8 Retargeting Strategies to Boost ROI Without Spending More

Discover 8 proven retargeting strategies to improve ROI. Boost conversions across ads, email, and direct mail—without spending more on ad budgets.

Introduction

Marketing teams today face a frustrating paradox: ad costs on Google Ads and social media platforms keep climbing, but budgets aren’t growing at the same pace. That leaves marketers and agencies under pressure to deliver more conversions with fewer resources. 

The good news? You don’t necessarily need more ad spend to drive better results. By focusing on retargeting strategies, you can maximize the value of the audience you already have—turning more website visitors into customers without increasing your budget. 

Retargeting works by engaging people who’ve already shown interest in your brand, whether they visited your site for the first time, clicked on a product page, or started filling out a form. Instead of paying for more top-of-funnel traffic, you can re-engage these high-potential prospects with tailored campaigns that guide them toward conversion. 

In this post, we’ll break down what retargeting is, how it differs from remarketing, the main types of retargeting campaigns, and 8 proven retargeting strategies to boost ROI without increasing spend. You’ll also see how tools like the LeadPost Retargeting Suite make it easier to activate cross-channel retargeting across email, display ads, and even direct mail—all from a single platform. 

 

What Is Retargeting? 

Most people who land on your website for the first time won’t convert right away. In fact, industry research shows that the majority of visitors leave without taking action—whether that’s filling out a form, starting a free trial, or making a purchase. That’s where retargeting comes in. 

Retargeting is a digital marketing strategy that helps you re-engage people who have already interacted with your brand. Instead of treating every visitor like a stranger, retargeting campaigns identify past visitors and deliver tailored follow-ups that encourage them to come back and convert. 

Here’s how it works: 

• A visitor lands on your site or a specific landing page. 

• Tracking tools capture their behavior (like products viewed or content consumed). 

• That data is used to build a retargeting audience—people who’ve already shown interest. 

• You then deliver retargeting ads, emails, or direct mail designed to move them closer to becoming a customer. 

By focusing on people who already know your brand, retargeting strategies reduce wasted spend, improve conversion rates, and increase ROI. In short, retargeting works because it gives potential customers the right message at the right time—when they’re most likely to act. 

 

Retargeting vs. Remarketing: What’s the Difference? 

Marketers often hear the terms retargeting and remarketing used interchangeably—and while they share similarities, there are subtle differences worth understanding. 

• Retargeting typically refers to ad-based strategies that reach people who have already interacted with your brand online. For example, showing display ads on the Google Display Network, running Facebook retargeting campaigns, or using dynamic retargeting to serve personalized ads to visitors who viewed a specific product. Retargeting is focused on keeping your brand in front of potential customers until they’re ready to convert. 

• Remarketing, on the other hand, has traditionally meant email-based follow-ups sent to existing customers or contacts in your database. Think of an abandoned cart email, a reactivation campaign for lapsed customers, or a win-back sequence offering a discount code. 

While the technical distinction is clear, many marketers use the terms interchangeably today. What matters most is the strategy: both retargeting and remarketing aim to re-engage people who’ve already shown interest in your brand, making them more cost-effective than campaigns targeting cold audiences. 

The best marketing teams use a combination of both—leveraging retargeting campaigns for ad impressions and remarketing emails for nurturing—so they can maximize conversions without adding extra ad spend. 

 

Types of Retargeting Campaigns 

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to retargeting. The most effective marketers create retargeting campaigns that align with their audience’s preferences, their budget, and their overall digital marketing strategy. Let’s look at three of the most common—and most effective—approaches. 

1. Social & Display Retargeting

Social and display retargeting is the most widely used form of retargeting. These campaigns keep your brand visible across social media platforms and the Google Display Network, so your ads follow visitors even after they leave your site. 

Examples include: 

• Facebook retargeting ads reminding someone about a product they viewed. 

• Dynamic retargeting on Google showing the exact item left in a cart. 

• Custom audiences built from high-value landing page visits, then synced to Instagram or LinkedIn. 

The value here is repetition—your brand stays top-of-mind, increasing the chance that potential customers will return and convert. 

2. Email Retargeting

While display ads are powerful, email retargeting remains one of the highest ROI tactics available. By capturing visitor data, you can automatically send behavior-based emails to re-engage prospects—even if they didn’t complete a form on your site. 

Examples include: 

• A follow-up email triggered when someone visits your pricing page. 

• A personalized offer sent to people who abandoned their cart. 

• A nurture sequence reminding a lead of the benefits of your solution. 

Because email goes directly to the inbox, it’s a low-cost way to turn interest into action. 

3. Direct Mail Retargeting

Direct mail has made a comeback in modern retargeting strategies. With the right technology, you can automatically send personalized postcards to visitors who hit specific pages on your site. 

Examples include: 

• Sending a postcard featuring the model of car someone viewed on a dealership site. 

• Mailing a mortgage offer to someone who completed an online calculator. 

• Delivering an invitation to schedule a demo for B2B buyers. 

This approach cuts through the digital noise, creating a tangible connection that’s harder to ignore. Direct mail is also ideal for ABM (Account-Based Marketing) plays, since you can send as few as one postcard to a decision-maker—perfect for 1:1 campaigns or teams on a tight budget. 

 

8 Retargeting Strategies to Boost ROI Without Increasing Spend 

1. Segment Smarter to Reduce Waste

One of the quickest ways to boost ROI without touching your budget is smarter segmentation. Many retargeting campaigns waste money serving ads to the wrong people—like existing customers, competitors, or visitors who showed no real buying intent. By applying filters and suppression rules, you can focus your spend only on high-potential customers. 

For example, instead of retargeting every visitor who hit your homepage, segment audiences by behavior: people who visited a landing page with pricing, downloaded a whitepaper, or spent more than 90 seconds browsing your site. These signals indicate higher intent, which means your retargeting ads are more likely to convert. 

 

2. Leverage First-Party Data for Stronger Audiences

Cookies are fading, and third-party data is increasingly unreliable. To maximize ROI, marketers need to lean on first-party data—the information you already have on your own visitors. With platforms like LeadPost, you can identify up to 40% of previously anonymous traffic and add them to custom audiences across Facebook, Google, and email. 

This approach expands your retargeting audience without buying more traffic. Imagine capturing someone who visited your site for the first time, enriching their profile with a verified email, and then adding them to a Facebook retargeting campaign. You’re not just re-engaging random visitors—you’re retargeting known, high-quality prospects with real potential to convert. 

 

3. Go Cross-Channel for Greater Impact

Many marketers make the mistake of limiting retargeting to one channel, like social ads. But today’s customers move fluidly between social media platforms, email, and offline experiences. To maximize ROI, you need to retarget across channels. 

A cross-channel strategy might look like this: a visitor engages with your Google Display Network ad, then receives a personalized email follow-up, and a week later, a direct mail postcard lands in their mailbox. Each touchpoint reinforces your message, making it far more likely they’ll return and convert. 

The magic of cross-channel is efficiency—you’re reusing the same captured audience in multiple formats. Instead of spending more on top-of-funnel ads, you’re squeezing more value out of every visitor. 

 

4. Use Dynamic Retargeting for Personalization

Generic ads are easy to ignore. But when you tailor your retargeting strategy with dynamic retargeting, results improve dramatically. Dynamic injection allows you to automatically swap in personalized images, text, or offers based on a visitor’s past behavior. 

For example, if someone browses a particular car model on your site, they’ll see display ads or Facebook retargeting ads featuring that exact model. If they looked at pricing, they might receive a direct mail postcard with a tailored financing offer. Even emails can dynamically adjust content blocks to highlight the products or services a visitor viewed most. 

The closer your retargeting message aligns to what someone has already shown interest in, the higher your chances of converting them—without spending more. 

 

5. A/B Test Across All Channels

Retargeting isn’t “set it and forget it.” To continually improve ROI, you need to test. Many marketers stop at testing ad creative, but with the right tools, you can run A/B tests across email, ads, and even direct mail campaigns. 

Experiment with subject lines, headlines, images, and calls-to-action. Test timing too—does a postcard sent three days after a landing page visit convert better than one sent after a week? Does an email with a discount outperform one focused on testimonials? 

Every small improvement compounds, helping you squeeze more conversions out of the same spend. Testing lets you optimize your retargeting campaigns without needing bigger budgets. 

 

6. Trigger Campaigns Based on Behavior

Timing is everything in marketing. Retargeting works best when it’s triggered by real-time behavior instead of arbitrary rules. For instance, you might trigger a Google Ads retargeting campaign when someone visits your product demo page, or send a direct mail postcard when they use your pricing calculator. 

By aligning retargeting campaigns with high-intent actions, you ensure your message reaches people at the moment they’re most likely to act. That’s far more cost-effective than serving the same generic ad to every past visitor. 

Behavior-based retargeting doesn’t just boost ROI—it also creates a better customer experience. Instead of being blasted with irrelevant ads, your audience receives timely, relevant reminders. 

 

7. Integrate Retargeting into ABM Strategies

For B2B marketers, retargeting is essential for Account-Based Marketing (ABM). ABM focuses on high-value accounts rather than broad audiences, and retargeting provides the ongoing touchpoints needed to stay top-of-mind with decision-makers. 

Imagine you’re targeting five executives at a prospective client. You can use LinkedIn retargeting ads for air cover, send personalized postcards addressed directly to those executives, and follow up with behavior-triggered emails. And thanks to platforms like LeadPost, you can send as few as one postcard—making ABM retargeting feasible even on tight budgets. 

This 1:1 approach turns retargeting from a mass-market tactic into a precision tool for engaging the accounts that matter most. 

 

8. Measure & Optimize with Attribution Data

Finally, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. To maximize ROI, use attribution dashboards to understand which retargeting campaigns actually drive conversions. Look beyond vanity metrics like clicks—focus on revenue, cost per acquisition, and customer lifetime value. 

For example, you may find that direct mail retargeting generates fewer impressions but delivers a higher conversion rate than display ads. Or maybe your email retargeting campaigns are outperforming social. With this insight, you can double down on the channels and creative that work best, reallocating spend without increasing your budget. 

Smarter measurement ensures your retargeting strategy keeps getting better over time. 

 

Why LeadPost’s Retargeting Suite Works 

The strategies above can transform how you approach retargeting—but they’re often difficult to execute without the right tools. That’s where the LeadPost Retargeting Suite comes in. It’s designed to help marketers capture, segment, and activate audiences across multiple channels, all from a single platform. 

Here’s how it works: 

• Audience Capture: Start with anonymous visitors or upload CRM/email lists. LeadPost identifies up to 40% of unknown traffic and makes them available for activation. 

• Profile Data Capture: Collect verified contact details—names, emails, mailing addresses, job titles, and more—to fuel precise retargeting campaigns. 

• Filter & Suppress: Exclude existing customers, competitors, or irrelevant traffic to reduce wasted spend. 

• Cross-Channel Activation: Trigger outreach across email retargeting, display ads, and direct mail from the same dashboard. 

• Dynamic Injection: Automatically personalize ads, emails, and postcards with tailored content and images. 

• A/B Testing Everywhere: Test creative, offers, and timing across every channel, including direct mail. 

• ABM-Friendly: Send as few as one postcard—perfect for 1:1 campaigns with high-value accounts or small budgets. 

• Track Results: Built-in attribution dashboards make it easy to see what’s working and where to optimize. 

 

And the results speak for themselves: 

• An automotive dealer sold 7 cars—4 from postcard matches—at just $34 CPA. 

• A real estate agency drove 5 home sales in a 6-week postcard campaign. 

• An insurance provider saw a 43% higher conversion rate among direct mail recipients. 

By combining smarter segmentation, personalization, and cross-channel execution, LeadPost helps you boost your retargeting ROI—without increasing spend. 

 

Conclusion: Convert More Without Spending More 

At a time when marketing budgets are under scrutiny and ad costs continue to climb, the smartest teams aren’t throwing more money at the problem—they’re making better use of the traffic they already have. That’s what makes retargeting such a powerful lever. 

By applying the strategies we’ve covered—smarter segmentation, cross-channel campaigns, dynamic personalization, A/B testing, behavior triggers, and ABM integration—you can significantly improve the performance of your retargeting campaigns without touching your ad budget. 

Retargeting works because it builds on interest that’s already there. Visitors who’ve engaged with your brand once are far more likely to convert with the right nudge, whether that’s a timely email, a relevant Facebook retargeting ad, or a personalized postcard. 

With tools like the LeadPost Retargeting Suite, these strategies aren’t just possible—they’re streamlined. You can identify anonymous visitors, enrich your data, and activate cross-channel retargeting campaigns with built-in controls, dynamic injection, and attribution dashboards that prove ROI. 

The result? More conversions, stronger ROI, and sustainable growth—without the pressure of bigger ad budgets. 

Ready to boost your retargeting ROI?

Start a free trial of the LeadPost Retargeting Suite today and explore how easy it is to convert more of your audience across email, display ads, and direct mail. 

 

FAQ: Retargeting & Remarketing Basics 

1. What is retargeting in digital marketing?

Retargeting is a strategy that shows ads, emails, or direct mail to people who already visited your site or engaged with your brand. By focusing on past visitors instead of new traffic, retargeting campaigns boost conversions and ROI at a lower cost. 

2. What’s the difference between retargeting and remarketing?

Retargeting usually means ad-based campaigns like Facebook or Google Display ads aimed at past visitors. Remarketing often refers to email campaigns for existing customers, such as abandoned cart reminders. Both re-engage warm audiences to increase conversions. 

3. What are the different types of retargeting campaigns?

The main types of retargeting campaigns are: 

• Social & Display Ads (Google, Facebook, Instagram) 

• Email Retargeting (behavior-based emails) 

• Direct Mail Retargeting (postcards triggered by site activity) 

4. What are best practices for creating effective retargeting ads?

Best practices for retargeting ads include segmenting audiences, suppressing existing customers, using dynamic retargeting to personalize content, A/B testing creative, and aligning ads with the buyer’s journey. These steps improve relevance and boost conversion rates. 

5. How does retargeting help with Account-Based Marketing (ABM)?

Retargeting supports ABM by reinforcing brand messages across multiple channels for specific accounts. Marketers can target decision-makers with LinkedIn ads, personalized emails, or even a single direct mail postcard to drive 1:1 engagement. 

6. Can retargeting improve ROI without increasing ad spend?

Yes. Retargeting campaigns focus on people who already showed interest, so they convert at higher rates than cold audiences. By segmenting smarter and using behavior-based triggers, marketers can drive more ROI without raising budgets. 

7. What role does personalization play in retargeting strategies?

Personalization makes retargeting more effective. With dynamic retargeting, ads, emails, and postcards automatically display the exact product, service, or content a visitor viewed. Relevant messages convert better, boosting ROI without additional spend.