Dive Brief:

• 52% of retailers' digital advertising budgets are going to mobile, according to market research firm L2's Digital IQ Index report. 
• The study found that smartphones accounted for 45% of online shopping in Q1 2016, but the shopping cart abandonment remains a significant challenge on mobile, with smartphone shoppers abandoning their carts 90% of the time.
• The study also found that Instagram is the best channel for customer engagement, revealing that interactions on the platforms are 10 times higher than on Facebook, 54 times higher than on Pinterest, and 84 times higher than on Twitter. 

Dive Insight:

The extremely high cart abandonment rate for mobile shopping illustrates the importance of tracking and retargeting for e-commerce marketers.

One effective way of retargeting existing users can be a highly personalized email that makes the call-to-action button a completion of the sale. The idea is that many people may browse and shop on a mobile device, but they get busy and have to abandon the cart more than necessarily becoming reluctant to make the purchase. By retargeting those customers later on when they might be home and opening email on a tablet or desktop, they are more likely to have the time to complete the transaction.

For unknown users, marketers can run retargeting campaigns via display ads. However, marketers should be aware that many people find those campaigns to be “creepy” when they feel like product ads are simply following them around online — particularly if it's a product they’ve already bought.