Retargeting is one of the most valuable tools in the modern marketers’ arsenal. It is a re-engagement technique and ensures successful conversion of existing users into paying customers. 

In this guide, we will provide you with the best practices in the context of Retargeting campaigns. We will focus specifically on mobile app retargeting.

App retargeting is used most often for the following 3 scenarios:

1. Reacquisition
2. Increase app usage
3. Boost app revenue

A reacquisition campaign can allow you to reacquire users who lapsed after a certain period of inactivity. You will be able to boost awareness and maximize retention for your app.
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​§ Segmentation is they key when reacquiring lapsed users. Make sure to utilize your in-app events and create custom segments accordingly. This way you ensure your message is relevant, effective and avoid to annoy lapsed users to the point they churn and stop using your app completely. For instance, you can segment users inactive for 10 days with no purchase and users with previous purchase and inactive for 8 days.

Increasing app usage involves retargeting users who were frequent users but have not opened the app in a couple of days.  The main goal is to bring them back and get them to engage again.

§ Segmentation
It is important to understand the reasons why a user would stop engaging with your app. According to the reasons identified you can segment your audience and ensure your message is relevant and effective. Additionally, by analyzing in-app events you can understand the points of churn better and develop a retargeting campaign that addresses their pain points and brings them back to continue where they left off.
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​§ Deep Links
Deep links improve the user experience greatly. You can internalize it in your retargeting strategy and bring users directly to the appropriate page in your app, for instance the last page they visited or an offer page.

Combining segmentation and deep links together will give the best results. For instance, using deep links and custom tailored ads you would redirect “segment 1” users (Items have been added to the cart but has not completed the purchase) to their shopping cart and “segment 2” users (Previous purchaser, inactive 14 days) to special offer page.

Campaigns aimed to increase app revenue by retargeting and converting users who have already engaged with your app. Most of the time it is cheaper and more effective to encourage users to increase their in-app purchases than running campaigns to bring back users who may never convert.

§ The best way to segment your app’s audience for a retargeting campaign focused on driving revenue, is to segment your users based on their likelihood to convert. Namely, cart abandoners, previous purchasers, and users who play your mobile game everyday.

Before starting a retargeting campaign, there are some steps to consider:

1. Define the KPIs. Ask yourself:

What are your expectations from the retargeting campaign? Typically, increasing the LTV of the users is the final goal of any campaign. How one reaches that depends on the revenue model of the app. Make sure that the KPIs of the campaign are aligned with it.

2. Campaign optimization type:

Once the KPIs are defined, decide on an optimization type depending on your goals – e.g. CPC or CPM.
CPM would be better for highly focused segments with high likelihood of conversion (i.e. previous purchasers). Since CPM (with the right target price) will allow you to achieve a higher win rate and show more ads to these valuable users

3. Find segment of users to retarget:
Audience segmentation is key to successful retargeting. Based on your KPIs multiple criteria could be taken into consideration before launching the retargeting campaign. Some of these are the recency, the degree of engagement and the amount of money spent on the app.

4. Use creatives tailored to retargeting:
Creatives for user acquisition are often meant to give a general idea about what your app is about to someone who does not know it yet. For instance, such creatives would include a call to action such as “download,” since the user does not have the app installed yet. Creatives for retargeting should be adjusted to the segment of users you are targeting. For instance, If a travel app is targeting users who have searched for a flight, the creatives could show the flight searched, mention that seats are running out and have a “Purchase” call to action. Intelligent use of creatives is also important to counter user fatigue and make sure that the same user isn’t shown too many ads. Consider frequency capping in this case.

5. Use deep links:
Rather than using a tracking link that redirects to the app store page of the app, use a deep link that will land the user directly on a relevant page in the app.

The most common and efficient way of sharing data is dynamically, via an API. As the vast majority of advertisers use third party platforms (MMP: mobile measurement partner) to, among other things, track and measure their user’s behavior. Therefore, these MMPs store the data needed by Kayzen to run the retargeting campaigns. In short, you can easily define if and what data to stream via API callback to Kayzen. To do so, an integration between the MMP and Kayzen should be already in place. Kayzen has  these kinds of integrations in place with the most common MMPs. In addition to this basic integration, some MMPs have specific features dedicated to retargeting (for example building audience segments).

The most common ways to do it are the following:

1. Kayzen’s audience builder allows you to define rules and segment users based on multiple in-app events. A sophisticated audience segmentation tool gives you the chance to take immediate control of audiences by retargeting users at a granular level.
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​2. Uploading a static CSV: you can upload a CSV file containing Device IDs to retarget.
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​3. MMP’s Audience Builder: Some MMPs have a specific feature that enables advertisers to build audiences directly through the MMP interface and share the audience to Kayzen.

4. Data via CRM solution can also be streamed and used. Indeed, rather than using your MMP, you can use your CRM data directly, build the audience and stream it via API to Kayzen.