Online retailers look to dynamic remarketing to amp up holiday sales. (Photo Credit: IntelFreePress, Creative Commons)

Dynamic Remarketing Hits Home for the Holidays

When was the last time you browsed through Amazon.com or picked up a new bath rug over at Crate & Barrel’s website? Maybe not so much the latter, but if you’re like half of the consumers out there then you’ll be buying holiday gifts online this year (according to Google). And this is exactly what online retailers are counting on when they use dynamic remarketing.

So what exactly is dynamic remarketing?

Let’s go back to the time when you visited Amazon.com, and we’ll say that you were checking out prices on the Playstation 4. When you decided that you weren’t ready to pull the trigger, you exited the site and went about your other business.

The next day while searching Google for airline tickets to Florida (because let’s face it, you’ll need a getaway after all of the holiday madness), you spot an Amazon ad on the search results pages showing the Playstation 4. Only this time, you can get free shipping.

Free shipping on a Playstation 4 sounds pretty tempting at this point. You figure you won’t have to fight the crowds at the store and you won’t even have to pay for it to be delivered to your front door.

So you click on the ad and it takes you to Amazon’s page with a brand new, shiny Playstation 4 just ready to be purchased. With free shipping, of course. And you go for it.

What just happened here?

Amazon used dynamic remarketing to target you as a buyer for the Playstation 4, the exact product you had been looking at the day before. They made you an offer and that got you to buy the product.

It’s dynamic because it caters specifically to you, and it can do this for any product on the site. It’s remarketing because it got you to come back and make a purchase.

And it was effective.

More about Remarketing

While this approach is great for those that didn’t purchase the first time around, dynamic remarketing can also be used for site visitors that have already made a purchase.

By targeting them at a later date with other accessories or products they might like, based on their previous purchase, retailers can drive buyers back to the site to make additional sales.

In a time when so many consumers are doing their holiday shopping online, remarketing can be more effective than other ad formats because it targets people that have already become a customer or have enough interest in the company to potentially come back again and seal the deal.

So how about you? Do you plan to use remarketing in your holiday advertising?