sales-retargeting

What this skill does

# Retargeting & Remarketing Strategy

Help the user plan and execute retargeting campaigns — website visitor retargeting, cart abandonment recovery, dynamic product ads, cross-channel remarketing, and audience segmentation. This skill is tool-agnostic but includes platform-specific guidance.

## Step 1 — Gather context


If `references/learnings.md` exists, read it first for accumulated knowledge.

Ask the user:

1. **What's your retargeting goal?**
   - A) Recover abandoned carts (ecommerce)
   - B) Re-engage website visitors who didn't convert
   - C) Upsell/cross-sell existing customers
   - D) Bring back lapsed users or churned customers
   - E) Build a full retargeting funnel from scratch
   - F) Not sure — help me figure out what to retarget

2. **What channels do you want to retarget on?**
   - A) Display ads (banner ads across the web)
   - B) Social ads (Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn)
   - C) Google Ads (search remarketing, display network)
   - D) Email retargeting (triggered by website behavior)
   - E) Connected TV (CTV) / video
   - F) Multiple / all channels
   - G) Not sure — recommend channels

3. **What retargeting platform do you have (or are considering)?**
   - A) AdRoll
   - B) Google Ads (remarketing)
   - C) Meta Ads (Facebook/Instagram retargeting)
   - D) Criteo
   - E) LinkedIn Ads (website retargeting)
   - F) Native ESP retargeting (Klaviyo, Omnisend, etc.)
   - G) Remerge, Adwake, or Zoomd (mobile in-app retargeting)
   - H) None — evaluating options
   - I) Other — describe it

4. **What's your business type?**
   - A) Ecommerce / D2C
   - B) B2B SaaS or services
   - C) Local business / services
   - D) Publisher / content
   - E) Other

## Step 2 — Strategy and approach

### How retargeting works

Retargeting serves ads to people who have already interacted with your brand — visited your website, viewed products, added to cart, or engaged with content. It works through:

1. **Pixel-based retargeting**: A JavaScript pixel on your site drops a cookie (or uses first-party data) on each visitor. Ad platforms use this data to serve ads to those visitors elsewhere on the web.
2. **List-based retargeting**: Upload email lists or CRM contacts to ad platforms. The platform matches against their user base and serves ads to matched users.
3. **Server-side tracking**: Send conversion and behavior events from your server to ad platforms directly — more reliable than client-side pixels with ad blockers.

## Step 3 — Retargeting reference

**Read `references/platform-guide.md`** for detailed funnel frameworks, audience segmentation, frequency capping, creative strategy, platform-specific guidance, and budget allocation.

*You no longer need the platform guide details — focus on the user's specific situation.*

## Step 4 — Actionable guidance

### Quick-start: First retargeting campaign

1. **Install tracking** — pixel on your website + server-side tracking if available
2. **Wait for data** — let 1-2 weeks of visitor data accumulate (aim for 1,000+ unique visitors in your retargeting pool)
3. **Segment audiences** — create at least 3 segments: cart abandoners, product viewers, all visitors
4. **Create ads** — 3-5 creative variants per segment. Dynamic product ads for cart/product viewers, brand ads for general visitors.
5. **Set budget** — allocate 40-50% to cart abandoners, 30% to product viewers, 20% to general visitors
6. **Launch and monitor** — check daily for first week. Watch ROAS, frequency, and conversion rate by segment.
7. **Optimize** — after 7-14 days, cut underperforming segments, increase budget on high-ROAS segments, refresh creative.

## Gotchas

1. **Retargeting without fresh creative = ad fatigue** — the #1 mistake. Rotate creative every 2-3 weeks. If frequency is high and CTR is declining, your audience has tuned out your ads.

2. **Don't retarget everyone the same way** — a cart abandoner with $500 in their cart needs a different message than someone who bounced from your homepage in 3 seconds. Segment by behavior and value.

3. **iOS tracking limitations** — Apple's ATT framework (iOS 14.5+) significantly reduced pixel-based tracking accuracy for Safari/iOS users. Use server-side tracking (Meta CAPI, Google Enhanced Conversions, AdRoll S2S) to fill the gap.

4. **View-through attribution inflates ROAS** — platforms count conversions that happen after someone *saw* your ad, even if they didn't click. View-through is real but weaker than click-through. Compare click-through-only ROAS for a conservative measure.

5. **Retargeting cannibalizes organic conversions** — some retargeted users would have converted anyway. Run incrementality tests (holdout groups) to measure true lift. Typical true lift is 40-60% of reported retargeting conversions.

6. **Cookie deprecation** — third-party cookies are being phased out. Shift toward first-party data (email lists, logged-in users, server-side tracking) and contextual targeting. Platforms with strong first-party identity graphs (Meta, Google) will maintain better targeting.

- **Self-improving**: If you discover something not covered here, append it to `references/learnings.md` with today's date.

## Before recommending a specific platform skill

This skill covers a strategy domain across many platforms. **Before pointing the user to any specific platform skill** (any `/sales-{platform}` listed in `## Related skills`, e.g., `/sales-mailshake`, `/sales-klaviyo`, `/sales-apollo`), read that platform skill's actual `SKILL.md` first. The 1-line description in `## Related skills` is enough to *identify* a candidate — it's not enough to *commit* to it or to write a prompt that invokes it well.

**How to read it:**
- If `~/.claude/skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md` exists locally, `Read` it.
- For `sales-*` skills, `WebFetch` directly from this repo: `https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sales-skills/sales/main/skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md` — e.g., for `sales-mailshake`: `https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sales-skills/sales/main/skills/sales-mailshake/SKILL.md`.
- For non-`sales-*` skills (third-party), look up `{org}/{repo}` in `~/.claude/skills/sales-do/references/skill-sources.md` if installed and fetch the same `skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md` path under that repo.

**After reading,** ground your recommendation in something concrete from the SKILL.md (its scope, a sub-flow, its `argument-hint` shape, or a "Do NOT use for..." negative trigger). Align any generated invocation with the platform skill's `argument-hint`. If the platform skill turns out not to fit the user's situation, swap to another or handle the question here directly rather than recommending a poor fit.

## Related skills

- `/sales-retention` — Retention.com platform help (ecommerce identity resolution, abandonment recovery)
- `/sales-customersai` — Customers.ai platform help (ad retargeting audience recovery via X-Ray identity resolution for Meta, Google, TikTok)
- `/sales-adroll` — AdRoll platform help (retargeting pixel, campaigns, audiences, RollWorks ABM, NextRoll API)
- `/sales-b2b-advertising` — Account-based B2B advertising (ABM ads, not consumer retargeting)
- `/sales-email-marketing` — Email marketing strategy (email retargeting flows are covered here for strategy, platform skills for setup)
- `/sales-checkout` — Checkout optimization (reducing abandonment at the source)
- `/sales-funnel` — Funnel strategy (retargeting supports mid/bottom-funnel conversion)
- `/sales-audience-growth` — Growing your email/subscriber list (retargeting as a list-growth tactic)
- `/sales-klaviyo` — Klaviyo platform help (email/SMS retargeting flows for ecommerce)
- `/sales-omnisend` — Omnisend platform help (email/SMS retargeting for ecommerce)
- `/sales-blueconic` — BlueConic CDP — build retargeting audiences from unified profiles, activate segments to ad platforms
- `/sales-reddit-ads` — Reddit Ads platform help (subreddit targeting, website retargeting, engagement audiences)
- `/sales-cloutboost` — Cloutboost platform hel