Retargeting tiers explained: 0–7, 8–30 and 31–90 days
Someone who visited yesterday and someone who visited two months ago need different ads. How to split retargeting by recency, what to show each tier and how often.
2 min read
Most buyers don't purchase on their first visit. They leave, compare, get distracted and come back later, often because an ad reminded them. That makes retargeting one of the cheapest sales you can buy, as long as you don't show the same ad to everyone forever.
Why split by recency
Someone who looked at your pricing page yesterday is close to buying. Someone who read one blog post two months ago barely remembers you. Putting them in one audience means one message for both, and it ends up too pushy for one and too vague for the other.
Splitting by how recently people visited fixes that.
The three tiers
| Tier | Visited | What they need | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hot | 0–7 days | A reason to finish: the offer, a guarantee, an answer to the last objection | 3–4 a week |
| Warm | 8–30 days | Proof: a demo, a result, a customer story | 3–4 a week |
| Cool | 31–90 days | A reminder of the problem you solve, and something new since they left | about 2 a week |
After 90 days, most people are cold again. Move them back into prospecting, or leave them out.
Exclusions matter as much as the tiers
- Exclude the previous tier from each tier, so a hot visitor doesn't also get warm and cool ads.
- Exclude customers and active trialists from all of it. Paying to re-acquire someone who already bought is the most common retargeting waste.
- Exclude people who just converted as soon as the conversion is recorded, which is one more reason tracking has to work first.
Refresh creative before it wears out
When the same person has seen an ad four or five times, performance usually drops. Watch frequency per ad set and swap in new creative when it climbs, even if the numbers still look fine.
Where the audiences come from
- Website visitors from the Meta pixel or Google tag, by recency.
- Video viewers and page engagers on Meta and YouTube.
- Customer lists from your email tool or store, uploaded only with consent, mainly so you can exclude buyers.
Build the tiers once, name them clearly ("Visitors 0–7d", "Visitors 8–30d"), and keep the same names in your email segments and analytics, so every channel talks about the same people.
Our paid ads agent builds these tiers as paused drafts, with the exclusions in place, for you to approve.
- Retargeting
- Meta Ads
- Google Ads
- Audiences
Let your AI run the marketing. You keep the final say.
Connect your ads, analytics, store and email, and approve every change before it goes out.
