Must-Have Triggered Campaigns for Every Business Carolyn Nye Marketing Manager S&S Worldwide, Inc. Thursday, January 21, 2010
Triggered Campaigns What is a triggered campaign? • An event-driven triggered email is automatically launched based on a specific business rule criteria. These may be a behavior the customer has taken or as a result of time/date sensitive information. Why triggered campaigns? • Triggered campaigns typically have much higher open and response rates then normal promotional emails. • Customers are more engaged since the trigger is based off a recently-taken action. • Information is highly relevant to what the customer is doing or thinking about. • “Set it and forget it” - Triggered campaigns require much less day-to-day management then traditional thrust campaigns.
Triggered Campaigns Challenges and Struggles • Understanding your own customers behavior • The technical implementation of triggered campaigns • Evaluating if the effort is worth the results • Measuring a shift in behavior vs. true incremental sales on triggered campaigns Recipe for Success • Use timely and relevant information • Engage your customers interests • Create a sense of urgency. Use great offers when applicable Tips to Remember • A triggered campaign will only be as successful as your ability to capture the customers email address and present valid, up to date information. There will always be a high percentage of customers who you cannot communicate via triggered strategies. • Always follow CAN SPAM guidelines when thinking through any triggered program.
Order Confirmation Series • Most companies will already have this triggered campaign in place. But think about it as not just a customer service and communication tool, but also a relationship builder and prompt for future orders. Why? – Order confirmations have very high open rates. In addition, many people tend to keep order confirmations in their inbox for their records and will use that confirmation as a tool to return back to your site. – This is an excellent opportunity to showcase more of what you can offer the customer and reward them for placing additional orders. Even in a down e economy my, our order confi firmatio rmation emails have brought ht in 35% more demand dollars rs in 2009 over 2008
S&S Shipment Confirmation Objectives: • Clear customer service communication relating to the order • Mimic the S&S website so customers could refer back to their confirmations as a navigation tool • Incentives to place a second order • Incentives to refer a friend Results: • All order related communications have increased demand dollars by over 30% in 2009 over 2008
Welcome Campaign • Your customers (or future customers) are at their highest point of engagement. They requested information from you, so welcome them! • Welcome emails have a very high open rate so take advantage of telling them about things that may not be evident on the website. Engage them and give them reasons to return to your site. Things to include: – What they can expect from your company – newsletters, offers, frequency, etc. – The benefits to being an email subscriber – Highlight what differentiates you from the competition – Your services, products, etc. 2009 open rates s for our we welcome email are at 88%
Welcome Email Trigger: Instantly once someone signs up for emails or newsletter on our site Objectives: • Obvious welcome • Easy explanation of how to get started • Clearly feature the benefits to customers • Link to sample newsletters • Add email address to address book Did not want to: • Be too promotional: No offer in welcome email
Abandon Cart Program • Oct 1, 2009: In a study of 500 online retail shopping websites, just 11 % of Internet merchants sent email responses to shoppers who abandoned carts.* Why you need it: – Your customers are at the closest point of purchase and leave. You should try everything in your power to get them to come back and purchase. – Understand your customer’s buying behavior: Why would they leave? Price comparison shopping, frustrating cart experience, outside interruptions, etc. Get them back to convert the sale. • Effective abandon cart emails: Highly personalized with shopping cart contents, product name in subject line, call to action, multiple emails in a series, reason for customer to complete the order! *The abandoned cart study was conducted by, Listrak . Abandon don Cart programs ams have helped us realize ze 25% conversi ersion n on abandoners. ners. Cart programs ams account nt for almost st 1/3 of TOTAL yearly email sales
S&S Abandon Cart Example Trigger: When a customer abandons his/her shopping cart Objectives • Position as a convenient service to the customer • Personalize with name and cart contents • Call to action (“return to cart” button) • Gives customer reason to return and complete their order by giving an offer • Further emails in the series create a sense of urgency to urge customer to return to purchase
Other Abandon Programs (Forms, Search, Browse) • Depending on your business model and customer behavior on your site you can apply the same logic from a successful Abandon Cart program to other ‘abandon’ programs. • Examples include: – Abandoned a form or registration process. – Abandoned a session when searching or browsing on your website (without adding items to a cart).
S&S Abandon Search/Browse Email Trigger: Once a customer searches or browses our site at least 3 product views but does not add anything to their cart. Objectives: • Try to address the possible reasons why a customer may abandon after search or browse event. • Address any customer service issue or if the customer may need help finding a certain product • Encourages customers to return to site to browse discounted products • Encourages customers to return to purchase
S&S Abandon Search/Browse Results: • 30% open rates and a 6% clickthrough rate. • Customers have increased the use of our Instant Chat service to help identify their product needs. • These emails have generated a considerable amount of incremental revenue and conversions . Coming in 2010: Personalization based on product type and group customer was browsing. • Adding recommendations.
Bridging Offline and Online • Strengthen all your customer communication touches by using a cross-media campaign wherever possible using triggered email. • Examples: – Catalog request triggered email instantly once catalog request is made and a follow- up around the time the catalog is to be received. – Customer service call follow-up. – Sales call/inquiry follow-up. – Thank you for shopping in our store email follow-up, if data is available. – Trade show notifications.
Catalog Request Email Trigger: When a customer requests a catalog on our website Objectives: • Acknowledge the customer has requested a catalog. • Provide the customer with other options to shop (online catalog, browsing site). • Incentive to place order online immediately. • Encourage customer to sign up for newsletter.
Catalog Request Follow-Up Trigger: 10 Days after the customer has requested a catalog in the mail. Objectives: • Serves as a reminder for customers to browse their catalog. • Serves as a customer service tool if the customer did not receive their catalog in a timely fashion. Results: • Customers are very pleased with the service and has greatly helped bridge multichannel marketing efforts. • Anecdotal replies from customers: “ Just got my catalog, thanks! Will browse shortly and place my order.”
Product Review Requests and Notifications • If your site has review functionality: Use your customers as advocates of your brands. Ask them to review products or services after purchase. • Notify your customers when their review has been posted (if not done so automatically) to keep them engaged and active in your site and your products.
S&S Product Reviews Email Trigger: A set number of days after they have received their shipment notification. Objectives: • Increase our database of products with customer reviews. • Keep customers engaged and coming back to the website. Results: • Obtained more than 4,500 reviews in first year.
S&S Product Reviews Posted Email Example Trigger: Once a product review has been accepted and posted on our site. Objectives: • Engage customers to return to view the review they have just written. • Personalized with the products they have reviewed. • Incentive to return to our site to complete an additional order.
Anniversary or Reminder of Last Order • This technique is especially effective for businesses where customers return to purchase at specific times of year. • Trigger an email based on their last purchase date to remind them of the items they had purchased at this time last year. • Will spark customer to potentially return to place the same or similar order.
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