that are served. Too much remarketing, and you run the risk of banner blindness. Your ads will fall into the category of “advertising white noise,” which is not a place you want to be.
We’ve found that a good rule of thumb for credit unions is to limit impressions to roughly 40 per month.
While you are considering the frequency of when your ads are served, you should also be thinking about the quality of the creative you’re using. Is it on-brand, bright, colorful and attention-getting?
Remember, these ads are competing with other content on news sites and social media platforms. Spend the money to have a specialist work your ads for you. Fitting information into all the different sizes and shapes that the ads take can prove to be a real challenge for someone who isn’t expert in display advertising.
Start With the End in Mind
With remarketing, you have to consider what it is you’re trying to accomplish in your calendar year.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how disorganized credit unions are when it comes to digital marketing. Let me also say that I’m specifically talking about strategy, not tactical execution. You may even be using some of the digital marketing platforms I’m suggesting in this article, but have you sat down and thought about how all of these different platforms work together towards a particular end that you desire?
Awareness of this concept is what separates the great strategies from the mediocre. With digital marketing, it’s easy to get excited about new forms of media and tactics that are working well for others, and want to jump in with reckless abandon.
Follow a Narrative
Remember your brand when developing your digital remarketing strategy. These ads are an ongoing touchpoint for many potential members, so make sure they are a reliable representation of your brand’s key messages and ideas.
If you took all of your remarketing ads and opened them up on one artboard, do they feel consistent? Is there a narrative around your products, services and brand that the ads are consistently reinforcing? The answer should always be yes.
One advanced technique that we employ for our retail clients is adjusting the frequency and creative based on where a person is inside your sales funnel. This ensures that people are served different ads based on where they might be at in the buying decision. This develops an ongoing narrative about the products and leaves room to test cross-selling and upselling different products.
Stick to What You Can Execute
One thing we often see here at James & Matthew is credit unions appearing everywhere online simply because they feel like they have to. There is nothing more ludicrous than that idea.
If you can’t execute well on a given platform, then you should avoid it. Stick to the areas that you can have an impact on potential members.
Platforms like Google and Facebook offer remarketing options, along with many others. It can be a little tricky managing all of these resources at once, so if you’re new to remarketing or strapped for time, a third-party solution like AdRoll might be a great option for you.
With technology, growth is exponential and keeping up on the latest social media platforms and digital targeting tactics really can be quite the task. Remarketing is a great place to start and offers the opportunity for larger potential gains than other forms of digital marketing.
Matthew Maguy is co-founder of James & Matthew, a marketing and advertising agency specializing in credit unions in Shirley, Mass.
