Trigger emails start and win

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Maria Paisina, Project Manager at email marketing agency Bonfire

Content
What other benefits does triggered email marketing have?
Where to start?
How to set up?
Tips from practice
"Mailing lists? I don't believe in mailing lists, no one reads telegram company profile this spam." This is what the CEO of a small but fairly well-known IT company recently told me.

Working in an e-mail marketing agency, I periodically forget that many still consider any mailings to be spam. Harmful or, at best, useless. More advanced people perceive e-mail marketing as a support tool: something about congratulating clients on professional holidays, inviting them to events and announcing sales.

Meanwhile, email marketing is 40 times more effective (according to Campaign Monitor) than social media promotion. According to Litmus research, every dollar invested in email marketing brings in $42 in profit. In IT, this figure is 40:1, in retail 45:1, and in tourism as much as 53:1. And the greatest contribution to this impressive result is made by triggered emails. That is, messages that come automatically in response to a trigger - a certain action (and sometimes inaction) of the user. When receiving triggered emails, users read them and follow links 8 times more often than when receiving newsletters.

Why? The content of the newsletter and the time of its sending are determined by the sender. The subject may not be interesting to the recipient or irrelevant at the moment. Triggered letters are sent exactly when the client has performed a certain action (subscribed to the newsletter, put the product in the basket), they contain relevant information (a welcome letter with a selection of useful things for new subscribers, a discount or a non-material bonus for those who complete the abandoned order). The success of triggered letters is based on the fact that the recipients themselves initiated them and the content corresponds to what the person is interested in at the moment. By clicking the "subscribe", "order" or "download" button, visitors expect you to send them a letter immediately.

Of course, the highest level of skill is to use trigger letters as a tool for additional sales. For example, to offer products that are in demand among customers who have ordered a similar item. However, implementing such a scenario is quite difficult from a technical point of view. Unlike a standard notification of receipt of an order (which can be sent, for example, from 1C-Bitrix without using any external email systems), this case requires analysis of large volumes of data, integration of several systems, and implementation of various scenarios. After all, it is necessary to know which products sell better with which, which of them are in stock, which items are most likely to generate interest depending on previously viewed items, characteristics of a specific group of customers, etc. Comprehensive analytics and setting up such a mailing is labor-intensive, but the benefits pay for themselves.


What other benefits does triggered email marketing have?
Customer Satisfaction

Sending triggered emails reassures customers that you care about keeping them informed, that your processes are reliable, and that working with you will be clear and understandable.

Working with "warm" clients

Subscribers may not be ready to buy right now, but useful and timely information helps build trust, which will make the user more likely to buy from you than from your competitor.

Customer Retention and Repeat Sales

Attracting a new customer costs 5 times more than retaining an existing one. Trigger emails help activate users who have already made purchases but for some reason stopped doing so.

Saving

Trigger emails are sent automatically. This helps reduce the number of routine tasks and increase their efficiency. This is especially useful if you have a small team.



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Where to start?
The most common types of trigger emails are the so-called welcome emails: order/subscription/registration confirmations. There are many other types of trigger emails:

abandoned cart,
reactivation of the format “you haven’t visited us for a long time, we miss you”
feedback request,
offering related products and services,
congratulations,
and even chains of letters, the scripts of which can be built according to complex algorithms depending on the user’s actions.

Here's an example of a good trigger mailing strategy from Hoff (the picture was published in 2015, now the process is more complicated). Hoff doesn't just send information about viewed products - it offers alternatives that the site visitor hasn't seen; it not only thanks for the purchase, but also predicts the composition of the next orders and the time when they are likely to be made.

Email chains accompany the client from the nascent idea to buy something to after-sales service, taking into account the stage at which EVERY subscriber is. What information does a potential car buyer need? What are they thinking about now? BMW or Audi? Auto-Lux or Auto-Star? Audi A4 or Audi A6? Now on credit or later on their own? Should I change my three-year-old or is it not critical? Trigger email chains take into account all available data about the user and offer them exactly the information they need most at the moment.

But before thinking about complex algorithms, you can evaluate the benefits of trigger mailings from the simplest steps. For example, right today, set up a welcome letter for visitors to your site.

It is with the welcome letter that your email communication begins, and it is to it that you need to pay special attention. As they say, you will not have a second chance to make a first impression. The welcome letter is not just an order confirmation. It is an opportunity to demonstrate how you work, who you are, why you. Send the user confirmation that he made the right choice in trusting you, and, perhaps, start a conversation that will turn into a long-term friendship.

If you are not an online store and placing an order on the website is not your case, a subscription form for collecting contacts of potential clients can be a good help. In exchange for what will visitors be willing to leave you their personal data? It varies from business to business. One of our clients prepared a free guide on “how to choose a service provider” in his field and shared many years of expertise without selling himself bluntly. Another had a great idea to record a series of videos on how a suburban real estate owner can reduce taxes and avoid fines. The videos are not publicly available. If I had a small house in the Moscow region, I would definitely subscribe to get access to these materials. What kind of material you offer as a gift is up to you. The main thing is not to deceive the subscribers' expectations and send something truly valuable.

I recently attended a webinar where they called for studying potential demand by offering to download materials on a product that doesn't yet exist (if they request it, then there is demand, if they don't request it, then there is no need to create this product). When the audience objected to what to do if they request it and there is no product, the author said that users don't really remember where they register, and if they don't get what you promised, they won't even pay attention to it. Please don't do that! Maybe they won't. But if you try to interest this client again, your trick will backfire.