Retargeting and Customer Development

We've all been there. We buy from Walleye Direct, and six hours later we see this.

Twitter is a place where reason and digital best practices crack skulls. One person tweeted that he bought a washer/dryer, then spent weeks seeing washer/dryer ads though he just bought a washer/dryer. Same thing happened to me. I bought a Dell laptop last June and for six months I was continually "retargeted" by Dell to buy a laptop.

Then the digital gurus pile on in the opposite direction. "It's cheap", "It's branding", "the ROI is too good (never mind lousy attribution models designed to benefit retargeters", "it's practically free". They seldom say, "yeah, the strategies we promote are stupid, lazy, redundant."

Here's what we know.

• When a customer buys for the first time, you have between 30 and 90 days to encourage a second purchase before the customer begins to lapse.
• Customers who buy from multiple merchandise categories are more valuable than are customers buying from one merchandise category.

So retargeting has a place. But do something valuable with it. DEVELOP a customer. Cross-shop the customer into adjacent merchandise categories. Tell a brief story. Do anything ... anything ... but sell the darn customer the exact same item the customer just purchased, especially when the customer only buys that item once every "x" years.

Develop your Customers.