Please don’t tell my husband, but I am disappointed with my holiday gift even though he hasn’t given it to me yet. While I was doing some web research on a computer we share, an ad for shiny lucite bracelets popped up where it should never have been. Clearly, it was retargeted, from an abandoned shopping cart and he’s chosen to give me something else.

Retargeting serves as a reprimand that I should clean my cookies daily, if not more often. Once I’ve abandoned a shopping cart, I am unlikely to go back to it. I’ve either decided that a) my 15 year old winter boots can last one more season or b) I can find that new fuzzier, cuter pair for less money somewhere else.

Shopping cart abandonment plagues marketers. In 2010, Forrester Research reported that 88% of online shoppers abandoned their carts. Things didn’t get better the next year when, presumably, retargeters made better use of the data. According to a study by SeeWhy, 89.2 percent left their carts full without making a purchase on the Wednesday before Black Friday in 2011. The implication is that they were looking for better deals.

So, what’s a marketer to do to pull customers like me back to their sites? Right now, retargeting is a data game, plain and simple. For it to really deliver on its promise, calls on creativity and rethinking the possibility of the ads.

Instead of retargeted ads, why not deliver more compelling content about the item that one is shopping for? Take my winter boot example: maybe instead of featuring a photo of the boots, the ad would instead link me to a page with tips from a stylist on how to rock them. Even better, if the page included a call to action, such as leaving a comment, liking a Facebook page, sending a tweet with a hashtag, I could receive a discount in return for my engagement.

I’m not a retargeting expert, just an online shopper plagued by boring ads that show me pictures of products I already decided I didn’t want or could buy somewhere else for less. I also acknowledge that serving up customized content based on every SKU searched would be pricey. But maybe retargeting could be rejiggered to serve up higher value brand engagement. That would bring customers back in and send them to the shopping carts and lead to that purchase.

In the meantime, I hope my husband changes his mind about those bracelets. I love them.

What’s your story? Do retargeted ads send you back to the shopping cart or do you ignore them because you’ve already made a different buying decision? What would it take to draw you back?

 

image courtesy of Nordstrom