Remarketing strategies are evolving. What started as behavioral targeting at the onset of the internet boom has led to e-commerce sites sending targeted emails to consumers who have abandoned their online shopping carts without purchasing. Even more new strategies are unfolding as large advertising networks like Google and Yahoo enter the remarketing arena. Along with this remarketing discussion, debates over privacy issues have been raging.

Remarketing strategies today allow you to display an advertisement to consumers who have previously visited your website. This is done through the placement of a cookie, a small piece of code placed on their computer when they visit your site. When that visitor surfs the web, advertising networks recognize the cookie and serve up ads. This is a low-cost way to re-engage prospects and can be a useful marketing tool for businesses. But what about the consumer experience?

A colleague recently shared his experience of being targeted by remarketing. While doing some research, he came upon a financial web site – one of dozens of sites he visited that day. Later in the day, he realized he was seeing the same ad from the same company over and over again, for a product he was not really in the market for. At first, he thought it was coincidence. But then he saw the ad on sites that were completely unrelated to the subject of finance. And the frequency with which he saw this company’s ad became unnerving. The word he actually used was “creepy.”

As a marketer, everyone who visits your site should feel safe, whether they’re a potential customer, partner, investor, or casual visitor. At the same time, marketers want to be able to capture potentially qualified buyers who leave your site prior to purchasing so you can eventually turn them into loyal customers. So there’s a delicate balance that must be achieved. Here are some subtle ways you can court and remind past visitors of your brand while minimizing your likelihood of offending the masses:

1. Target the appropriate prospects. Don’t remarket to everyone who visits your website. You may want to exclude those who have already purchased or haven’t navigated past your home page. Another strategy is to target only those who have purchased to tell them about a new product or offering that complements their recent purchase. Define your objective and select your target audience appropriately.


2. Control ad frequency. This is easy to do and helps you avoid any perception that you are stalking your potential customers. By controlling the number of daily, weekly and even monthly impressions per individual target, you can ensure that you won’t overwhelm your potential customers with ads.


3. Treat remarketing as a campaign. Your remarketing efforts should have a predefined lifecycle where you start, stop and evaluate performance. Ads should discontinue after a particular promotion is over. If ads aren’t tied to a promotion, they should discontinue when a reasonable buying cycle timeframe has been exceeded.

The privacy debate mentioned above is pretty sticky. The Federal Trade Commission has been working on an initiative to address concerns over the collection of data regarding online searching and browsing activities by implementing a “Do Not Track” mechanism. Leading industry associations have developed a voluntary opt-out program which allows users to manage their preferences for online behavioral advertising for companies that participate in the program. This program only works, however, if the user has enabled his browser to allow third party cookies. Internet Explorer, Google and Mozilla have also developed alternatives in hopes of paving the way for any future legislation.

Bottom line: remarketing can be a useful way for marketers to continue courting their potential customers, build market share, and generate revenue. But it has to be done in a strategic manner, with no “creepy” factor. As with all good marketing, put your prospect hat on before you begin, and your remarketing campaign will achieve the best possible results.

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