Optivo by ESBConnect lets brands retarget site visitors without ads

Customer acquisition specialist, esbconnect, has launched Optivo, its new audience retargeting tool, Optivo.


In a UK first, Optivo enables brands to retarget anonymous website visitors not on their CRM system with an email. Retargeting website visitors via email has long been proven to be effective.


Cart abandonment emails uplift conversions by 26% on average, but it is estimated that 90% of a brand’s website traffic are “ghosts”, who visit sites without identifying themselves or starting a purchase.


Esbconnect now enables brands to identify those anonymous visitors, link them to an email address, suppress any of their current customers, and retarget them by email, encouraging them to purchase or subscribe.


Optivo

Using esbconnect’s GDPR-compliant database of 17 million opted-in UK email addresses, Optivo can match up to 20% of unknown visitors to real email records that are not in a brand’s CRM.

Within minutes of a visit, matched users are enrolled into a compliant email journey, offering them a chance to subscribe and later to purchase.


For those that choose to subscribe, they are immediately added into the brand’s CRM to nurture towards a conversion.
Esbconnect has already seen that between 40-70% of people who enter into this process convert to a subscriber, and the ROI is typically 2.6 times higher than a straight, purchase-led campaign.


The London-based adtech estimates that Optivo will be able to match 20% of anonymous site visitors to an email address, much more efficiently and cost-effectively than retargeting ads on Meta or Google.


This is the first GDPR-compliant service to launch in the UK. It enables brands to potentially retarget anyone who visits their site via email, not just the 10% of visitors who typically add to a cart, whether they complete the purchase or not.

Email is extremely effective for retargeting, delivering the best ROI of any channel, according to the DMA. It typically delivers read rates in excess of 40% and an ROI of 4x, with some retail pilot test partners reporting 2.2x this figure.


“With customer acquisition costs growing, and retargeting becoming less effective as more stringent privacy regulations take hold, we are seeing a lot of interest in Optivo from UK brands,” said esbconnect CEO, Suzanna Chaplin.

“In the US, tools like Retention.com have proven this model can work, but until now, there was no GDPR-compliant solution in the UK. Optivo changes that.”


Esbconnect is currently running a pilot programme with a number of selected brands in the Fashion, Home & Garden and Travel sectors, with a full roll-out scheduled for later this month.

The platform integrates quickly and easily with existing marketing tech stacks and CRM platforms like Klaviyo, Ometria, Adobe and Salesforce.


Also published in: Mediashotz

More from our team & client partners

Fake it till you make it? Thought leadership’s got trust issues
September 15, 2026
It has never been easier to publish something polished, yet it is becoming harder to prove that the thinking behind it is genuinely yours.
The Credibility Premium: Why AI has just made riding solo impossibly expensive
August 14, 2026
For the last twenty years or so, brands have been rightly obsessed with their search rankings. But in the time it takes for consumers to completely reinvent their online research habits – which it turns out wasn’t very long at all – it has become clear SEO was the easy part.
Creator marketing: The growth engine brands can no longer afford to ignore
August 13, 2026
There was a time when creator partnerships were considered a ‘nice-to-have’ in supporting a marketing campaign. They were great for achieving an extra few likes and comments across social platforms, but rarely were creators considered central to an ad campaign, never mind a long-term growth engine.
Rob Hall, CEO of Parallel: “Digital Twins and ‘Customer Suitability’ can power better decisions
August 12, 2026
While brand safety and brand suitability help advertisers avoid harmful environments and align campaigns with brand values, Customer Suitability asks whether a video placement is right for the customer viewing it. Parallel combines proprietary AI, large-scale data sets and digital twins – synthetic replicas of consumer
Andy Squire, Brave Ads: “AI replacing traditional Search? It’s not as simple as that”
August 10, 2026
NDA spoke recently with Andy Squire, RVP Sales EMEA at Brave Ads, about the rapid evolution of the Search marketplace and how marketers can reassess their strategy for discoverability…
Brandtech’s Jellyfish Launches AI Ads Optimisation in Share of Model™
By Ren Bowman • August 6, 2026
Jellyfish, a global digital marketing leader within The Brandtech Group, today announced AI Ads Optimisation, a major expansion of the paid media optimisation capabilities within its proprietary Share of Model™ Platform. The update extends beyond the existing Google Ads integration for Performance Max to generate media
Tinder ‘Dump Traditional Dating’: Alternative fourplay | The Digital Voice™
By Ren Bowman • August 6, 2026
Oh the joys of online dating…are there any? Not according to many of those we know but maybe, just maybe Tinder has the answer, with its Double Date feature.
How adtech CEOs should use LinkedIn in 2026: a visibility playbook for the AI world
July 25, 2026
Everyone knows that CEOs should be using LinkedIn. But so often it’s something they promise they’ll get around to after the board meeting, after the investor update, product launch, client pitch, or one of a hundred other urgent tasks competing for attention. It's time to stop treating LinkedIn as a nice to have.
Stop the scroll: how to win at SEO in the age of AI search | The Digital Voice™
May 14, 2026
How people seek and find information, optimising for the front page of search engines is no longer optimal. GEO has made technical SEO more important than ever.
Show More