The PGA Tour Caddie mobile application has evolved its strategy beyond acquiring users to retargeting them and triggering repeat visits.

Tracking and retargeting have long been a challenge on mobile due to a lack of cookies or an alternative form of tracing users. The PGA Tour Caddie app, which was created by Shotzoom Software, overcomes this obstacle with Fiksu?s technology for retargeting.

?I?m interested in having the users who have downloaded the app actively using it,? said Ben Addoms, general manager at Shotzoom, Scottsdale, AZ.

?[PGA Tour Caddie is] designed to be something you use every time you play golf, we want to remind users that if they haven?t been using it recently, it?s there on their phone and has a wide range of capabilities,? he said. ?And hopefully convert free to paid users.

Seasonal sport
A retargeting tool makes a lot of sense for an app such as PGA Tour Caddie. The app is really only useful for consumers in good weather who are going to play golf, so there will inherently be times when users do not frequent the app.

With the retargeting technology, PGA Tour Caddie can message users to remind them about the app and convince them to return.

For example, in the spring, a user may receive an ad saying, ?Hey, the sun is finally out, you know what that means? It?s golf time.? The ad could then deeplink into the PGA Tour Caddie app.

Alternatively, PGA Tour Caddie could target a free user and encourage them to upgrade to a paid version of the app.

Using an anonymous ID, Fiksu can track a PGA Tour Caddie user and find that same user on other mobile sites and applications such as Facebook. Fiksu can look at the last time the user visited the app, how frequently he visited the app and decide what message to use to target him in conjunction with Shotzoom and their data on users.

Fiksu sends retargeting messages across different media sources such as real-time-bidding exchanges, Facebook and major ad networks like Google Adwords.

Mobile tracking
One of the biggest challenges for mobile marketers is figuring out how to track and retarget on mobile. Desktop tracking is fairly simple with cookies, but mobile is still in the experimental phase of tracking.

On desktop retailers tracking and retargeting can go as far as a consumer who added a product to a basket but did not convert receiving an ad for that exact product.

Fiksu believes that it has found a comparable solution for mobile tracking.

?In the beginning for any client, marketing at first will be largely user-acquisition oriented, in that you need to build up a critical mass of a user base prior to then embarking on how you build on the trust and confidence with your customers,? said Craig Palli, chief strategy officer at Fiksu, Boston.

?Most marketers will start with a user acquisition strategy, but as soon as you achieve this user mass you will turn your attention to retargeting where you mature that relationship with messaging," he said.

?Retargeting becomes a necessary component of your marketing mix and a perfect complement."

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York