How to Manage Your Email Marketing List to Implement Retargeting

Retargeting campaigns can be very effective in your email marketing lists. After all, they aim to reach those who have previously visited your website or have taken some valuable action, such as making a purchase or adding items to their cart.

This means that retargeting reaches those who have already shown interest in your brand, but in a much better way: with personalized campaigns.

Personalization can work wonders for your campaigns. Click-through rates in segmented campaigns are 100.95% higher than in non-segmented campaigns.

However, it's not enough to just segment by region or gender. You need to enrich your email marketing list to use in retargeting campaigns. Not sure how to do that? Let's go through it!

3 steps to manage your email marketing list for retargeting

Your email marketing list is the most valuable asset for your campaigns, whether retargeting or not. The better managed it is, the better your results will be.

We don't need to tell you that collecting emails for your list organically is the best way to achieve your goals. Some options include placing subscription pop-ups on your website, using social media, or lead magnets.

The important thing is to ensure that the user is aware that they are providing a valid email address to receive exclusive content from your brand. How? By using solutions that provide real-time verification directly from your form.

But after building your email marketing list, you need to manage it to keep it in its best shape. By not doing so, you risk having low open rates and few clicks in your campaigns.

Below, we explain how to manage your email marketing list to succeed with retargeting!

1. Collect data from your leads

The foundation of a good retargeting campaign is segmentation. But before segmenting, you need to have data for that.

Use analytical data, social analytics, and other data you have collected through your CRM solution to map out who your customers are and what they typically do on your website.

Another tip is to use Google Customer Match. While the tool only works for Gmail accounts or accounts managed by Google, it can be useful for collecting more data about your contacts. Simply upload your email marketing list to Google Analytics, and the tool will search for matches with Google's databases (which, as we know, are enormous).

If there are matches, you can use the data to get to know your contacts better. With this data and any other data you collect, you can move on to the next step, which is...

2. Segment your email marketing list

You may already be familiar with some details about segmentation, but segmenting for retargeting is a bit more complicated than regular segmentation.

In addition to grouping your list by people from the same region, age, and gender, you need to adjust your list based on what your contacts do.

For example, you can segment a group of people who have filled their carts but haven't completed the purchase, or a group that has already purchased from you but hasn't returned for more.

Monitor closely the actions your contacts take when interacting with your brand. Planning and defining your goals with the retargeting campaign will make a difference at this stage—you can base your segmentation on your goals.

Some common objectives of a retargeting campaign include getting the user to:

• Complete an abandoned purchase: If a user has added a product to their shopping cart but hasn't completed the purchase, you can remind them to come back and finish the process.
• Purchase a product they viewed: Encourage users to return to a product or service they previously viewed but haven't purchased yet.
• Make a new purchase: If a user has already purchased from you, you can analyze related products and send suggestions for cross-selling or upselling.
• Learn more about your brand: The goal of your retargeting campaign doesn't necessarily have to be a sale. You can send campaigns to users who have visited your site but haven't shown an intention to buy, to help them get to know your brand better and, who knows, maybe fall in love with it!

3. Clean your list regularly

There you have it! You have collected your contacts organically, segmented your email marketing list, and it's ready to go. But the work is not done—you need to clean your list regularly to ensure that it continues to reach the people who genuinely matter to your company.

Over time, users may change their email addresses, switch jobs, or simply stop checking that inbox. You need to clean your list to make sure these users don't stay in it.

Cleaning your list can be done manually by checking those emails that bounce back when sending a campaign. However, besides being time-consuming, this method can affect your sender reputation since the more emails bounce, the worse your reputation becomes with ESPs (email service providers).

The best solution, therefore, is to use an email verifier. The program automatically cleans your list, reducing the time spent on the process, and also prevents you from having a high bounce rate.

Retargeting campaigns are very useful and have a great cost-benefit ratio because you won't be sending messages to cold leads, but rather to people who have already shown some interest in your brand.

Since your audience voluntarily subscribed to your email marketing list, it means they are already interested in what you have to offer. In other words, they just need a little incentive to become your loyal customers!

How about you? Do you rely on retargeting to engage with your audience?