Marketing automation is an essential part to anyone’s email marketing strategy, because it gives insight into your subscriber’s lifecycle and allows you to market to them properly. One effective form of marketing automation is triggered emails.
For those who are not familiar, triggered emails are automated responses based on a specific action taken (or not taken) by a consumer or a meaningful change in their behavior or profile. These timely, relevant and personalized responses create an invitation to advance the communication between a marketer and their customer.
A great example of a triggered email happens when a customer is on an eCommerce site and leaves items in their shopping cart without checking out. That company has the opportunity to send a triggered email to remind them to complete their order.
The Benefits of Triggered Emails
According to research by Forrester Research, trigger based email marketing campaigns can generate 4x more revenue and 18x greater profits. So, if you are looking for a way to lift your conversion rates, triggered emails are the way to go.
But wait – there’s more. Additional benefits include:
Increased customer loyalty
By providing your subscribers with relevant emails based on their preference and behavior, you build trust with them, which in return will keep them as subscribers.
Increased relevance
Since inboxes are more crowded than ever, providing relevant content will help your emails stand out. Triggered emails allows you to create a highly targeted and relevant campaign based on a subscribers interests at a time when they are most likely to respond.
Increased efficiency
Triggered emails can allow you to focus on improving your campaign performance instead of manually segmenting and uploading lists.
Increased revenue
Triggered emails can be designed to send relevant campaigns for every customer’s lifecycle stage, starting with the welcome email to the post-purchase process.
Types of Triggered Emails
Here are five examples of triggered email that you can implement into your marketing:
Welcome email
If someone has opted in for your newsletters, created an account or subscribed to your blog, sending a welcome email is a good way to build trust. Welcome emails let the subscriber know who you are and what they can expect from your emails.
When sending a welcome email, you should take the opportunity to thank your new subscriber and if you offer some kind of discount or trial you can promote that in the email.
Activation Email
Let’s say a potential customer has created an account, but months after signing up, they have not purchased anything. Something must be wrong, and you will want to address what that is. You can send them triggered email to remind them about the account they created and reiterate the benefits of your product or service.
The “Win back” email
If you have a customer who has not purchased anything from you during the last six months or so, now might be a good time to step up and show them you still care. Sending them a triggered marketing campaign to win them back by offering a discount or special promotion will show them that you care and want to keep them as a customer.
The “Abandoned shopping cart” email
It is pretty common for people to initiate an order and not complete it. So what stops them from clicking the “Pay now” button? Most likely, timing and pricing could be what it comes down to.
Sending a triggered email campaign with an incentive for checking out such as free shipping or price matching can turn your abandoned cart shopper into a customer.
The “Customer satisfaction” email
If you have a business that has customers contacting customer service on a daily basis, it doesn’t hurt to follow up with them to see if their question or concern was addressed. It shows that you care.
Sending a triggered email to follow up with customers regarding their customer service experience with a survey or feedback form, can provide you with the information you need to make any internal improvements if needed. You can also use this opportunity to give the customer an incentive for providing their feedback with an offer or discount.
What did we learn?
Triggered emails should be incorporated into any email marketing strategy because they can help with increasing revenue and maintain a relationship with your customers. The great thing is that they are extremely easy to set up. And once created, they send themselves, taking out the hassle of you having to schedule them. Only positive results can come from sending triggered emails.
Have you created any triggered emails? Let us know how you’re using them over on Facebook or Twitter!
