How On-Chain Retargeting Levels Up Your Web3 Marketing and User Retention

How data-driven retention is empowering Web3 marketers

As the Web3 space continues to gain users and awareness around privacy reaches record levels, the world is shifting away from the use of cookies and other technologies that marketers have traditionally leveraged for their outreach efforts.

More and more people and platforms are choosing to opt-out when it comes to cookies and other features which are perceived to infringe on privacy. A cookie-less world creates serious challenges for marketers (and Web3 marketers specifically), particularly when it comes to retargeting users that failed to convert and former customers. The good news is that there are ways to fill the gaps left behind by a lack of cookie tracking, via on-chain activity.

The magic of the blockchain industry and Addressable’s secret sauce lies in the ability to leverage on-chain behaviors and actions for Web2 targeting and outreach. 

Fortunately, Web3 offers a number of critical data-driven insights that marketers can leverage for stellar user retention, including retargeting on-chain, if they know where to look. We’re breaking down data-driven strategies for Web3 user retention, and how marketers can leverage on-chain retargeting to win over customers for the long term.

It’s critical to remember that no matter the project, the blockchain is full of information you can use to make these determinations regarding who’s actually engaging with your project.

Who are your users? Understanding your audience

Before you can develop and implement a new strategy for user retention, it’s critical that you understand both your current and recently-departed users. That process will look different depending on your space and project.

Your individual process will vary, but here are a few examples:

For DeFi protocols, you’ll need to collect the list of wallets associated with your token contract. From there, identify the most active trading pairs. Use those pairs' contracts to see who's interacting with your protocol most often. Next, take a look at the deepest liquidity pool and see who's interacting with it. Build an audience of the smart-contract interactors. That will help you qualitatively explain who your users are.

When it comes to NFT projects, identify who’s engaging with your project in your given marketplace. Trading Volume per Users and the number of NFTs they hold are helpful metrics for determining this. Check out the users who were among the first to mint that NFT.

It’s critical to remember that no matter the project, the blockchain is full of information you can use to make these determinations regarding who’s actually engaging with your project.

Translating data into action: Learning from your ex-users

Users that leave your project, token, or NFT are an extremely valuable resource. Why? They can tell you a lot about what’s not working when it comes to your customer experience, marketing strategies, ongoing user engagement, and more.

But you’ll need to determine why they left in order to know what to improve or change. That starts with looking at where your audience hangs out and analyzing some of their behavior. 

There are a number of questions you’ll need to consider, including:

• Are they regularly scoping out your competitors’ projects? 
• Did these users only briefly dabble in your project’s offerings, but are primarily interested in something else on the blockchain? 
• Were they new users on the blockchain interested in your project that ended up being intimidated by the steep learning curve of the space?

The good news is that you can leverage data to answer these questions.

Check which protocols they’re interacting most - you may be surprised to find it’s something different than your area of expertise. Identifying which parts of the blockchain they frequently hang on can also be revealing. Aspects such as their overall on-chain activity level and areas of focus (e.g., if they’re mostly focused on DeFi, NFTs, or deploying contracts) can give you some perspective. Long periods of silence between transactions and the amount of ‘gas’ (operational tokens) in their account can also provide some clues. 

This will help you build out an overall behavior profile for that audience of ex-users, which you can use to develop actionable insights and a stronger user retention strategy.

Combining these data points between your ex-users and current audiences is the key to understanding which gaps to fill and what might be fueling user loss.

Web3 marketers’ secret weapon: Data-driven user profiles, on-chain and off-chain

Taking your audiences’ on-chain data and combining it with their off-chain, social media data provides you with a comprehensive, holistic profile that’s ideal for planning outreach with an impact. Armed with a complete behavioral profile, you can gain a deep understanding into the behavior of a particular segment of your audience.

This is a critical time to engage in retargeting, which is one of the most effective practices for Web3 marketing. With retargeting, you can revisit ex-customers who interacted with your smart contract and users who expressed interest in your project but didn’t end up converting. Retargeting gives you a critical starting point, as you’re reaching out to an audience that’s already open to learning more about your project and its value for them. 

Instead of assuming that a user who didn’t convert or an ex-user who stopped engaging with your project is lost, you should look at them as being primed to come back and a huge opportunity for your marketing efforts. All they need is the right push and outreach to tip them over the edge. Viewing both your active users and ex-users, pick and choose what’s important for you to know in order to enhance your retention and build stronger outreach campaigns. Look at your current users’ behavior, such as their peak interests, where else they’re active, and how they’re interacting with distinct features offered by your protocol.

For your ex-users, consider other projects they interact with, what those protocols offer (especially if they are different from your project), and their general likes and interests.

Combining these data points between your ex-users and current audiences is the key to understanding which gaps to fill and what might be fueling user loss.

Your active audience profile can be used as the foundation of your campaign. Consider outreach based on your project’s distinct features and advantages, launching the campaign to confirm or identify what’s resonating most with your users.

Consider the optimal times of day (morning, afternoon, or evening) for audience targeting that converts to engagement and results. Make a data-driven decision based on your users’ peak purchasing hours and patterns.

Determine what kind of messaging has the biggest impact on your audience. To figure out what they find most appealing, utilize data-driven solutions to generate keywords based on their interests.

When retargeting your ex-users, target the spaces where they hang out as your primary focus for ad placement. Explore campaigns that touch on their interests, especially if you’ve never previously done outreach on those topics. You should view retargeting as the ideal time to reach out to them with a different strategy than you previously used.

Data-driven relaunch and reoptimization: The way forward

After combining numbers from your ex-users and current audience outreach efforts, you’ll likely be facing a mountain of campaign data. You’ll need to pull insights out of this data, the sheer volume of which may be overwhelming, but the knowledge you’ll gain is critical for figuring out what needs to be refined or even eliminated from your Web3 marketing campaigns.

First, look at your on-chain data, specifically your audience’s attribution funnel. If there’s been a high conversion rate or large number of conversions, you’re definitely doing something right. Retain the important elements of that successful campaign, only slightly tweaking what you feel is necessary.

If your campaign didn’t show great results, take a second look at your outreach and if it’s truly aligned with your audiences’ preferences and ideals. Consider revamping the creative aspects of your campaign, such as the wording, along with ads placement and the hook.

Now, break down your audience, identifying which segments are converting. If a segment has a low conversion rate, remove only the users with no renewed activity. This is also when you should determine which former users and potential users are primed for retargeting.

For a segment with high conversions, this is a critical opportunity to evaluate the audience you’re targeting and determine what’s working best for your campaign. Note the parameters that fit their specific interests, including:

• What they’re looking at on social media
• What accounts they’re most influenced by
• Geographic context
  • Your segment’s physical location: U.S., based in Europe, etc.
  • Make sure your campaigns are focused towards your users’ part of the world.
  • For example, outreach to an American audience looks extremely different from a campaign targeting Scandinavians.

You can use this information to approach different segments with similar features, or even to re-target users who overlap into some of these categories or interests.

Users who clicked on your ad, but didn’t convert, are a valuable resource. Think of them, along with previous customers, as being on the cusp of becoming full-time users - they just need a push in the right direction. When the time for reoptimization comes, it’s crucial to target exactly these users. Don’t be shy - keep the pressure on them.

Refresh your audience with a new set of one-and-done users, even if you don’t anticipate them to last for the long run. Keep refreshing as you continue to regain users, creating a flywheel of perpetual growth. 

Addressable empowers you with the ability to retarget users based on their on-chain activity, all within a cookie-less environment. Our data-driven, proprietary technology gives you the ability to sing your project’s praises and its benefits for potential customers subtly and authentically, letting your audience draw their own conclusions rather than targeting them repeatedly with a hard sell.

To learn more about how data-driven insights can boost your Web3 user retention strategy, get in touch with us.