What Valentine’s Day Can Tell Us About Running a Remarketing Campaign

I'm of the opinion that loved ones should receive flowers on Valentine's Day. It's just in my DNA. That being said, like other online shoppers, I did some research to see which flower delivering service was worthy of my business this year. In the back of my mind, I was going to go with the website that not only had the lower price... but also decided to remarket me in an attempt to come back to their site to place an order.

SPOILER (highlight for the short & sweet answer): I had to use both sites I did research on: 1-800 Flowers and ProFlowers.

What is Remarketing?

According to Google, remarketing lets you show banner ads to users who've previously visited your website as they browse the Web.

Remarketing is something more and more companies are starting to include in their marketing portfolio. It's with good reason too, as remarketing gives brands the ability to customize an ad that is shown to a user based on browsing history on their website.

You can do some really creative stuff with remarketing, such as advertising a follow-up webinar to people who signed up and watched on one your site (my favorite example: show an upcoming 201 webinar to people who watched a 101 webinar) and even showing an ad with an extra discount for those who fell out of the purchasing conversion funnel.

What Makes Valentine's Day The Perfect Case Study

Valentine's Day is like "Black Friday" for Florists. For fresh flower purchases, Valentine's Day ranks No. 1 out of all major U.S. holidays with 36% of holiday transactions and 40% of holiday dollar volume.

With percentages that large, you bet online florist services will try to not only capture your business for V-Day... but for other holidays and special occasions.

Who knows? If I'm happy with my online floral delivery experience, I may just develop into a loyal customer. And as I covered in my previous blog post, these type of customers are $$$ for businesses.

First Company - ProFlowers

I had heard the name but never ordered anything from this website. After poking around, looking at their selection, and jotting down prices, I left.

Immediately after closing the tab, I saw an ad on another website:

"Deal Of The Day"? Reduced prices? And two items I had my eye on were in the ad?

ProFlowers went with the angle of trying to get me back to their site by advertising reduced prices. It worked, as I kept on seeing their ad as it followed me around the Internet and eventually ordered tulips with chocolates for both my Mom and Mother-in-law.

Second Company - 1-800 Flowers

This was a website I was already familiar with, as I had used their service in the past. I feel like 1-800 Flowers has been around forever; surely they wouldn't need to use remarketing, right?

Wrong!

After doing some research, I closed out of their window and started seeing ads like this:

Here they're doing almost a little bit of scare-tactic marketing. "Quantities are limited - hurry up and order!" That didn't really hook me (you're one of the biggest online florist service websites out there; are you really going to run out of flowers?) but I did like the "Save 15%" message. After clicking it and confirming the savings were for anything, I ordered roses for my wife.

Congratulations - you both won my business

Fortunately for those two websites, I was ordering multiple flower deliveries. This probably isn't the usual buying experience, as I would think most people using an online floral delivery service only have one order to make.

Both websites used remarketing to try to get me back to their website by offering discounts. I thought the ProFlowers remarketing ad has a better hook, as they directly showed two items I had looked at in their ad copy. They also mentioned how it was a daily deal... so I had to order that day or potentially lose on some significant savings.

What floral delivery service will I go with next year? Well, maybe I'll try to see which company is doing mobile click-to-call marketing and go with that one. We'll see!

Did you order flowers online for Valentine's Day? Did you notice any remarketing ads "following you" around the Internet? Let us know!