A report by Marketo suggests that 96% of website visitors don’t purchase on their first visit to a website. Clearly, these potential leads are interested in what you have to offer, but for whatever reason, they decided not to make a purchase.

The question is, how do you keep customers interested in your products when they’re no longer in your sales environment? 

Fortunately, one thing you can do to bring back lost visitors is run retargeting campaigns.

Retargeting allows you to capture 96% of lost customers, so you no longer have to rely solely on the 4% who convert.

What Is Event Retargeting?

There are several ways to retarget or remarket. It is an online ad campaign based on cookie-driven, data-driven technology that targets ads to the right people.

Marketers use site retargeting, or pixel-based retargeting, to establish a connection with visitors to their website and then deliver them display advertisements while they are online. By exposing these visitors to the brand elsewhere on the web, even if they did not convert initially, they may convert later.

Retargeting allows you to reach out to contacts already in your database who have yet to buy. In event planning, this retargeting is known as list-based or CRM retargeting. It is particularly useful for event organizers who can utilize lists of previous attendees.

Why Should You Use Retargeting?

With real-time bidding technology (RTB) or Google Retargeting, event professionals or marketers can bid on and purchase ad impression shares based on the reference of the target audience’s persona.

Since retargeting campaigns are targeted specifically, they also get higher engagement than average. Make lead generation an efficient and cost-effective process by retargeting your events to the attendees who might be interested.

Here are some benefits of using retargeting campaigns.

Multiple chances to engage

You may encounter one-time visitors when marketing your events. Retargeting means customized content targeting users who are already aware of your events and are very likely to register since they have shown the intent but might go away for various reasons. 

Retargeting gives you multiple chances to get them back in your conversion funnel.

Better brand connect

Retargeting is a great way to increase brand recognition and awareness. You will be able to better connect with your event attendees, considering that your ads, event invites, and dates are consistently shown to your target audience. Multiple chances to bring prospects back to your registration page consistently improve your conversion funnel. 

Cost-effective campaigns

When it comes to retargeting campaigns, the question of what and why is often neglected due to a lack of knowledge of how to create such campaigns and which channels work best. 

Retargeting campaigns should be started as early as six months before your event’s final date. Retargeting campaigns can be run using Google AdWords, Facebook, or tools like Adroll that use RTB technology.

Cream of the corp tactic

Retargeting campaigns are designed to get back the attention of users who have already interacted with your event page and are likely to attend your event if you target those users with retargeting ads. 

Because the users interact with your event landing page at much higher intent levels than the average organic traffic users, they are referred to as the cream of the corp tactic.

Upselling with retargeting

Retargeting your event pages to your earlier audience can also lead to upselling. It’s a good way to remind all of your previous event attendees to attend your next event. You can expect higher conversions and a higher return on investment with consistent and quality retargeting campaigns. 

CTRs with retargeting can range from 0.30-0.95%, which is 3-10x higher than the industry average. They can be even higher in some cases. A high CTR is crucial in display advertising, where you pay per impression.

How To Implement Event Retargeting Ads For Promoting Your Events?

As opposed to search ads, retargeting ads are not prompted by user queries, ensuring the right audience sees them. A retargeting campaign targets customers who have bounced without making a purchase directly. 

Follow these steps to boost your registrations for your event with an optimized retargeting campaign.

1. Segment Your Audiences

Visitors to your website don’t all have the same interests. A few would like to attend. Some would like to exhibit. It is possible that some might be interested in your publication. Why would you treat all these people in the same way? No, you shouldn’t.

Use segmentation to deal with different audience members differently.

The process is simple. You can segment your audience by URL with most retargeting tools (such as AdRoll or Feathr). This allows you to create a group for everyone who visits a page, such as http://www.yourevent.com/why-attend. Most likely, these people are attendee prospects who are interested in attending your event.

The same can be done for your “Why Exhibit?” or a similar page to group exhibitor prospects.

2. Use Unique Ads to Target Your Different Segments

You can communicate with them specifically by segmenting your audience into useful segments (such as interested attendees and interested exhibitors).

For example, attendees may be influenced by a ticket discount, celebrity speaker, or venue highlight. Make sure you mention these factors in your ads to get to the heart of their concerns.

Attendee statistics and proof of ROI are more relevant to exhibitors. Your ads should include total registered attendance (maybe with a year-over-year growth figure) and testimonials from other exhibitors. 

3. Test Incentives 

According to an enterprise analytics firm MicroStrategy report, first-time customer discounts provided the highest ROI. Try promoting discounts, buy-one-get-one tickets, after-party access, etc., in your ads. Sometimes, prospects only need a little push to get off the fence and sign up.

4. Find the Right Times of Day to Run Your Campaigns

Most retargeting platforms allow you to choose your campaigns’ start and end times daily. While it would seem common sense to run campaigns during working hours, such as 9 am to 5 pm, relying on that assumption may prove costly in the long run.

Find hotspots in your daily registration activity by analyzing your existing registration data. Attendee registrations might be busiest during the early morning or evening.

However, this isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it approach. To discover other potential hotspots, you should also test during other hours of the day with additional campaigns.

Do this separately for exhibitor registrations as well. Exhibitors may register at different times than attendees.

5. Run Campaigns Targeting Visitors Who Have Already Registered 

Initially, retargeting may seem useful only in the pre-sale phase. While retargeting can be very valuable in that use case, it can also be very effective for post-sale engagement. Here are a few examples.

• Qualifying Registrants

Are you running a show where attendees must fill out an initial registration form online and submit additional information to qualify and register?

It is often the case that registrants do not complete this second step of the registration process, which results in a large loss of attendance.

Engage this audience segment with a campaign encouraging them to click through and submit their supporting documents.

• Driving Foot Traffic

There are many trade shows and conferences that are free to attend.

You can use this strategy to increase registrations and to advertise to exhibitors with a large attendance number. The challenge is getting registrants with no financial commitment to attend. The attrition of attendees is a huge problem for organizers.

This scenario makes retargeting very valuable. You can target these registrants again with a retargeting campaign that highlights features of the event likely to encourage attendance – such as a giveaway, an impressive exhibit, a big-name speaker, etc.

Way to maximize the success of retargeting ads

Now that you’ve analyzed your event data and chosen a platform, you’re ready to launch your retargeting campaign. It is still important to ensure these potential attendees click on your ad. 

To run a successful retargeting campaign, you must follow best advertising practices. You can maximize the success and click-through rate of your targeted ads by following these tips: 

• Be creative

Ads are constantly bombarding users across the web. Retargeting gives you an advantage since users have already seen your event. To maximize the potential of a click, you should create a clever and bold banner ad.

• Run relevant ad

Ensure that your retargeting ad reflects your event clearly by taking advantage of the leg up you have with retargeting. The purpose of retargeted ads is to keep your brand top of mind, so an ambiguous ad will not alert your potential attendees that they have already visited your event’s website. In other words, you’re aiming for the “Oh yeah, I remember this event!” instead of starting from scratch.

• Include clear CTA

The call-to-action, or call-to-action, is a key component of relevance and clarity in your ad. Retargeted ads aim to build awareness, but their main goal usually is to get the user to click the CTA.

• Highlight event dates

The purpose of retargeted ads is to remind people about your event. As a result, users have already expressed interest in your event by visiting their website, attending previously, or being on your mailing list. As these are reminder ads, you should highlight your event’s dates.

Conclusion 

Retargeting campaigns can boost event marketing by allowing multiple opportunities to interact and engage with your attendees. This highly targeted method can reach potential event attendees who may need a little push to purchase a ticket. It is imperative to use a compelling marketing strategy when marketing your events.