Best Practice Advice
Triggered email marketing campaigns drive ROI and increase relevance
Triggered or event driven emails are a great addition to any email marketers’ tool kit but are often overlooked. A triggered email, is one that is generated based on a meaningful change or event in a customer behavior or profile thus enabling you to send messages that are relevant, timely and personalised. An intelligent triggered email marketing programme can have many benefits. In this article Simon Bowker, eCircle’s UK MD discusses the benefits and provides some useful examples for you to try.
What are the advantages of triggered emails?
Strengthens Customer Loyalty: When someone opts in to receive a customer communication from you this shows a level of trust towards your company. Automated emails provide you with the opportunity to build upon this trust by automating timely, relevant, informative campaigns based on customer preferences and online behaviour.
Increases Relevance: With inboxes more crowded than ever your email has to be relevant. Using a change or event in a customer behavior or profile to trigger an email response gives you the ability to create highly targeted, relevant campaigns based on customer interests at a time when they are most responsive and likely to purchase.
Drives Efficiency: Time saved automating email campaigns will give you the freedom to focus on monitoring and improving campaign performance.
Generates Revenue: The many variations of triggered emails make it possible to design the perfect email message for every stage of the customer lifecycle. From an individual ‘welcome email’ to a reactivation campaign. New customer can be won and existing customers nurtured thus increasing the profit per customer.
Types of Triggers
There is virtually no limit to the number of triggered campaigns you can create. Here are some examples below to inspire you.
Event/Webinar Campaign: Follow up any sign ups with a series of triggered emails immediately after, 2 weeks before, the day prior and on the day to reduce drop outs.
Returning Customer not Purchasing: Trigger reactivation campaign 4 months after last purchase with incentive based on profile interests.
Out of Stock Email: Offer alternatives based on what the user has reviewed on the site.
Shopping Cart Abandonment: Send an email alert to a user who has left items in their shopping cart after 24 hours.
Personal: Subscription anniversaries, wedding anniversaries, birthdays, children’s and spouse’s birthdays.
Seasonal: Holidays, Easter, Christmas, New Year.
Interests: Tennis, Skiing, Dining out, Theatre, Rugby.
These lights-out triggered email programmes can work while you sleep, giving you the freedom to focus on monitoring your campaigns and modifying them accordingly. The opportunities to engage, retain and drive revenue via triggered emails are limitless and don’t have to be complex.
This article is a summary of eCircle’s newsletter "Inside Digital Marketing". If you wish to receive further news from the email marketing sector please subscribe here: http://www.ecircle.com/en/newsletter
