Increasing Conversions Using Triggered Emails

1. Identify critical points that define the customer lifecycle.
The single most important aspect of any triggered email campaign is to outline the strategy. This includes taking an inventory of each point from which a customer interacts with your business. These interaction points are opportunities for increasing conversions. Marketers should consider enrollment forms, registration pages, landing pages, web service transactions and emails.

Once critical interaction points are identified, marketers need to assess where real opportunities reside. This includes examining the customer lifecycle. Triggered emails are extremely effective when customers are segmented by behavior and the length of time they’ve been actively engaged. Timing is a key element in campaign effectiveness and increasing conversions.

2. Outline business logic for each actionable segment.

Since all triggered email campaigns are based on customer behavior, it’s important to define each segment’s business logic and deployment timing. For instance, when a customer signs up for a new service, it characteristically triggers a “welcome” email. Welcome emails are designed to confirm an initial transaction and are typically deployed instantaneously. Conversely, if a customer is disengaged and hasn’t used a product for a certain period of time, an “inactive” email may be triggered. The exact business logic and deployment timing for any triggered email should always consider the type of product (or service) being marketed and the length of time a customer has been engaged or disengaged.

Whether looking for customers to enroll, activate, sign up, purchase or simply use a product feature, lifecycle-based triggered emails walk customers through a series of messages aimed at nurturing their relationship. That’s why flexibility is required when establishing business logic and crafting triggered communications. Increasing conversions involves keeping an eye on performance and adjusting where necessary.

3. Target abandoners.
With most websites seeing only 2% of traffic converting on the first visit³, marketers should always consider targeting abandoners. Abandoners are essentially hand-raisers who have shown interest and are typically easier to convert. However, the reason why a customer abandons is often difficult to ascertain.

Therefore, triggered abandonment emails should chip away at potential causes. These might include refocusing a customer who was distracted, clarifying a purchase process that caused confusion or preparing customers with the information they require to complete a transaction. Targeting abandoners is one of the best ways to increase conversions from your website.

4. Customize communications to get customers over conversion hurdles.
Triggering the right message at the right time is one of the biggest keys to increasing conversions. That’s why it’s important that triggered communications are customized to break down adoption barriers at every stage of the customer lifecycle.

Consider a recent financial services campaign in which customers were having difficulty making their first online bill payment. In examining behavioral data, it was determined that customers were struggling with adding a payee after they enrolled. Addressing this, a series of welcome communications were crafted with specific instructions about adding a payee and the process for sending a first payment. After customers got over this hurdle, they adopted online bill pay more quickly.

5. Ensure your email platform has the capacity to execute a triggered campaign.
Triggered email campaigns are complex and typically require more than off-the-shelf email platforms to be effectively executed. A triggered campaign requires significant up-front programming and integration between your email platform and internal transactional data. It also requires a process to test, track and measure campaign performance.

As campaigns evolve, it’s increasingly important to optimize communications, identify new trigger opportunities and refine trigger deployment timing. The discipline behind increasing conversions using triggered emails requires continuous improvement. That’s why it’s essential that your email platform can keep up.