retargeting-funnel

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from when this skill was listed. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: retargeting-funnel
description: "Design a multi-stage retargeting sequence from a site's own funnel data - recency windows and behavioural-depth tiers per stage, a message and offer ladder for each stage, mutually exclusive audiences with exclusion logic, and per-stage frequency caps. Use whenever the user mentions retargeting or remarketing, cart or form abandonment, how long a retargeting window should be, frequency caps, a retargeting audience that is too small, or ads still showing to people who already bought - even if they never say 'funnel'. Covers B2B and B2C, and produces a stage-by-stage plan rather than campaigns built inside an ad platform. Do NOT use to design cold prospecting audience tiers - use mbfinotti/advertising-skills@ad-audience-targeting instead."
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Maya-Beth Finotti
  version: "1.4.9"
---

# Retargeting Funnel

Design a multi-stage retargeting sequence from the client's own conversion data: stage boundaries, per-stage message intent, exclusion logic, frequency caps, and a measurement plan.

## Scope and handoffs

This skill decides stage boundaries, per-stage message intent, exclusion logic, caps, and the measurement plan. It does not build campaigns inside any ad platform, and it hands off neighbouring work:

- Working event tracking is a hard prerequisite - retargeting audiences cannot be built without it. Verify first via `mbfinotti/advertising-skills@ad-conversion-tracking`.
- The broader targeting plan across interest/lookalike/retargeting layers → `mbfinotti/advertising-skills@ad-audience-targeting`.
- Ongoing creative-decay monitoring after launch → `mbfinotti/advertising-skills@ad-creative-fatigue`.
- Writing the per-stage ads themselves → `mbfinotti/advertising-skills@ad-copy-variants` and `mbfinotti/advertising-skills@ad-creative-brief`.
- Splitting the total budget across campaigns and channels → `mbfinotti/advertising-skills@ad-spend-allocation`.

If you draft any customer-facing copy while illustrating a stage, route it through your preferred humanizer skill before the user ships it - this is not a copywriting skill.

## Interview

Ask these questions one at a time, multiple-choice where possible. Stop asking as soon as you have enough to design; do not batch all of them into one wall of questions.

1. Business model: (a) B2C / e-commerce, (b) B2B, (c) hybrid (e.g. PLG SaaS with self-serve and sales-assisted tiers)?
2. Typical time from first visit to conversion: (a) under 3 days, (b) 3-14 days, (c) 2-8 weeks, (d) 2 months or more, (e) unknown?
3. Monthly site traffic and monthly conversions, roughly? (Order of magnitude is enough.)
4. Which behavioural events are actually tracked today: page views only, product/feature views, pricing views, cart or checkout starts, trial starts, purchases, CRM stages?
5. Which paid channels are in use or planned?
6. Offer type: (a) transactional purchase, (b) free trial, (c) demo request, (d) lead form / gated content?
7. Is a discount ever available as an incentive? (Many B2B businesses: no - that removes a rung of the ladder, not the ladder.)
8. Total monthly paid budget and the current prospecting-vs-retargeting split, if one exists?
9. Does a converter-suppression / exclusion audience already exist on any channel?
10. By what date must this be live and producing, and is that date hard? (The creative ladder in step 5 spans near-zero to a quarter in time-to-effect, so its ordering cannot be picked without this.)
11. Do you want the fastest revenue available this quarter, or durable assets that keep paying - a proof library, an incrementality baseline? (The first favours the cheap rungs, the second the slow ones.)
12. Effort ceiling: who can produce creative and how often, and can you actually obtain customer consent and legal sign-off? (A "no" removes the top rungs of the ladder rather than delaying them.)

Refuse to invent stage boundaries without time-lag data. If the user answered "unknown" to question 2, say e