What Is Behavioral Targeting?
Behavioral targeting is a marketing technique used to deliver relevant content to buyers based on their past actions.
Understanding how people behave online—for example, what they download, purchase, and share—helps marketers distribute relevant content to a user. And delivering relevant, personalized content boosts engagement and conversions.
Marketo’s post on this topic provides a solid list of examples of behavioral targeting—including on email, social, and website channels.
How Does Behavioral Targeting Work?
Behavioral targeting works like this: A user downloads an eBook on student loans from a financial company’s website. That financial institution’s marketing team now knows that particular user is interested in the subject of student loans.
What Is Behavioral Targeting? by @lizkoneill
If the company creates another content asset, like a whitepaper, on that same subject, they will send it to that user and others who downloaded the student loan eBook within a targeted message like “You downloaded X eBook on student loans. That’s why we thought you might like to see our new whitepaper.”
This personalized approach transforms what the user might suspect as spam or promotional emails into a helpful resource.
Why Implement It?
Behavioral targeting improves user experience, and boosts click-through and conversion rates. MarketingSherpa research shows that segmenting campaigns based on behaviors are the top tactics to improve email engagement:
Personalizing your interactions with users with behavioral targeting will help build trust, engagement and ultimately business for your brand.