Triggered Email Marketing #1: beyond segmentation

Originally posted on nov 4, 2011 (ita version)

We are skilled in segmentation, we carefully choose target groups to send custom communications to people, but email marketing real power is in the advanced content customization based on event and behaviors.

Jupiter Research reported in the “ROI of Email Marketing” analysis that behavioral email marketing, compared  with traditional email marketing, has tripled conversion rates  and has allowed an increase of 30% of the click-through rates.

With an automation such this, we can send messages in the right time to the right recipients. This makes communication more relevant. Just as a trigger, actions are enabled in certain time periods or when the user performs an action.

Using triggered email marketing you can:

• manage the event that trigger the sending of an email;
• schedule different forward in different times;
• customize subject and content of messages;
• choose recipients (single users or groups);
• fix linked mails’ frequency.

In particular, triggered email marketing is characterized by being:

• automatic: set the rules and forget them! They work autonomously. (But don’t forget to check periodically that everything is still valid);
• specific: one campaign responds to different goals: subscription or unsubscription, purchase or inactivity;
• customizable:  it starts with the same communication for each recipient, but, depending on the actions performed by the user, it continues with different messages sent to users in different times.

Triggered email marketing can unleash special dialog tracks, limited only by your creativity, that allow to estabilish a more personal dialogue with customers. By the way, this follow-up strategy, won’t replace periodical newsletter or extraordinary communications (that’s what we call broadcast email marketing).

Three ways to use triggered email marketing?

1. Invite unsubscribed users to explain reasons, offering a bonus. You will improve your services and it will  be easier to retrieve a unsatisfied customer.
2. Send a custom offert to people who has visited a promotional page more that once without converting. Beat the resistance.
3. Give a second chance to user who have not clicked any link in your message. Perhaps you didn’t send in their best time of the day, send a new mail, provide a strong incentive and reming the expiration of the offert.

We will soon talk again about triggered email marketing, providing new examples.