Retargeting: ads for visitors who left, and where email does the job for less
Showing ads to people who've already visited your site. It follows strangers around the internet. Your email flows do the same job for the people you can name.
- 112Retargeting
- A form of online advertising that targets users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your brand, encouraging them to return and complete a desired action.
- Also called
- Remarketing, which is Google's word for it
- Works through
- A pixel or tag on your site, or a customer list you upload
- In the UK
- Needs cookie consent before the tracking starts
Ads for people who've been to your site before
A pixel or tag on your site notes who visited and what they looked at. Meta, Google and the rest then show those people your ads elsewhere, often for the exact product they viewed. Upload a customer list and the platforms can match that too.
In the UK, advertising pixels aren't strictly necessary, so they need consent before they fire. The ICO's cookies guidance sets out the rules. Visitors who say no to your banner never join the audience. That's the plain reading, not legal advice.
Retargeting follows the browser, flows follow the person
| Compared on | Retargeting ads | Email and SMS flows |
|---|---|---|
| Who it reaches | Visitors who accepted your cookies | People who've given you an address or a number |
| What it knows | Pages viewed on that device | Name, order history, what's in the basket |
| What it costs | Every impression or click, every time | The cost of the send |
| Where it lands | A feed, among everything else | The inbox, or their messages |
Klaviyo can only follow visitors it can identify: people who've clicked one of your emails or texts, filled in one of your forms or logged in, as its onsite tracking guide explains. For those people, an abandoned cart flow does the retargeting ad's job, with more detail and no bill per view.
Stop your ads and your emails tripping over each other
- Leave recent buyers out. Klaviyo can sync a segment to Meta and Google as an audience, so whoever runs your ads can exclude it
- Don't put a discount in the ad that the cart email doesn't offer, or customers learn to wait for the better deal
- Cap how often one person sees the same ad
- Count the overlap honestly. The ad they scrolled past and the email they clicked can both claim the same order
That last one bites when budgets get set. Neither channel is lying, but they can't both have caused it. Our piece on whether email revenue is incremental covers how to test it.
Related terms
FAQs
What's the difference between retargeting and remarketing?
Mostly the name. Google calls its version remarketing, and some people use remarketing for follow-up emails specifically. Either way, the idea is reaching people who've already shown interest. The distinction that matters is between ads, which follow a browser, and emails, which reach a person.
Is an abandoned cart email a form of retargeting?
In spirit, yes. Same trigger, same goal. The difference is that it reaches a known person in their inbox, for the cost of a send, and it can show exactly what they left behind. If you're paying for retargeting ads before your cart and browse flows are live, you've done it in the wrong order.
Does retargeting still work with cookie banners and privacy settings?
It works on a smaller audience than it used to. Visitors who decline cookies never join it, and privacy features in browsers and phones trim it further. That's one more reason to ask for an email address. A subscriber stays reachable whatever their browser does.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
Half an hour with Theo, our founder.
We're all about relationships built on trust, mutual respect and a shared vision for success. If that sounds like your vibe, let's make some waves together 🌊
