Why it Makes Sense to Invest in App Retargeting During a Festive Season

A common misconception is that re-engagement during sales doesn’t make sense because people are already buying. In reality, this is when app marketers should invest in it.

Festive days and seasonal sales are an opportunity for eCommerce and food delivery apps particularly. Organic engagement rises to all-time highs, and app marketers assume that they don’t need to invest in paid advertising. This is a mistake: during sales, when users are ready to purchase, and all apps release their best promotions, advertisers should plan for specific seasonal campaigns to ensure that the users that land on the app stay, engage, and convert.

Don’t let precious re-engagement opportunities slip away.

Data has consistently shown that retargeted users are more engaged and more inclined to purchase. Want to keep a healthy app user base? Retargeting is the answer to unlocking higher revenue and increasing users’ lifetime value.

App marketers will do well on truly leveraging Festive seasons such as Chinese New Year to break order records on sale days and beyond. However, while investments in User Acquisition (UA) campaigns are wise, marketers often overlook elaborating on the crucial retargeting strategy. Considering that the cost to acquire a user is five to ten times more than the cost to re-engage a user, this is a risk you shouldn’t take. A healthy user base needs active users. Your UA investments might partially be in vain if you don’t actively retarget your entire user base from an early stage to enhance LTV.

Data shows a healthy spike in remarketing conversions in 2021. Furthermore, when comparing retargeted versus non-retargeted paying users in the shopping vertical, the retargeted users show up to 21% in revenue lift. This revenue lift has the potential to increase during big sales periods. Chinese New Year is one such shopping festival for East Asian countries.

Are you making the most out of Festive seasons?

To achieve the best results possible with re-engagement, app marketers should cater to the different segments of their user base:

🔹  Retargeting the active user base to secure and enhance transactions.

🔹  Retargeting newly installed users to retain them early on.

🔹  Cater to lapsed users to recover their attention and invite them back.

During crucial campaign days, you will have more robust and appealing offers to communicate to your users that might compel them to return and stay with your platform for a purchase. It is significantly less expensive to reactivate dormant users during promotional periods.

Despite good performance in 2020 and 2021, retention for shopping apps on day 30 after installation is low (~8%) compared with other verticals such as gaming or fintech (12%). There is a large pool of users becoming inactive right after day 1 post-install that is worth re-engaging. And a big sale is an excellent opportunity to reignite the spark and take advantage of the pull effect of promotions.

The app retargeting strategy you can benefit from during big Sales

To grow a loyal user pool, engagement for newly acquired users is crucial to creating a positive experience and bonding with your app. Hence, to assure long-term ROI, marketers should work towards a holistic strategy: UA in combination with early activation campaigns and cost-efficient retargeting campaigns during sales periods.

Apps running retargeting campaigns typically target their most active users and recently installed users. Moving a bigger share of an app’s user base early and permanently to a higher “state of activation” results in lower re-engagement costs as well as higher revenue. Transactional campaigns yield higher ROAS and scale due to the more immediate availability of users willing to purchase on an app familiar to them.

However, there is also the opportunity to grow and sustain a campaign by retargeting the users who have lapsed. Reaching out to the dormant users while we keep retargeting the active user base is a strong tactic during seasonal sales to achieve lower re-engagement costs per user and grow a healthy active user base.

Discover the possible reasons for the users’ lapsing. This will give you insights to segment and retarget this segment more effectively. Reaching out to customers with a compelling offer can get them to re-engage and improve the odds of turning them into not only active but loyal users.

Recommendations to activate your entire user base during a Holiday.

Build your active pool of users and increase your customers’ lifetime value. Users in the lower funnel tend to be active and loyal customers of the brand, driving the most sales and engagement with your app.

🔹  Timing is crucial:

Time your sale strategy to these users well before the Festive day is key to reactivation. Show users what’s new. Does your shopping app have new features, new products, or better discounts during this sales period? Offers and messages like free shipping, up to xx% off products, and double rewards can be shared consistently and intermittently to your users to build up curiosity and develop an intent to purchase on the D day.

🔹  Work on your messaging:

What value can you add to users in a Festive season? Offer something unique and be relevant with your message. Creatives can make or break your campaign. Rely on Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) to entice users to the app.

Each Festive season is a re-engagement opportunity.

These big sales present many opportunities to fine-tune your message and create an effective retargeting campaign that can ultimately help improve your business position.

Don’t dismiss the opportunity a Holiday period presents to fine-tune your ad message and create an effective retargeting campaign that can holistically impact your app growth. Retargeting your entire user base with selective strategies during these key periods will unlock long-term gains.