Customer Retargeting in Brazil

In this article we’ll examine the advantages of customer retargeting and indicate which of the largest online stores in Brazil make use of this method.

Retargeting methods and advantages

Grabbing a customer’s attention while they browse content online isn't always easy. Getting them to buy a product is even more difficult. Statistics continuously show that the massive majority, or 98%, of the public who access a product page simply do not buy it. These masses of potential customers gather info on the product they’re interested in and walk away empty-handed. However, this does not mean that the interaction a company has with them needs to end there.

Retargeting a customer who leaves an online marketplace has proven to become one of the most efficient techniques to reclaim this lost consumer. While it may seem counter-intuitive, displaying ads of products from a page a user has just left creates a high chance for customers to return and convert to make a purchase. Not only that, retargeting can help companies spread their influence in a number of ways.

For example, retargeting can help convert customers by enabling the display of custom advertising designed to specifically engage walk-away users, provide additional information or even offer special discounts to this market. Retargeting has proven to be a powerful tool for advertising because at the very least it extends the exposure of a brand to customers who got in contact with it.

Research shows that retargeting is one of the most efficient means of converting customers to make a purchase. A study by ComScore, in association with ValueClick Media, showed that retargeting was the most successful from a list of marketing techniques which included audience targeting, contextual targeting and premium-priced publicity.

Retargeting process and the Brazilian public

The process of retargeting consists mainly of tracking visitors to online stores. This means saving cookies on users' devices that store, for example, information about the websites they accessed and which purchases did or did not occur. This information is not only important to determine user habits but also to give a very precise indication of user interests.

While the placement and reading of cookies on a user’s device is not necessarily an invasive technique, some customers may be reluctant to handing an online store information about their purchasing decisions and buying habits.

This is more likely not to be the case in the Brazilian market. A survey conducted by Cisco Customer Experience in 2013 indicated that less of the country’s public is bothered by sharing personal data with online stores than the world average, as long as this information helps direct them to better products, deals or customer service. This survey also shows that retargeting is more efficient when combined with other marketing techniques.

Retargeting by Brazilian stores

Some of Brazil’s most successful online stores employ several means of retargeting to grab the customer’s attention. These strategies usually involve using ad space to display information on products whose pages a customer has recently been to but did not make a purchase on. Although it is unclear how much of their buyers’ decisions are influenced by retargeting, the sheer number and size of brands and sales of these websites point to the efficacy of this method.

A listing of the biggest Brazilian stores that employ customer retargeting include market leaders in classified products mercadolivre.com.br, retail giants americanas.com.br, submarino.com.br and walmart.com.br, online shoe retailer netshoes.com.br and fashion products seller dafiti.com.br, and price comparison service buscape.com.br.