Automated email marketing and trigger-based marketing emails go hand in hand. To maximize your content marketing benefits and increase return on investment (ROI), you can use trigger-based emails to get the visitors to return to your website.
Once a person subscribes to your blog or services, you can engage them repeatedly based on their specific place in the sales funnel and interaction with your brand. The triggers are dependent on customer interests and actions. This extreme personalization is what makes these emails more effective than traditional email marketing campaigns.
It’s no surprise that trigger-based marketing emails have a higher open rate and click-through rate than other types of emails, including RSS, Newsletters, and Autoresponders.
Before we move on to the examples of trigger-based marketing emails, let’s take a quick look at how they work.
How Trigger-based Email Campaigns Work
When you run a business, your interaction with people goes through a lifecycle consisting of multiple stages, from new subscribers to regular clients. Each lifecycle stage warrants a specific response, such as welcome emails, re-engagement emails, or milestone emails.
In a trigger-based email marketing campaign, your system automatically sends emails to your customers or subscribers based on their interactions with your brand.
The triggers can be opening your emails, buying from you, visiting your website, or interacting with you on social media. Each of these actions will trigger a unique email response to that customer.
These emails motivate recipients to take actions tied to specific goals. It helps move the customers along the sales funnel subtly.
Here are seven great examples of trigger-based marketing emails.
Triggered Email Examples
1. Welcome Email
Welcome emails have a whopping 58% open rate. They are triggered when someone confirms a subscription or completes the registration process on your website. As soon as the customer clicks on the confirmation link, they automatically receive a cheerful welcome email.
The purpose of the welcome email is to confirm the subscription and guide the client about what to expect next. It’s an excellent opportunity to suggest the following steps to engage the clients.
However, make sure you don’t go overboard with your welcome email. There’s a fine line between courtesy and annoyance. So instead of stuffing your welcome email, you can split your message into a short sequence spread over a reasonable time interval.
Have a look at the welcome email by Adobe. Along with a bunch of helpful links, they’re also inviting new members to their free trials. This way, they can experience the Adobe products firsthand and decide to buy with confidence.
2. Inventory Updates
Out-of-stock products amount to $1 trillion in lost sales worldwide! According to reports, one in three products that customers need is not in stock. So, if you run an eCommerce store, you’re losing the sale of one product for every two sold. But, you can prevent this loss by sending inventory updates to customers as soon as the products are back in stock.
What would be the trigger in this case? If the customer added a product to their wishlist, it’s a no-brainer that they should get an email once the product is back in stock. However, if you’ve been using pixel tracking or website cookies, you will also know if a customer has been paying special attention to particular products that were sold out.
When the system identifies such a scenario, it stores the information and sends out an email as soon as that commodity is back in stock. So even if the buyer has forgotten about that product, your email will remind them of the product, bring them back to your store, and the FOMO may even compel them to buy it there and then. Inventory update emails have a startling 65.32% open rate, so they are definitely worth the effort.
3. Surveys and Feedback
Customer survey or feedback email has a response rate of about 25%, so they’re worth adding to your trigger-based marketing email campaign.
Want to make them even more enticing? Offer a discount coupon as an appreciation for filling out the feedback form or the survey! Did you know 96% of Americans love coupons? That’s why surveys and feedback emails coupled with a discount coupon are a fail-proof way to earn returning customers.
You can use any number of events as a trigger for sending out feedback or survey emails. For instance, after visitors purchase something, download a free template, or attend a webinar.
You can kill two birds with one stone with surveys and feedbacks. Not only do they compel the customers to come back and shop again, but they can also help you gather valuable information from customers about your brand or product.
Here’s an example of feedback email from Titan.
4. Announcements
When you have something newsworthy, send out personalized emails to your prestigious subscribers and customers. For example, you can send announcement emails to alert your customers about new changes or inform them about lucrative updates. Here are a few events that should trigger announcement emails.
- New product release
- A limited-edition product launch
- Start of pre-orders
- A special virtual event
- Business anniversary
But the question you should be asking is, why will the customers care?
You remember, the first rule of marketing is to know your customer. Therefore, your announcement emails should hold value for your customers. They should reiterate your brand promise and fulfill it by offering what your customers value the most.
You may tie the announcement with discounts, premium access to valued customers, free bookings, or a sneak peek into upcoming products and services.
Here’s an example.
5. Onboarding Email
Onboarding emails are beneficial in the orientation of new audiences interested in your offerings. They help engage the visitors and show them how to get the most out of your products and services.
A well-planned onboarding email campaign can channel your leads quickly toward conversions. For instance, Habitat offers a discount to its customers right off the bat to encourage them to shop from them. Then it provides links to important pages such as their latest products, bestselling products, and social media links so that the visitors can explore the brand thoroughly.
Their onboarding email is aesthetically designed in earthen color to induce a sense of calmness and trust in the reader.
6. Reengagement Emails
Re-engagement emails are trigger-based emails usually sent to people who haven’t interacted with your business for a while. For example, maybe they subscribed a while ago but haven’t opened your emails in some time. Perhaps they bought your products a while back but didn’t shop again.
With trigger-based emails, it pays to keep track of such customers. Set a duration after which a buyer or subscriber will be declared inactive. At this point, the system should send a re-engagement email to them automatically. For example, if you set inactivity time to six months, the customers who have been inactive for the last six months should receive a re-engagement email automatically.
Ancient Nutrition by Dr. Axe sends out this re-engagement email to its subscribers who haven’t opened their emails recently. The message is clear, concise, and gives people a choice to stay or leave.
7. Milestone Achievement
Milestone-triggered emails are instrumental in increasing customers’ loyalty by remembering occasions important to them, such as an anniversary or a birthday. The goal is to make your customer feel cherished. These trigger-based emails are highly personalized and can increase transaction rates by 481%, especially when coupled with a discount code.
Many businesses like Sigma Kappa, Qatar Airways, and ASOS send milestone achievement emails to their customers.
Trigger-based email marketing campaigns are successful because they are aligned to customers’ interactions with your business rather than trying to align customers to your business timelines. In addition, because automated triggered emails are sent based on the customer’s online behaviors and activities, you don’t have to do the guesswork.
