With competition running rampant on Earth, let alone in the SaaS (Software as a Service) space, acquiring customers only takes you halfway. However, the real problem is recovering users who showed interest but did not convert. And this is where a solid remarketing strategy is important. This article is all about the “Boomerang Method” a remarketing strategy uniquely crafted for SaaS companies to recapture lost opportunities and convert them into loyal consumers.
Table of Contents
What Is The ”Boomerang Method” Remarketing Strategy?
The Boomerang Method is an advanced remarketing technique that targets visitors who have engaged with your SaaS but have not taken the desired action. This is similar to a boomerang throw it away, it comes back to you, only this is in the form of potential customers that you targeted with personalized messages based on their prior interactions.
Rather than the more traditional remarketing technique, which can subject users to the same messaging repeated ad infinitum, the Boomerang Method uses a multi-touch approach that identifies pain points and objections to address at each stage of the prospect’s journey.
Why Do SaaS Companies Need A Specialized Remarketing Strategy?
SaaS companies face distinct challenges that traditional businesses don’t deal with:
Informed Decision-Making for B2B SaaS: The nature of B2B SaaS deals necessitates insights into decision-making timelines and processes. Enterprise SaaS, unlike B2C transactions that can close in minutes, often takes months As it needs cross-department alignment to come to the decision, a budget approval process, security reviews, and technical validation.
Complex and Nurtured Value Propositions: Keeping in mind that the value proposition of many SaaS solutions is complex and may not be obvious to the average user, and that value needs to be nurtured. The prospect might not see the benefit of such features as workflow automation, data analytics or integration capabilities until they are exposed to those features and relevant examples specific to their industry.
In SaaS, the first sale is the start of a revenue relationship beyond it. Because customers pay regularly, the profitability of each customer relationship is determined by how long they’re active subscribers and whether they upgrade as they go.
High CAC: With CAC still increasing in SaaS, maximizing conversion from existing prospects becomes an economic necessity. Every abandoned cold prospect not converted is a significant sunk cost in marketing.
Related blog: https://www.adlabz.co/marketing-funnel-10-powerful-steps-to-boost-b2b-saas
What Makes The Boomerang Method Different From Traditional Remarketing?
A common practice in traditional remarketing is to follow a “one-size-fits-all” strategy, displaying the same ads to every visitor who left your website. The Boomerang Method, on the other hand, uses an advanced segmentation technique:
The Boomerang Method recognizes that different prospects leave for various reasons. Some need more education, others need pricing justification, and some might require social proof.
What Are The Core Components Of The Boomerang Method?
1. Behavior-Based Segmentation
The crux of the Boomerang Method is advanced customer segmentation through:
The pages visited: Entails different contents from the different sections, which depicts different interests and needs. An analyst who spends lots of time on analytics features probably cares about data-driven decision making, while a visitor who spends a lot of time on integration pages is thinking about how your solution fits their existing tech stack.
Session Duration: Duration of concentration on particular features indicates interest. Long dwell time on pricing pages can signal serious exploration but whether a budget is available, while a long time on technical literature indicates deep evaluation by a prospect.
Interactions — Calling behaviors hierarchically signal the most compelling interest and objections of prospects. On the other hand, someone who downloads a security whitepaper and doesn’t go any further might require more conviction about compliance features.
Exit points — The last page someone views before leaving your site will often reveal what kept them from converting. If people leave pricing pages, it indicates pricing objections, budget objections, or dissatisfaction with value communication.
2. Intent-Driven Messaging Hierarchy
Once segments are developed, create messaging that speaks to the specific intent signals:
Visitors in the awareness stage: Write educational content related to the problem your SaaS solves. You should be messaging thought leadership and grants content focused on problems and education to help prospects know what their problems are and their package and add cost.
Consideration stage audience: Promote what sets you apart and your advantages over the competition. Leave room for comparative analyses, feature spotlights, and more importantly examples of your implementation.
Decision stage abandoners: Waiving common objections and offering incentives to complete signup. You can also offer a mix of reassurance (e.g. money-back guarantees, implementation support) with limits where appropriate to lower the perceived risk of taking the next step.
Free trial abandoners: You are going to want to give them tips on how to use your product and demonstrate the value they haven’t yet received. Provide them with relevant how-tos and success checkpoints to enable them to get to that initial value with the least effort.
3. Multi-Channel Orchestration
The Boomerang Method uses a combination of channels holistically:
Display: Display ads are at the core of most remarketing platforms, keeping your name in front of customers as they continue their research across the web. These visual touchpoints need progressive messaging that changes based on recency and frequency to mitigate ad fatigue with dynamic creative rotation.
Email Sequences: Email remarketing delivers the type of depth that display advertising lacks; in-depth messaging, elaborative storytelling, and sequential narrative. Make sure that every email provides standalone value while contributing to the overall narrative around the benefits of your solution.
Social media remarketing: Social media remarketing builds trust through community validation by virtue of the inherent credibility of the social platform. Testimonials from customers, usage statistics, or industry talk that creates social proof should be the front-and-center feature in these campaigns.
Video remarketing: A good video remarketing campaign submerged customers and gave you active audience with potential to convert, video content brings the solution alive unlike static content. Such assets must be used wisely at the correct stages of the funnel.
4. Progressive Incentive Ladder
Instead of going into immediate discount mode, the Boomerang Method uses a graduated escalation of incentives:
First touch point: Content which adds value (guides, webinar, case studies). When doing remarketing, the very first touch-point should ONLY be about providing value.
Second touchpoint: Long free trial period or new features. After providing value through educational material/ content, offer incentives to improve the experience and assessment.
Third touch point: Personalised onboarding, implementation or support. It is common to hear the objections of “too complex” or “too much work.” Offer dedicated resources for implementation to counter them.
Fourth touchpoint: Time-sensitive discount or offer. Price incentives should come only after you have provided value, improved the evaluation experience, and answered questions about implementation.
How Can You Implement The Boomerang Method For Your SaaS?
Step 1: Audit Your Current User Journey
This is why, before you start planning a proper remarketing strategy, you should document the entire user journey on your platform. Type your answer here… Track common paths of navigation to reveal natural user flows as well as unexpected detours. Identify crucial friction points needing the attention of remarketing efforts by identifying exactly where and why users are most likely to drop off.
Step 2: Configure Advanced Listening
You need to implement full tracking to get all the data necessary for a solid segmentation. Set up event tracking on key actions that indicate interest level and specific objections. Custom dimension configuration for Google Analytics associates user behavior with context (e.g., where the user has been in the funnel) for remarketing strategy. Use heat mapping tools to see engagement patterns that indicate user priorities and confusion points.
Step 3: Create Your Segment Framework
Make detailed segments based on your audit and tracking data:
Visitors of Headlines, Homepage only: Awareness, but a little higher engagement Advertisement first should just be on the broadest Educational Content that covers the problem space before you talk about how your offering will solve it.
Feature awareness is high on your product pages: visitors know the system features but always think their efforts matter less than they do. They should delve deeper into the features they previewed in the context of your platform capabilities at large.
Colder leads: Pricing page abandoners — possible price objections or lack of clear value proposition The key to remarketing is that it needs to be about justifying the value, showing the business impact and outcomes that justify the spend.
Trial non-completers: Have started but haven’t completed the signup process. Remarketing should prevent the suggestive barriers from the apparent requirement for the information, ease of the process, and commitment.
Step 4: Develop Channel-Specific Creative Assets
Develop remarketing assets specific for every segment and channel:
Display ads: Various sizes, with exit intent and interests-based messaging Build out full sets of display creative catering to the abandonment scenarios you found in your user journey analysis.
Educational series explaining common objections and providing more and more value throughout. Create advanced email nurture flows with branches for each main segment that evolves based on engagement with prior messages.
Landing pages: Content that targets specific pain points and objections identified through drop-off analysis. Create targeted remarketing landing pages that offer detailed information addressing the combined issues that seem to have affected conversion.
Social proof elements: Industry-specific testimonials and organizational case studies of groups with comparatively similar profiles and challenges. These testimonials will speak to personal concerns for each segment.
Step 5: Use Progressive timing
Instead of constant bombardment, the Boomerang Method relies on strategic timing:
- First re-targeting: 1-2 days after visit
- Second wave: 5-7 days after visitation
- Third wave: 14-21 days after visit
- Last wave: 30-45 days post visit
This progressive approach honors the sales cycle of SaaS buys while glossing active interest over the entire consideration process.
Remarketing Beyond the Demo and Trial Phase
A common error for SaaS companies is to pull the plug on their remarketing after prospect has converted into a trial user or requested a demo. But the Boomerang Method acknowledges that the path from trial to paid customer — the evergreen stage — is no less important and needs to be catered to with its own tailored remarketing strategy.
In fact, during the trial period, remarketing needs to be about activation and feature adoption, as opposed to conversion. Retarget people depending on their activity within the product, serving them with remarketing content that help them reach major moments of value realization. As a remarketing touchpoint for infrequent logins, the message should focus on quick-win features and success stories from similar customers.
For demo participants, remarketing should recover the specific questions and concerns brought up during the demo session. Create and deliver segment-specific campaigns around the subjects discussed and objections raised with accompanying materials that go into more detail about clearly the topic you are interested in.
The most advanced SaaS companies don’t limit remarketing to closing new customers but rather continue to invest in behavior-based campaigns designed to drive feature usage, completion of onboarding milestones, and engagement with educational content that fuels long-term retention during the early part of the customer lifecycle.
What Are The Most Common Mistakes In SaaS Remarketing Strategy?
Mistake 1: Treating All Non-Converters The Same
Unfortunately, a lot of SaaS companies show the same remarketing ads to everyone who didn’t convert. It glosses over the vast differences in intent and interest levels. The messaging needed for a visitor who spent 20 minutes checking out your features is different than for one who left within 30 seconds.
Mistake 2: Only Prioritizing Trial Signups
It is not just about retargeting those who signed up for a trial; conversion can take several forms: email subscriptions, resource downloads, webinar sign-ups, product demos, or free tool usage. Every micro-conversion pulls prospects back into your ecosystem.
Mistake 3: Ignoring Mobile Users
Most SaaS remarketing campaigns are made for desktop experiences, but most of the first research is done on mobile. Make sure your remarketing strategy provides mobile-optimized experiences.
Mistake 4: Stopping Remarketing Upon Conversion
The Boomerang Method does not stop at the point of initial conversion either; it continues by helping with customer onboarding as well as customer upsell and expansion. Jump on top of new signups with guides for feature adoption, on inactive users with incentives to engage again, and on active users with upsells.
How Do You Measure The Success Of Your Boomerang Method Remarketing Strategy?
Primary Metrics:
Return Rate: Proportion of remarketed users returning to your site is a KPI representing the basic efficiency of your remarketing campaigns. This metric should be looked at not only overall but broken down by where the abandonment occurred, what messaging strategy was used, and what channel was used.
Segment Conversion Rates: What a single remarketing segment does in terms of conversion, helps you look at which type of prospects can be influenced the most via remarketing.
Channel effectiveness based on not just conversion rates, but downstream metrics like customer lifetime value and expansion revenue: Which remarketing channels generate the highest quality returns?
Time-to-Conversion: Whether remarketing makes your sales cycle longer than non-remarketed ones and of different remarketing types.
Incrementality: Real lift compared to control groups that are not subjected to remarketing to show the actual effect your remarketing had that would not have occurred naturally.
What Advanced Boomerang Techniques Are Leading SaaS Companies Using?
- Intent Data Integration
Top SaaS firms take the Boomerang Method to the next level with third-party intent data to detect active buying cycles and personalize according to tech stack data.
- AI-Powered Dynamic Creative
At the next step, advanced implementations take AI further, dynamically generating the creative for their remarketing messages, automatically testing hundreds of variations on messages, personalizing image selection by industry or role, and calculating a clear ROI for all of this, minute-by-minute.
- Cross-Device Orchestration
Today, smart remarketers tail each user on their devices — starting the remarketing story on mobile where a lot of research begins, but continuing it on desktop where more in-depth evaluation happens.
Conclusion: Is The Boomerang Method a Good Fit For Your SaaS?
The SaaS Boomerang Method remarketing strategy provides a multi-faceted framework for engaging lost prospects. Couple behavioral segmentation, multi-channel orchestration, and progressive incentive and you can turn your remarketing from a blunt instrument into a precision tool.
The full approach takes considerable resources and know-how to implement, but it’s still possible to reap many of its benefits just by getting better at segmentation and creating more personalized messages (which we’ll talk more about in the next section) as a first step to implementing the full method and avoiding the limitations of traditional remarketing techniques.
And in the SaaS world, where customer acquisition costs are only increasing, using remarketing tactically to maximize the value of every visitor is not only a marketing tactic, it’s a necessity for your business. Your most efficient path toward growing your business is through prospects that already know who you are.
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