This is still true today but the theory is less about what time or day of the week to launch an email campaign and more about what the optimum time is in the customer lifecycle, for each customer/prospect to receive a message.
Trigger based marketing works on the premise that you communicate with your customers at a time when they have indicated a propensity to purchase. Trigger based marketing analyses customer behaviour to identify changes – or ‘triggers’ – that may indicate the need for a new product or service.
Basically any interaction – or significant lack of interaction – that a customer has with a business or service provider can be used as a trigger to tailor communications to them in a more relevant way.
Customer-specific events – these events affect specific customers and change their requirements or expectations. Examples include the birth of a child, moving to a new house or a change in employment status.
Relationship events – these events arise from the relationship the business already has with its customer or prospect. Examples would be the opening of a new account, the purchase of a product or the dropping a product or service.
To offer a flavour of the opportunities trigger based marketing represents here we outline some approaches we have used across the key industry verticals:
Trigger marketing in Retail
A furniture retailer sells a customer a leather sofa including delivery. As part of the sales process the retailer acquires the delivery address, a contact phone number and an email address.
1 week post the delivery date of the sofa the retailer mails the customer a leather care pack, with information on how to best care for their sofa, including details of products available in store, or via the on line store.
3 weeks post the delivery date of the sofa an email is sent to the customer featuring the selection of cushions, throws and side tables which would complement the sofa.
Trigger marketing in Entertainment/Leisure
The visitor attraction has an annual membership ticket, our objective was to drive renewal of these memberships. A series of triggered email messages was developed to automatically be sent to each member at set time periods pre the expiration date of the annual pass.
These messages drove renewal through the delivery of relevant content (what new rides and events are coming next year) and timely offers (renew in the next 7 days for a 20% discount).
Trigger marketing in Financial Services
Frequent on line share traders have a tendency to use multiple platforms to buy and sell shares.
Our objective was to gain a greater share of the share trades conducted by these frequent traders. The activity of 10,000 frequent traders was monitored to identify shifts in trading behaviour, this analysis indicated that a segment of our client’s frequent traders were using their trading platform 30% less than in the previous 3 month period. This insight lead to the development of a series of triggered emails which were sent relative to a frequent traders level if inactivity.
So if a frequent trader did not trade during a 2 week period a message was triggered with some free market insight information and access to a premium based analytics tool. This message was designed to reinforce the benefits of our client trading platform and values add services. If the trader made no trade within the next 7 days an offer of a discounted trade was sent.
Trigger marketing in Telecommunications
We have had significant success in driving mobile phone contract renewal (positive shifts in the region of 25%) through trigger based marketing where a series of messages was developed to pre-empt the contract end date, which has a tendency to drive consumers to “re consider” their provider.
The message series was designed to make the decision to renew a “no brainer” by covering of the usual price and handset comparisons well before the contract end date. This approach served to reassure the customer that their current provider had all the handset options, competitive pricing, and the ability to make it an easy hassle free process.
Automated Refill-Reminder Service
This triggered e-mail program tracks customers’ product-consumption cycle and sends timely reminders to stock up. It may also build on past purchases by offering bulk purchase deals and recommending similar styles and up sell by introducing premium versions of the same products.
Welcome E-mail Program
Welcoming new customers via a series of timed e-mails designed to introduce your product, service, brand, or company is highly effective at building strong early engagement and early second purchases. The welcome series warms up your new subscribers/customers while not overwhelming them with detailed product based messages, content types we have found effective in this series include a “top 10 products” campaign.
We replaced a basic text welcome e-mail for a Hotel Group with a content rich HTML welcome e-mail program, the net result saw conversions increase 85% and obtained a 6 times lift in revenue per e-mail.
For further insights on trigger based marketing and its relevance to your business contact us
