What Is Email Remarketing in Google Shopping?
Email remarketing targets shoppers who visited your site or abandoned their cart but didn’t complete a purchase. These emails are personalized and often highlight the exact products the customer viewed. Research shows that cart abandonment emails can recover up to 36% of lost sales and improve conversion rates by 2.8% or more.
Why Email Remarketing Matters
- Highly relevant: Based on user behavior (e.g., browse or cart abandonment).
- Higher ROI: Email remarketing typically generates 4× the revenue of regular promotional emails.
- Stronger customer engagement: Well-timed reminders feel helpful, not pushy.
4 Powerful Email Remarketing Types
- Browse abandonment – Email visitors who viewed products but didn’t add them to cart.
- Cart abandonment – Remind users of the items they left behind.
- Post-purchase – Upsell related products or request reviews.
- Customer reactivation – Target customers who haven’t returned in a while.
How to Set Up Email Remarketing Campaigns
🔹 Step 1: Collect Email Addresses
Use email opt-in popups, checkout forms, or post-purchase follow-ups. For enhanced reach, integrate with tools like Klaviyo or Mailchimp.
🔹 Step 2: Segment Your Audiences
Group users by behavior:
- Viewed products
- Added to cart but didn’t buy
- Purchased specific items
- Inactive for X days
🔹 Step 3: Create Targeted Emails
Include:
- Products viewed or added
- Urgency-based CTAs (“Only a few left!”)
- Follow-up reminders (1–2 max)
- Optional discount codes in second or third emails
🔹 Step 4: Send at the Right Time
- Cart abandonment: Send 1 hour to 24 hours later
- Post-purchase: 2–5 days after delivery
- Reactivation: 30+ days of inactivity
🔹 Step 5: Automate Your Emails
Use email platforms with automation features (Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp) and test subject lines, images, and CTAs.
🧩 Add Customer Lists to Google Ads (for Remarketing)
You can upload your email list directly into Google Ads to create Customer Match audiences.
✅ Requirements
- Must collect emails with consent
- List must have at least 1000 matched users to serve ads effectively (For search campaigns it can now be just 100 matched users)
- Data must be hashed (Google Ads handles this if you use the CSV method)
📥 How to Upload a Customer List
- Sign in to Google Ads.
- In the top menu, click Tools (wrench icon) > under Shared Library, click Audience Manager.
- Click the “+” button and choose Customer List.
- Choose your upload method:
- Upload a CSV file with the header
Email - Or paste data directly
- Upload a CSV file with the header
- Name your audience (e.g. “Cart Abandoners – June”).
- Check the box confirming you’ve collected user data responsibly.
- Click Upload and Create.
Optional (but recommended):
- Apply this audience to your Performance Max, Search, or YouTube campaigns.
Note: Google matches emails with logged-in users on Google services (Gmail, YouTube, Search, etc.).
Best Practices for Email + Ads Remarketing
- Use the same segmentation across both email and Google Ads (e.g., “viewed but not purchased”).
- For Performance Max campaigns, applying your uploaded customer lists will help steer automation in the right direction.
- Retargeting combined with email results in up to 400% higher conversion rates compared to using either method alone.
✨ TL;DR
Email remarketing and Google Ads Customer Match allow you to re-engage potential customers at critical points in their buying journey. By combining email campaigns with Customer Match audiences in Google Ads, you increase your chances of turning window-shoppers into buyers—while maximizing your return on ad spend.