Retargeting Gone Too Far?
The weather is finally starting to feel like summer! Last week I decided I would start researching wooden playground sets for the backyard. I shopped online for an hour or so, and compared the same wooden playground set on a handful of online stores. My process went something like this, I would go through the ordering process of each site to determine my actual cost, and bookmark the sites that I thought had the lowest pricing.
The next day, around 10am I received a phone call from a customer service agent at one of the websites I had visited. The agent asked if I had any questions about the wooden playground set I had looked at on their website. I paused for a minute, feeling very vulnerable to the fact they knew exactly which product I had put in my online shopping cart, I told the agent that I did not have any questions and request they not call me again. During the checkout process, I had put in my actual phone number, not thinking anything of it. Mainly because my phone number came up to auto fill in the telephone field and I did not think it would be a big deal.
Four days later I received an email from the same company offering a discount on the exact product that I had added to my shopping cart. The email does not bother me, partially because they offered me a discount, and partially because it does not feel as intrusive as a person calling me. Throughout the last few days I have noticed an uptick in the number of wooden playground ads when I log into my email account, and I understand this as another retargeting effort. Like the email, I do not feel bothered by the increase in ads targeted at me based on my searches.
Do you feel calling customers directly has taken retargeting too far?
