Most retargeting audiences are built from people who clicked an ad, looked around, and left without registering. Visitors who arrive through a speaker's post or an exhibitor's message are a warmer group, because someone they know sent them.
The short answer
For event retargeting, Snöball places your tracking pixel on every Snöball-generated landing page for your event. Visitors who arrive through a speaker's, sponsor's or exhibitor's share join your own retargeting audiences, inside your own ad account. Your follow-up reaches people who already have a reason to come, and you own the audience.
Why retargeting feels harder than it used to
Paid social keeps getting more expensive, and people have learned to scroll past ads that follow them around. Retargeting still works, but a pool made up mostly of ad clicks gives diminishing returns. You keep paying to remind people who were never that interested.
Events have an advantage here. People decide to attend because a colleague, a speaker they follow, or a supplier they trust says it's worth the trip. The trouble is that this kind of sharing usually happens where your pixel can't see it.
The sharing that fills events usually happens where your pixel can't see it.
How Snöball hands you the referral traffic
When speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors share your event through Snöball, each one gets a personalized landing page. Their followers, clients, and colleagues visit that page on the way to registering.
You give us your tracking pixel, and we place it on every Snöball-generated landing page for your event. Anyone who arrives through an advocate's link lands in your retargeting audience, inside your own ad account. You own that audience and run the follow-up however you like.
It's one of the features that sets Snöball apart, and it means the reach your advocates create keeps working for you after the first click.
Why referral visitors are worth retargeting
A visitor who arrives through a recommendation already has context. They know who is speaking, or which of their suppliers will be on the show floor. If they don't register on the first visit, a reminder has something to build on.
That changes what your ads can say. Instead of a generic “register now,” you can speak to the reason they came: the speaker they follow, the exhibitor they buy from, the community they belong to.
Let sharing data decide where you retarget
Snöboard, the Snöball campaign dashboard, shows which channels your advocates actually use to share. That tells you where your audience spends time and talks to each other, which is a better starting point for a media plan than last year's habits.
Use it to decide
If your community shares mostly on Instagram and by text, an email-heavy follow-up is out of step with how they talk.
What Premiere Orlando learned
Premiere Show Group ran Snöball for Premiere Orlando in 2024, and more than 20,000 advocates shared the event. The channel data surprised the team. Instagram led, Facebook Messenger and SMS were close behind, and WhatsApp turned out to be a strong channel for beauty professionals.
“We gained valuable insights from the dashboard about how our attendees communicate. It allowed us to adapt not only our Snöball campaigns but our overall marketing approach.”Erin McDonald, Marketing Director, Premiere Show Group
How to set it up
- Send us your pixelShare the pixel from each ad account you want to build audiences in. We add it to every Snöball-generated landing page for your event.
- Build a referral audienceIn your ad manager, create an audience from visitors to those pages. Keep it separate from your general site visitors so you can talk to it differently.
- Match the message to the sourceWhere you can, reference the speaker, sponsor, or exhibitor who brought people in, or the reason they likely came.
- Spend where the sharing happensCheck Snöboard for the channels your advocates use most and lean your budget toward them.
- Compare the resultsTrack how the referral audience registers against your standard retargeting pool.
Keep the right people in reach.
Your advocates already bring the right people to your event. With your pixel on their landing pages, you can stay in front of those people until they're ready to register.
