Email: When Are the Best Times to Pull the Trigger?

The larger your list, the more impossible the idea of sustaining one-to-one communications may seem. Fortunately, today's online relationship marketing technologies empower marketers with the ability to incorporate what they know about their customers with the capability to automate specific types of messages that are based on a customer action—a trigger.

As you'll see proven below, these automatic, behavior-based campaigns, (what we like to call "trigger campaigns") are incredibly effective. In fact, they actually reduce the time and effort required of your marketing team, while simultaneously building trust, increasing and sustaining engagement and creating new revenue opportunities. However, to do this, you must have some key pieces in place to experience success.

Common Triggers
According to the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council, triggered email campaigns have 96 percent higher open rates and 125 percent higher clickthrough rates than other messages, yet they only comprised 2.8 percent of the total email volume measured in Q4 2011. The most common types are the "Welcome" email, sent immediately after the sign-up has been completed, and the "Thank you" email, sent when someone has made a purchase. If you've got one or both of those kinds of customer communications automated, you're off to a great start!

But there are so many more campaigns you can automate. There are other obvious choices like birthdays, anniversaries and abandoned shopping carts. But what are some lesser-recognized opportunities that organizations can take advantage of?

Product Lifecycle Emails
Implementing a lifecycle campaign is an incredibly powerful way to maximize cross-sell opportunities and strengthen the customer relationship, while using less of your valuable internal resources. Baby strollers and digital cameras may not seem to have anything in common, but they're both great examples of products whose purchase sets up a perfect scenario for a highly effective lifecycle email campaign.

"What is a lifecycle email campaign?" you might ask? A simple way to describe it is as one that is based on predictable future needs or desires, as indicated by a previous customer action. A triggered lifecycle campaign typically consists of scheduled emails distributed at defined intervals. These campaigns can also be based on certain behaviors or changes of status.

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