I haven't yet implemented retargeting as it requires quite some time and I need to understand how it works. We do use cookies to rebuild the checkout when a user returns on the website (at least something!)
We tried building a newsletter, but we wasted a lot of time as people simply would not subscribe. We might want to try again but we will need to understand exactly what we can offer people and what would motivate them to give us their email address.
In order to let people know we are reducing prices, we run campaigns with specific collections and landing pages (so that we can track at least what people is doing as soon as they arrive on the offers page), an example here: http://polghi.co.uk/collections/winter-is-here
Tomorrow I will do a long list with some of the stuff you mentioned and will try to further optimize what we have, thanks a lot for your suggestions!