esbconnect announces four new customers for its Optivo email retargeting platform 

GoApe, Simba, Broadband Genie and Costway are the latest companies to tap into Optivo’s ability to retarget anonymous website visitors, NOT on your CRM via email in the UK.

Customer acquisition specialist esbconnect has announced four new customers for its audience retargeting tool, Optivo – the UK- first email retargeting platform, for anonymous site visitors, not in a brand’s CRM system. They are outdoor adventure company Go Ape; award-winning mattress maker Simba; broadband price comparison site Broadband Genie and home and garden brand, Costway. All four will use Optivo to retarget unlogged-in visitors to their websites via email after they have visited their site. 

Retargeting website visitors via email is a proven tactic, with cart abandonment emails delivering an average 26% uplift in conversions. According to the DMA, retargeting emails typically deliver read rates in excess of 40% and an ROI of 4X, with some of Optivo’s partners reporting 2.2x this figure.

This is usually only possible, however, if a visitor has already handed over their email, by logging in or starting a purchase – something that nine out of 10 people who visit a website don’t do. Optivo removes that condition. Using esbconnect’s GDPR-compliant database of 17 million opted-in UK consumers, it matches anonymous visitors to a real, opted-in email address, checks they’re not already a customer, and enrols them into a compliant email journey within minutes of leaving the site. Anyone who chooses to subscribe is added straight to the brand’s CRM, so future purchases can be tracked in the usual way. The process has been proven in the US, and is now available for the first time in the UK via Optivo.

Optivo is particularly relevant for infrequent, high consideration purchases like mattresses, broadband or family days out. Someone who spends 10 minutes on a website researching any of these items is showing real intent. But high consideration purchases like these rarely convert on the first visit – a mattress, for example, is bought only once every seven to 10 years, so the buyer needs time, comparison and reassurance before they commit, and if the brand can’t stay in touch, that browsing session is wasted. The same is true across retail more broadly. Search and social have become crowded and expensive, with brands bidding against each other just to get back in front of someone who has already shown interest. The inbox doesn’t have that problem. It’s quieter, cheaper to reach, and the brand owns the relationship, rather than renting attention from Google or Meta. 

“Over the last 12 months, Optivo has proven itself as a valuable and effective retargeting tool for brands outside of traditional retargeting, like social, display and search, which have become noisy and pricey, and with the ability to suppress your current users, answering the criticism often heard about retargeting, that it’s not incremental?” said esbconnect CEO, Suzanna Chaplin. “We have seen that between 3% and 5% of people who enter into this process convert to become subscribers, with between 0.5% and 2% making a purchase, with an ROI of more than 18X. Secret Sales reports that people who subscribe via Optivo spend 35% more than their active customers. The addition of these four great new brands to our client roster is a further endorsement of email’s power as a retargeting channel, and of Optivo’s ability to leverage that power to retarget website visitors, even when they have not identified themselves.”

Charlie Du Puy, Email Marketing Manager at Go Ape is pleased with how Optivo is performing. He said: “We were excited to test Optivo as a new way to retarget unknown visitors to our website. The results so far have been really promising – a ROAS of 4.8 against our primary KPI.”

Source: esbconnect

  Charlie Du Puy, esbconnect, Go Ape, Optivo, Suzanna Chaplin