What are Website Retargeting Playbooks
After you install the RollWorks Pixel on your site, our platform will capture your website traffic and your visitor behavior on your website. The Website Retargeting Playbook offers you a pre-packaged way to display ads to users that have already visited your website, with the goal of ultimately generating form-fill conversions.
Web Retargeting Playbooks offer you three pre-packaged strategies to choose from (standard, intermediate, and advanced). When you launch your playbook we will automatically recommend one of these three strategies based on your total number of website visitors. The result is a sequence of preset retargeting campaigns that will serve different ads to visitors based on any page views and specific page views for your high-value pages:
- Standard: Target all your website traffic in a single campaign.
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Intermediate: Split your website traffic into two audiences and target them separately:
- People who viewed at least 1 page
- People who viewed at least 3 pages
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Advanced: Split your website traffic into three audiences:
- People who viewed at least 1 page
- People who viewed at least 3 pages
- People who viewed your high-value pages (for example, visitors who abandoned a form or view your pricing page)
To launch a retargeting advertising strategy RollWorks offers two options: Website Retargeting Playbooks and Website Retargeting Campaigns. While the underlying retargeting algorithm is the same for campaigns and playbooks there are some differences in their settings capabilities.
Playbooks are very easy to set up and manage and include multiple pre-packaged campaigns based on RollWorks best practices, however, they only allow you to retarget all your website traffic.
Campaigns are not as straightforward to set up and maintain, but allow flexibility to target visitors to specific pages in your website, instead of all your website traffic.
The table below summarizes the key differences between our website retargeting campaigns and playbooks.
| Feature | Description | Website Retargeting Campaigns | Website Retargeting Playbooks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retargeting Strategies | Take the guesswork out of knowing the right retargeting strategy. Automatic strategy recommendation (basic, intermediate, or advanced) to segment your Playbook into 1, 2, or 3 different preset campaigns with preset audiences and different ads. | ❌ | ✅ |
| Budget Estimates and management | Automatic optimal monthly budget recommendation to effectively reach the cookies in your audience | ❌ | ✅ |
| Real-time Audience Estimates | Understand how cookie durations and countries impact your audience size and cookie counts. | ❌ | ✅ |
| Automatic conversion exclusions |
Stop targeting users that have completed a fill form conversion automatically. Exclude audiences targeted through other Playbooks. |
❌ | ✅ |
| AdGroups |
Segment your campaign to display specific ads to Website Audiences who have visited a specific high-value/landing page. Segment your campaign to display specific ads to a list of emails in a Contact Audience. |
✅ | ❌ |
| Audience flexibility |
Include or exclude specific website audiences or contact audiences. Retarget only specific URLs in your website instead of all your website traffic. |
✅ | ❌ |
Who can access
The Website Retargeting Playbook is available to customers on any of our paid subscription packages: Starter, Standard, Professional, or Ultimate.
|
My RollWorks Package |
Can I launch Website Retargeting Playbooks? |
|---|---|
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❌ No |
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✅ Yes, as many as you need. |
To find your current subscription, log in to RollWorks and navigate to Settings > Billing > Plans & Usage.
Launch a Website Retargeting Playbook
Before you start:
To use the Website Retargeting Playbook, you must first complete the following steps in the RollWorks Platform:
- Activate the RollWorks Pixel on your website. Learn how to install your Pixel here.
- Create a Website Audience for your high-value pages. Learn how to create high-value page website audiences here.
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- Each landing page where your visitors are prompted to submit a form with their email address (i.e. demo request).
- Your most valuable pages that denote your visitor is interested in your product or services (i.e. pricing pages and product-specific pages).
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Create a Conversion Audience for each of your conversion pages. Learn how to create conversion audiences here.
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- Each 'thank you' or confirmation page is shown to your visitors after they submit their email through a form on your website.
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- Upload at least one set of creative Web Ads. You will need different 3 ad sets if you choose an advanced retargeting strategy. Learn how to upload Ads here.
Now you are ready to create your new Website Retargeting Playbook:
- Log in to RollWorks and navigate to Advertising > Campaigns & Playbooks > Create.
- Click Website Retargeting > Get Started.
Step 1: Select your Playbook Strategy
You will be prompted to choose one of the following 3 retargeting strategies.
- Standard: Target all your website traffic in a single campaign.
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Intermediate: Split your website traffic into two audiences and target them separately:
- People who viewed at least 1 page
- People who viewed at least 3 pages
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Advanced: Split your website traffic into three audiences:
- People who viewed at least 1 page
- People who viewed at least 3 pages
- People who viewed your high-value pages (for example, visitors who abandoned a form or view your pricing page)
The RollWorks platform will recommend and highlight one of these strategies based on your monthly website unique visitors and our best practices to yield optimal performance. Selecting your strategy determines how many different sets of Ads we recommend you use for each campaign.
Step 2: Define your Audience
In this second step, you will define the criteria for your Playbook audience including:
- Geography: Use Geography to target specific countries. Selecting specific countries will not factor into the Potential Audience estimate for this Playbook, but will be applied as a filter in targeting once the Playbook is running.
Geotargeting limitations
Granular geotargeting based on zip code, city metropolitan area, or state is not available with Playbooks.
If you want to select a global region, for example, APAC, you will need to manually select all the countries individually.
- Last Visit: We recommend targeting visitors who have visited your website within the last 90 days. You can decrease this timeframe to decrease your potential audience and recommended budget.
- General Exclusions: Decide if the customers you defined previously in General Exclusions should be targeted or not.
Step 3. Set up your Campaigns
Click on the Playbook Strategy that you selected in the prior step 1 to continue with the step-by-step instructions that apply to your strategy:
As part of this step, you will select the set of Ads that will be used to target each campaign. We strongly recommend that you use different Ads with different messaging for each campaign within a Playbook. If you haven’t added your Ads to your Ad Library you can learn more about how to in this Ad Guide.
Standard Retargeting Strategy
If you chose this strategy you will target a single audience of people who viewed at least 1 page with one campaign. Your objective is to re-engage website visitors with the final goal to submit a conversion form fill. Once a user meets this goal we will automatically stop showing ads.
Continue to set the Campaign in your Playbook as follows:
- Add Ads to your Campaign. We suggest that you use a different set of Ads for each one, customized to the different customer stages. Learn more Ad best practices here.
| AWARE |
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Re-Engage Website Visitors - Audience: 1 page viewed - Select Ads - Goal = 3 pages viewed |
Intermediate Retargeting Strategy
If you chose this strategy you will split your visitors into two audiences and will launch two campaigns:
- Aware: People who viewed at least 1 page
- Interest: People who viewed at least 3 pages
Your objective is to re-engage website visitors and increase engagement with the final goal to submit a conversion form fill. Once a user meets this goal we will automatically stop showing ads.
Continue to set up the two Campaigns in your Playbook as follows:
- Add Ads to each Campaign. We suggest that you use a different set of Ads for each one, customized to the different customer stages. Learn more Ad best practices here.
- Under ‘Form Submission’ select the form submission Conversions Audiences that indicate that your audience is considering your product. You will choose between:
- ‘Use Every Form Submission’ to include all existing and future Conversion Audiences that you add to RollWorks.
- ‘Use Specific Forms’ to include only specific Conversion Audiences.
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AWARE |
INTEREST |
|---|---|
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Re-Engage Website Visitors - Audience: 1 page viewed - Select Ads - Goal = 3 pages viewed |
Increase Engagement - Audience = 3 pages viewed - Select Ads - Select Goal: Form submission |
Advanced Retargeting Strategy
If you chose this strategy you will split your visitors into three audiences:
- People who viewed at least 1 page.
- People who viewed at least 3 pages.
- People who viewed your high-value pages.
Your objective is to move users from 'Aware' to 'Interest' to 'Consideration' with the final goal of driving your visitors to your high-value pages where they would submit their email address through a form fill which results in a Conversion Audience. Once a user meets this last goal we will automatically stop showing them ads.
Continue to set up the three Campaigns in your Playbook as follows:
- Under 'Ads' select the Ads for each Campaign. You must use a different set of creative Ads customized to the different customer stages (Aware, Interest, Consideration). Learn how to customize your creative based on the customer stage.
- Under 'Visit to specific Pages' select your high-value pages. These are important pages such as your pricing page and any landing pages where visitors are presented with a form to submit their email address. Learn more about High-value pages.
- Under 'Form Submission' select the Conversions Audiences. These are the thank you and confirmation pages shown to visitors after they submit their email through a form. You will choose between:
- 'Use Every Form Submission' to include all existing and future Conversion Audiences that you add to RollWorks. Recommended.
- 'Use Specific Forms' to include only specific Conversion Audiences.
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AWARE |
INTEREST |
CONSIDERATION |
|---|---|---|
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Re-Engage Website Visitors - Audience: 1 page viewed - Select Ads - Goal = 3 pages viewed |
Increase Engagement - Audience = 3 pages viewed - Select Ads - Select Goal: High-Value page viewed |
Drive Form Submissions - Audience = high intent pages (editable) - Select Ads - Select Goal: Form submission |
Step 4: Budget and Schedule
Continue to set up your budget and schedule for this Playbook. While you enter the details below you will see the estimated Reach Forecast on the right side.
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Select ‘Budget Type’:
- 'Ongoing' to run your Playbook indefinitely.
- 'Fixed Dates' to run this playbook during a specific date range.
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For 'Ongoing' budget:
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Select 'Start Date':
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- 'Immediately' your Playbook with start within a few hours.
- 'Future Date' your Playbook will start on a specific date in the future.
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- Enter your 'Monthly Budget', RollWorks will aim to spend this amount monthly.
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Select 'Start Date':
- For 'Fixed Dates' budget:
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- Select a 'Start Date'
- Select an 'End Date'
- Enter your 'Total Budget', this is the total spend for the duration of the playbook.
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Select ‘Day Parting’
- Show Ads 24/7 - Your Playbook will run 24/7 without interruption.
- Pause on Weekends - Your Playbook will run 24/7 on weekdays and pause on weekends.
- Custom Day Parting - Your Playbook will run on specific days and hours.
Step 5: Review and Launch
Playbook Review & Launch: Review and name your Playbook then click 'Launch'.
Web Retargeting Playbook FAQ
What geotargeting options are available in Playbooks?
You can select one or multiple countries as your geotargeting filter.
- Granular geotargeting based on zip code, city metropolitan area, or state is not available with Playbooks.
- Global geotargeting based on a global region, for example, APAC, is not available. As a workaround, you can manually select all the countries individually.
What audiences are excluded from Website Retargeting playbooks?
- Any visitor that completes a conversion on your site, will be automatically excluded from your Website Retargeting Playbook.
- If you are running other Playbooks simultaneously (for example an Account Targeting Playbook) RollWorks will automatically exclude the audiences targeted in your other Playbooks.
- When launching your Playbook you can decide if you want to exclude your existing customers defined in General Exclusions.
You cannot exclude any other RollWorks audiences from Playbooks outside of the three audiences explained above.
Can I make changes to a Playbook once it is live?
Yes, you can edit, pause, clone, and delete a Playbook while it is running.
Can I run multiple Website Retargeting Playbooks?
All customers with a RollWorks subscription package have access to create as many Website Retargeting Playbooks as needed.
We only recommend launching multiple Website Retargeting Playbooks if you are targeting different countries in each Playbook. Otherwise, you will have multiple Playbooks targeting the same audience.
Do the audience size estimates account for country-level targeting?
Currently, the audience estimate in the Website Retargeting Playbook is at the aggregate level - it does not factor in geography into the calculation.
Can I run a Website Retargeting Playbook and a Retargeting Campaign at the same time?
Yes, this is only recommended if you make sure that you are targeting different audiences between them. The main reason why you would use a Retargeting Campaign instead of a Website Retargeting Playbook is if you require audience flexibility. The two most common use cases are:
- You want to show specific ads to someone who has visited a specific page on your website.
- You want to target a list of emails included in a Contact Audience.
What types of creatives are supported in Playbooks?
All Web Ads, Native Ads, Video, and personalized ads are supported. Learn more about all the types of Ads available in the RollWorks Platform in this Ad guide.
How is 'Currently Targeting' calculated for Playbooks?
Currently targeting refers to all the cookies that go into bidding. It refers to the potential audience. Whether a cookie sees or not an ad will depend on how the bid goes and things such as the budget being enough etc.
You can find Currently Targeting by navigating to any Playbook Summary page.
- Navigate to Advertising > Campaigns & Playbooks.
- Clicking the Playbooks tab.
- Click the Playbook Name for which you want to see the data.
