Triggered Email Campaigns and Examples of Their Use

Triggered emails are messages for potential and existing customers that hit the target accurately. They help to bring a visitor back to the website, to encourage a customer to make a new order. Let’s talk about the benefits of triggered emails, their types, and how to create them.

Triggered Email Campaign: What Is It?

Triggered email campaigns are one of the elements of marketing automation. Their main task is to keep a potential customer in the sales funnel until they make a purchase.

A triggered email is sent following a specific activity or when a customer's behavior meets certain criteria. For example, when a person subscribes to a newsletter, they automatically receive a greeting email. The email can also be linked to a specific event. For example, on a customer's birthday, companies often send a greeting email with an offer of a discount or a gift.

Triggered emails work more efficiently than regular mass emails. When an email isn’t linked to a specific activity, recipients receive one email, no matter what stage of the buying process they’re at. At the same time in the triggered email chain, each step of the buying process has its own message that a customer receives only when they are at the right step. That’s why a competent automated email campaign can improve the click-through rate from emails, increase the number of orders placed and orders completed.

Benefits of triggered emails

Let’s have a look at the advantages of this type of email campaign and the opportunities it offers to businesses.

• Personalization. Such emails are addressed to a specific customer and meet their needs, preferences, and purchase stage. This increases the chance that a customer will eventually place an order.
• Automatic sending. The marketer doesn't need to spend a lot of time on email campaigns, since the email chain only needs to be set up once. Thanks to a preconfigured sending script, emails will be sent at any time around the clock.
• Timing. The triggered email is delivered exactly when the customer needs it. Let’s consider the “abandoned shopping cart” scenario. A customer has added an item to the shopping cart on an online store's website, but still has doubts about the choice, so they haven't placed an order. If the next day they receive a reminder email about the half-finished purchase, it will be relevant and might encourage them to buy an item right away.
• Improving communication with customers. You can attract new customers, return old ones, and increase brand loyalty by regularly communicating with people via triggered emails.

Who needs triggered email campaigns

Triggered email campaigns are beneficial for any business. You can use them to respond to every action of a potential customer and offer them what they are interested in right now.

Such newsletters are especially suitable for the following types of businesses:

• Internet stores. Welcome-letters, lists of recommended goods, reminders about abandoned shopping carts - all these will help to bring the customer to the purchase on the website.
• SaaS. Triggered emails will help to get your customers more familiar with your product. To increase the chances of converting a registered user into a customer, send them a chain of emails about the convenience of using your service. You can send instructions, tutorials, and at the end of the chain you can add a discount promo code to the email.
• Media resources. Triggered emails can be used to bring readers back and encourage them to discuss the content they read. For example, if a subscriber has read an article and left a comment, you may send them an email with the comments of other subscribers.

Types of Triggered Emails

• Welcome-letters. In this case, the customer’s trigger action is to subscribe to your email newsletter or register on your website. A welcome email is like introducing yourself to your subscribers, you can tell them about your company and your product. To increase the engagement of your subscribers, you can add a discount and a gift product or service to your welcome email.
• Reminder. The most common example of a reminder email is a message about an abandoned shopping cart. Remind your customer about the incomplete order and offer discounts or free delivery service. This is a great way to reduce the number of abandoned orders.
• Warming-up emails. Some customers browse the goods but never make up their minds to buy. Alternatively, they sign up, but are in no hurry to use the service. For this category of potential customers, it is important to set up triggered emails with content that will stimulate their interest, for example, product reviews, instructions, video tutorials.
• Reactivation emails. These emails are necessary if your subscribers don’t read emails for a long time, don't visit your website, and don't make a purchase. To get their attention back, you can send an email with a provocative subject line (for example, “We have to say goodbye to you”), offer a discount or a gift. If the consumer doesn’t react in any way, you can delete their email from your database. In this way you can keep your email list up to date.
• Recommendations. Recommendation emails are always personalized, taking customer needs and preferences into account. For example, send an email with an offer available in the customer's region, or send a selection of recommended products based on what they've added to their Favorites.
• Greetings. Send holiday greeting emails to your subscribers, adding nice bonuses in the form of a promo code or a gift to an order for a certain amount.

How to Build a Triggered Email Campaign

Many email marketing services allow you to set up chains and send triggered emails. Such services include MailChimp, SendPulse, eSputnik, and UniSender. Thus, technically it is not difficult to implement such emails.

The following situations and actions can be considered as triggers:

• abandoned shopping cart;
• click on the “purchase” button;
• signing up on the website;
• website visits;
• subscription to the newsletters;
• browsing goods pages.

According to these steps you can see the stage of the purchase the customer is at. For example, if they’ve registered, it means they’re already interested enough in the goods/services. If they have clicked the “purchase” button, they are completely ready to buy.

Then you need to write the emails themselves and think through the scripts for each trigger depending on the customers’ activity. Take into account all the information about a customer's behavior on the website so that you can send them relevant emails: what they look at in the store, what they add to their basket, what they have already bought with you, etc. Think of what you can use to convert a website visitor into a customer or encourage them to buy again.

Let’s take a look at a few scenarios of sending triggered emails that are commonly used in marketing:

• A customer signs up? -> you send a welcome-email.
• A customer browses goods on the website -> you send a range of goods that customer may like, and you can offer a discount on the first order.
• Abandoned shopping cart -> you send an email reminding the customer of the goods in the shopping cart. If the customer doesn't respond, you send the email again and add a discount or personal offer.
• A customer buys goods -> you send a thank you letter, and you may offer a discount on the next purchase.
• 14 days after the purchase of the goods -> you ask to leave feedback about the purchased goods.

Examples of Triggered Email Campaigns

Let’s take a look at a few examples of triggered email campaigns from online stores.

Welcome-letter

Abandoned shopping cart

New goods notification

Feedback request

Triggered emails help to automate the sales process and prevent customers from falling out of the funnel, so this is a useful solution for any business. Test different email messages and topics, collect and analyze as much customer data as possible, and you'll find the most effective solutions for your email campaigns.