Setting up triggered emails is an easy way to ensure your communications are relevant and timely as they’re based on your subscriber’s recent interactions with your brand, product or service. For instance, there may be simple actions or changes in customer behaviour that you can use as the basis for new triggered activity that complements your existing messaging.
But you can also work outside the box for an even greater sense of the personal touch. Here we show you how…
Are you making the most of triggered emails?
Have you thoroughly explored all your potential email trigger programmes? Bear these points in mind:
• triggers can be very effective just because of their impeccable timing, and don’t always need to include an offer
• test different creative ideas before you set up your trigger campaign, timings and approaches to determine the most effective approach for your own list
• refresh your creative regularly
• check your triggers are still functioning properly every month or so
Basic types of triggered emails
Triggered emails offer endless possibilities. They can be fashioned to suit any type of customer behaviour criteria. Typically, triggered emails take advantage of moments in the customer lifecycle. Here are the most common and effective triggered messages:
Confirmation messages
Immediately confirm any changes subscribers make, including subscription initialisation (welcome email), unsubscription (farewell email), first purchase, future purchases etc
Follow up messages
Additional messages based on particular content you have sent – such as a targeted offer to subscribers who opened a particular message, or clicked on an offerPurchase / conversion based
Cross-sell and /or up-sell complementary products
Send reminders for past customers to renew products that have a certain life eg annual purchases, a contract ending soon, a product with a short life span like a cosmetic product
Abandoned shopping cart -remind someone they still have items in their cart and encourage them to purchase these items plus others offered at a discount
Send frequent purchaser messages to your most important/valuable subscribers
Personal Messages
Birthday offers- send to customers on or just before their birthday
Anniversary of customer / membership of loyalty programme – thank people for their membership / purchase history
Reactivation
To reduce the number of your subscribers becoming inactive, make a decision about when your subscribers are likely to become unengaged: you can do this by calculating your frequency and recency of opened messages.
Set up an incentivised, triggered message just before your estimated engagement cut-off
Get creative with your triggered emails
Once you’ve covered the basic triggered options, start thinking outside the box for even better returns:
• consider developing a full Welcome email programme with a series of messages that build on each otherremind past customers to make their regular purchase based on their individual historic purchasing frequency and timing- eg an insurance renewal
• send offers to generate additional sales from certain subscribers, eg to turn subscribers who usually buy once a year, to twice-a-year buyers
• send a survey message to subscribers who have recently purchased or unsubscribed to find out their opinions and make sure they know you’re listening
• update your purchasers on the progress of their order
Last updated: Apr 20, 2015 admin
