As more startups are popping up and global leaders keep entrenching their positions even further, markets become increasingly concentrated and competition even more fierce. In 2020, 4.35 million business applications were submitted in the US alone, which is a 24% increase from 2019. When everyone is vying for customers’ attention, trigger marketing can help. A well-designed trigger marketing strategy can fuel business growth, and here’s how.
What is trigger marketing
Remember that time you were shopping online but didn’t complete the purchase for some reason? Chances are you also received an email reminding you of the items still waiting in the shopping cart. That’s trigger marketing in action.
In a nutshell, trigger marketing is a technique that aims to launch automatic sending of messages to actual or potential customers in response to an event. However, there is one caveat to it. Simply automating your emails, messages, and in-app notifications will not get you very far. Customers have unique needs, and they experience your product or services differently. So, it’s vital that you understand your customers first, their journeys and behaviors, pain points and expectations, as well as preferred channels of communications.
That sounds right, but how to achieve that? Glad you asked.
The dynamic duo: trigger marketing and customer journey mapping
Customer journey mapping is a visualization of an end-to-end experience a customer has with your product or service. A well-thought-out journey map serves as a single source of truth, bringing visibility into customer’s interactions, as well as feelings and emotions.
Armed with these insights, businesses can create highly effective trigger marketing campaigns and target users with the right message at the right time. This approach significantly increases brand awareness and drives higher chances of conversion.
Here’s how trigger marketing and journey mapping can go hand in hand for better results:
- Always start with the basics, and in our case — with personas. A persona is a representation of a customer segment that shares goals, needs, and behavior. To make your personas as true-to-life as possible, base them on research data, conversations with real-world customers, and feedback from employees. The better the quality of your data is, the more detailed and insightful your personas will be.
- Special attention needs to be paid to communication channels. All personas are different and may prefer different ways to communicate with your brand. What’s more, even the same persona may go from desktop to mobile depending on the current stage.
- Now that you have your personas, you can move further to creating a customer journey map that would reflect all the stages and channels, as well as needs, pain points, and actions associated with those stages. Having this information right in front of you will help you choose the best channel of communication for each step.
- Whether you are sending emails, in-app notifications, SMS messages, leverage оjourney map-driven insights to personalize your trigger marketing campaign.
- Custom-tailored messages will help you win customer loyalty and take engagement to the next level.
Case in point: triggered email campaign
The most common type of a trigger marketing campaign is triggered emails. While the average opening rate for email blasts is around 18%, triggered emails boast the opening rate of almost 50% — all due to the highly relevant and personalized content.
Let’s dive a bit deeper and have a look at what a triggered email campaign may look like for an e-commerce business. From signing up to purchasing a product to leaving a review or feedback, a customer moves through a number of stages. And by tailoring emails to the exact stage a customer is in their journey, you can improve customer service.
Source: UXPressia’s CJM templates for e-commerce
A welcome email
A welcome email is triggered after a new subscriber has finished the signing up process. This email is the beginning of your relationship with a customer and its purpose is to make customers feel welcome. Welcome emails are opened up 10 times more often than others, so take your time to craft a greeting message that would provide details on your company and encourage further engagement by offering a discount for the first order.
Source: Campaign Monitor
A new arrivals email
Who doesn’t like getting their hands on the latest and greatest? A new arrivals email is a type of promotional email that allows the subscribers to get first dibs on new merchandise, boosting their loyalty. For best results, personalize messages to target the customers who showed interest in similar products or categories.
Source: Mailcharts
A promotional email
Unlike transactional emails that are triggered by customers’ actions (e.g., signing up, abandoning the cart), promotional emails aim to showcase your products and services while increasing brand awareness. These emails too can be automated and sent to prospects and customers on a predefined schedule. Limited time offers, seasonal campaigns, giveaways, and special offers for subscribers are examples of high-converting promotional emails.
Source: Sleeknote
A cart abandonment email
Shopping cart abandonment is a growing challenge that translates into billions of dollars lost every year. The good news is that 63% of abandoned goods can be recovered, and triggered emails are a crucial part of the strategy. An abandoned cart email is a follow-up message sent to customers who added items to their cart but didn’t go through with the purchase. Since it aims to recover lost sales, this type of email should address potential abandonment causes like offering free shipment to mitigate unexpected total costs.
Source: Bluecore
A product recommendation email
The purpose of recommendation emails is to help surface the products that customers would otherwise miss. The better you tailor the email content to the subscriber’s interests, the higher the chance of conversion is. Customer’s previous purchases, wishlists, browsing behavior, demographic profile, as well as best sellers — use all available data sources to make the recommendation email as personalized as possible.
Source: SmartMail
An order confirmation email
Placing an order online can leave a customer with a number of new questions. Is my payment through? What’s the next step? When am I to expect my order? That’s why it is important to send an order confirmation email to reassure your customer and improve the overall experience. In addition to essential order details, you may include complementary items for up-selling and cross-selling, limited-time discounts, an invitation to social media, and so on.
Source: Automizy
A shipment confirmation email
Once the order has been packed and shipped, it’s time to notify the customer that their purchase is on its way. In addition to estimated delivery time, it is very helpful to provide a tracking link so that customers can stay on top of the delivery process. You may also include a way to contact support in case the need arises.
Source: Jilt
A happy birthday email
This one is simple — it is an email triggered by the date that a user stated as their birthday. Opened twice as often as other types of emails, birthday emails can turn out to be that sweet spot that helps marketers reconnect with customers and reactivate inactive users. Celebrating your customer’s birthday with a personalized message and a gift card is a great way to increase brand awareness and drive engagement, resulting in higher revenue.
Source: Zaius
A product review email
Marketers know the value of product reviews in building social proof and driving engagement. To collect customer feedback, you can set up triggered emails to be sent after the purchase that would encourage buyers to share their experience with the product or your business in general. One way to motivate users to leave reviews is to inspire altruistic behavior by asking them to help you become better or help others make the right choice. Incentives like a chance to win something also work really well.
A re-engagement email
Our inboxes are hit with dozens of emails on a daily basis. So it’s only natural that with time a percentage of subscribers stop engaging with your emails. Triggered re-engagement emails are designed to win back inactive customers. Depending on your campaign purposes, these emails can come in different forms — friendly reminders, last chance emails, customer appreciation emails, and more.
Source: Hubspot
Wrapping up
When traditional marketing techniques yield suboptimal results, trigger marketing can help. The whole point of trigger marketing is to build a highly engaging communication stream based on the customers’ actions. From welcome emails to re-engagement newsletters, a curated trigger marketing campaign enables you to deliver relevant messages at the right time, significantly boosting the click-through rate and increasing your sales funnel conversions.