What’s worse than a shopper abandoning their cart? Spending too much to try and win them back. With cart abandonment rates averaging 70.19%, brands often end up chasing down lost sales. These efforts can be expensive, and sometimes inefficient.
As digital ad costs continue to rise, the urgency to adopt more cost-effective abandoned cart recovery strategies increases. Two of the most common tools for recovering lost sales often get confused: retargeting vs. remarketing. That’s why understanding the difference between the two is key to choosing the right approach.
While they’re often used interchangeably, these strategies take very different paths to the same goal. The one you prioritize could make all the difference.
Retargeting Vs. Remarketing: What’s the Real Difference?
Choosing the best abandoned cart recovery strategy requires understanding how each tactic works to re-engage website visitors and recover lost revenue.
Retargeting vs. remarketing: while the terms are often used synonymously, they take very different approaches to reaching lost shoppers. The key difference lies in how and where the engagement happens.
Let’s take a look at the difference between remarketing and retargeting:
Retargeting Strategies
Retargeting campaigns use paid ads such as display ads or social media promotions to reconnect with past visitors. These ads appear across platforms like Google Ads, Instagram, or Facebook. It’s an off-site, ad-based strategy focused on visibility and repetition, often relying on third-party cookies and broad behavioral targeting.
Remarketing Strategies
Remarketing campaigns rely on owned channels such as email marketing, SMS, and on-site messaging to directly re-engage shoppers. These tactics are triggered in real time, personalized to the individual, and can launch before a shopper even leaves the site. Lead capture tools further enhance remarketing by securing contact information. This gives brands more control over how and when they follow up.
Consider this scenario:
A shopper views the product page for a pair of shoes online, adds them to cart, and abandons checkout.
- Retargeting: The next day, the shopper scrolls through Instagram and sees a display ad for the same pair of shoes, nudging them to return to the site.
- Remarketing: An hour later, the shopper receives a personalized recovery email reminding them of the shoes, with a direct link to return to their cart and complete the purchase.
While both aim to recover the sale, remarketing strategies offer a faster, more cost-efficient, and highly personalized path to conversion. Without relying on rising ad spend or third-party platforms, this makes remarketing a powerful alternative to retargeting ads.
Why Retargeting Ads Drive Up the Cost of Cart Abandonment Recovery
Relying solely on retargeting ads to recover lost sales can quickly drain your marketing budget. As digital ad costs continue to rise due to privacy changes, increased competition, and limited attribution visibility, many ecommerce brands now face higher customer acquisition costs with less precise targeting.
Retargeting is also a reactive strategy. By the time your ad appears, it may be too late to win the shopper back. Even if the timing is right, ad fatigue presents another challenge. Without fresh creatives or personalized messaging, retargeting efforts often blend into the noise, making them easy to ignore.
This is where remarketing strategies offer a compelling alternative to retargeting ads. Through owned channels like email and on-site messaging, brands can engage shoppers earlier with personalized, timely messages that reduce reliance on paid media.
That said, retargeting doesn’t need to be abandoned entirely. When combined with remarketing, retargeting helps reinforce your message across multiple channels. Together, they support a more cohesive, omnichannel abandoned cart recovery strategy.
5 Remarketing Strategies to Recover Abandoned Carts
Not all shoppers are ready to convert in the moment. But when comparing retargeting vs. remarketing, remarketing strategies offer more flexibility, lower cost, and greater personalization to recover those missed opportunities without relying on paid ads. Here are five actionable ways to improve your abandoned cart recovery efforts.
1. Capture Leads with Timely Incentives
One of the most effective ways to enhance your remarketing strategy is by proactively building your email list through lead capture tactics. Encouraging shoppers to opt in to brand communications before they abandon gives you greater control over when and how you follow up.
Consider these strategies:
- Proactively engage visitors with an on-site engagement that reiterates a sitewide perk, like free shipping.
- Upon abandonment, offer an exclusive discount in exchange for the shopper’s email address.
Why this works: Shoppers who willingly share their contact information are more likely to engage with future remarketing messages.
2. Allow Shoppers to Save Their Cart for Later
Sometimes, shoppers abandon not because they’re uninterested, but because they’re undecided. Giving them the option to save their cart for later allows shoppers to hit pause without losing their progress, and gives your brand a second opportunity to convert.
Consider these strategies:
- Encourage abandoning shoppers to opt in to save their cart for later before they exit.
- Follow up with a personalized email marketing message that restores their cart contents and includes a direct link to checkout.
Why this works: This abandoned cart recovery strategy reduces friction and makes it easy for shoppers to pick up where they left off through a personalized checkout link, without the need for paid advertising.
3. Trigger Relevant Messaging with Behavioral Data
On-site cart abandonment recovery tactics, like personalized, real-time messaging, are among the most effective ways to re-engage shoppers. By tailoring messages to shopper behavior, you can influence decisions at critical moments, before they leave your site.
Consider these strategies:
- If a shopper is abandoning their cart after viewing a product, launch a dynamic on-site engagement that allows them to sign up for price drop alerts.
- When shoppers view items that are out of stock, prompt them to sign up for back-in-stock notifications.
- If an item has limited stock available, create urgency and encourage immediate action by highlighting stock availability on recently viewed items.
Why this works: These personalized on-site cart abandonment recovery tactics use real-time behavioral data to deliver timely, relevant messages that convert. They also give shoppers the opportunity to opt in for future remarketing.
4. Follow Up with Personalized Email Remarketing
When a shopper leaves without converting, timely follow-up is key. Sending a personalized message shortly after abandonment keeps your brand top of mind and encourages return visits.
Consider this strategy:
- Send a series of targeted email remarketing messages that includes dynamic content such as abandoned cart items, product recommendations, or calculated cart value.
Why this works: Email remarketing allows you to deliver highly personalized messages that reflect each shopper’s behavior, from cart contents to browsing history, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
5. Identify Anonymous Visitors
Most website visitors leave without logging in or creating an account, but that doesn’t mean the opportunity is lost once they abandon. Even if a shopper begins entering their email address mid-session but doesn’t hit submit, that information can still be captured. This strategy gives your brand a way to identify anonymous visitors and follow up with personalized outreach.
Consider this strategy:
- Capture pre-submit contact details by monitoring form fields in real time, allowing you to identify visitors even if they abandon before the checkout page.
- Send personalized email remarketing messages that reflect the shopper’s behavior and interests, creating a relevant follow-up experience that encourages them to return and convert.
Why this works: Capturing contact details before a form is submitted extends remarketing reach and allows you to recover revenue that might have otherwise been lost with personalized emails.
Recover Abandoned Carts with Proven Remarketing Strategies
When it comes to comparing retargeting vs. remarketing, the difference lies in ownership, personalization, and efficiency. While retargeting relies on paid visibility, remarketing strategies offer a compelling alternative to retargeting ads by using your own channels, like email marketing, SMS, and on-site engagements. This approach drives more meaningful and cost-effective abandoned cart recovery.
Upsellit helps brands turn missed opportunities into conversions with smarter remarketing strategies tailored to shopper behavior. From pre-submit email capture to dynamic post-abandonment emails, our solutions empower brands to recover more without relying solely on ad spend.
Explore our Remarketing Experience Case Study to see how real brands are combining on-site and post-abandonment tactics to create personalized remarketing campaigns that work.
