Creating tons of demand generation is great, and driving interested and qualified traffic to your website is a recipe for success. But not capitalizing on the time and money you spend getting someone to your website can be chalked up as a complete loss of great opportunities.

If you make this mistake―as most of us do―the last thing you should do is carpet bomb the consumer with more email. The same goes for display ad retargeting. It’s a natural reaction to retarget shoppers only with offers based on what they left in their cart. But while you might actually see small gains, they’re likely neither sustainable nor scalable. Plus, the haunting effect of following someone around the web can cause more harm than you think to both your brand and to the relationships you have with your customers.

Retargeting shoppers only with offers based on what they left in their cart is like sending another, and another, and another email about the same product and offer that didn’t get their attention in the first place.

I love the term coined by Forrester called the perpetually connected customer (PCC). While I agree with Forrester that by 2013 half of online adults worldwide will become a PCC, I actually think this estimate is too conservative. Regardless, just the idea that more consumers are “always on” means that there’s an increasing amount of consumers who expect amazing experiences to happen wherever they are on the web.

The prevalence of this new empowered customer drives home the need for brands to become more customer-centric in their marketing efforts, and this includes display retargeting. And with the incredible amount of data available, focusing on your best prospects and customers based not only on what’s in a cookie, but including technographics, recent browsing patterns, and “in-the-moment” behaviors will take your display retargeting and other demand generation efforts to brand new levels.

As always, I’d love for you to reach out to me so I can tell you how to make this happen. Feel free to email me (jhealy@monetate.com) so we can set up a time to chat.