One of my clients was asking for my advice about trigger e-mails.  If you haven’t worked with trigger e-mails then you may not be familiar with the ability to set up e-mails that are automatically “triggered” by an event.  There are many behaviors that can trigger an e-mail and below is a selection of the types of trigger campaigns you can develop:

1.  Welcome Campaigns

If a customer makes a purchase or registers on your web site, this is a wonderful opportunity to thank them as well as up-sell existing customers and convert prospects into customers.

2.  Birthday Programs

Why not surprise and delight your customers with a special birthday promotion.  You can send a promotion or special offer in the month of their birthday.  For one of my clients, this program consistently generates among the highest response rates.

3.  Specific Product Promotions

You can leverage past purchase behavior to let customers know about products that might be of particular interest to them.  Amazon is a great example of this.  Based on books I have previously purchased, I receive e-mails about books on topics of interest to me as well as e-mails about new books from authors from who I have bought in the past.

4.  Reactivation Campaigns

If it has been a while since a customer has bought from you, a reactivation e-mail may be in order.  The purpose of a reactivation campaign is to remind customers about your products and services and encourage them to become an active customer again.   This is your chance to win back a lost or inactive customer.

Trigger campaigns are one key element of your communication strategy.  They provide relevant content based on customer behavior and enable you to speak to the particular needs and interests of your customers.

Most of what I have written this year about e-mail marketing has been complaints.  So these are my New Year’s resolutions for e-mail marketers:

1.  Target your e-mails.  Resist the temptation to blast everyone on your list regardless of whether they will be interested in what you have to say.  A good e-mail is timely and relevant.  If you send out too many e-mails, your recipients will report your e-mails as spam, hurting your reputation and possibly your ability to send e-mails in the future. 

2.  Send trigger emails.  I am a big fan of Barnes and Noble.  I love purchasing books on-line and they make it so easy for me.  For example, their website indicates how quickly each book typically ships.  When I place an order, I receive confirmation almost instantaneously and then am kept abreast of the shipping status of my order.  I love knowing exactly where my books are and when I can expect to receive them.  As a result, I appreciate trigger emails and expect them to be timely.  If I sign up for a new service on-line, I expect to receive a welcome e-mail within 24 hours, if not sooner.  I am amazed and disappointed by organizations that do not send trigger emails as they are important for reinforcing the relationship and offer an up-sell or cross-sell opportunity. 

3.  Create a preference center and follow it.  Allow subscribers to determine the frequency, content and even form of communication.   DailyLit is a great example I wrote about.  DailyLit allows subscribers to choose the amount of text they receive, the frequency and timing of communication and whether users receive emails or RSS feeds.  Thus, their communication is more likely to be read.

4.  Create your emails with image blocking in mind.  I wrote about image blocking in one post and then had to resist doing it again and again as I received more and more e-mails that clearly were not designed for e-mail providers who automatically blocked images.

5.  Reactivate or eliminate inactive e-mail subscribers.  As I noted in an earlier post, it is nice to be asked if you want to continue to receive emails from an organization.  This gentle reminder reengaged me and reestablished a relationship.  Alternatively, marketers could create a formal reactivation campaign as part of their campaign cycle. 

6.  Measure your campaigns and continuously learn.  I believe strongly in testing and measurement, comparing campaigns to benchmark rates or past campaigns, and determining the return on investment (ROI) of campaigns.  In the end, everyone one wants to know what worked, what did not work and whether the campaign was successful.  If you are interested, past posts have provided sources for e-mail metrics and a discussion of A/B testing. 

Happy New Year!