If you are not already doing triggered welcome emails, you probably should be. Here at Jericho we encourage clients to look hard at what they are doing repetitively, and at their customer life cycle, and look for opportunities to add value and human touch.

It’s not surprising that timely, and relevant emails have the highest engagement rates, and deliver much better ROI than your usual ‘run of the mill’ emails.  And birthday emails have even higher engagement rates than other types of triggered emails?

“Triggered email is a really under used trick of email marketing, and just like optimising emails for mobile – if you are not already doing it, you are leaving your customers out in the cold.”

Triggered emails have higher opens, lower unsubscribes, and higher engagement rates, often leading to significant spending (just to name a few good things!) because they are personal, relevant and specifically targeted to the recipient.  They feel different.  They feel like they are ‘just for me’ – because they are.

The email relates to an event: an action the person has just performed or a date specific to them. So it goes without saying they will respond more positively to a triggered email that relates to them or something they are doing, or have just done. Welcome emails are STILL not used by many businesses, and studies have shown that the difference between getting a warm welcome, and not, can be many many thousands of dollars over the lifetime of that person. Post purchase & post visit work great too.  We have a client who sends a personal letter to everyone who visits their premium car showroom.   Other ideas are almost in the ‘infinity’ range!  Just ask us!

One of the hardest thing about email marketing is to consistently send emails that are relevant, personal and timely. Triggered email is the solution that makes the hardest thing the easiest thing by allowing you to automate your ‘customer love’.  Imagine if you could just tell your girlfriend that you love her and cook a lovely dinner once, and then hit a button and have it roll out every time she looks a bit sad!  Voila!

Triggered emails are triggered from a meaningful event or date such as a birthday, anniversary, online purchase, or membership club sign up. So you need data to trigger the email. This is where data collection and having a clean database is so important. However if you don’t have the data to create the triggers, you could use the email series functionality. You can use this as Jericho does and set up a series of welcome emails, where when someone signs up it triggers a series of emails to be sent at certain intervals (Once a week for a month for example) and each email could show the subscriber a new tip, or different information or new advice each week.

“Did you know welcome email series out-perform normal welcome emails in terms of ROI –this is even more under used and undervalued email marketing tool.”

Yes, yes, it all sounds great, however before you jump in; you need a plan.  You need to think about  your overall objective. Is it to get more customers? Sell more to each customer? Build reviews on your website?  Be the most credible company in your niche?   Whatever it is, a combination of measurable objectives and value to your subscribers will result in a more positive sentiment and higher engagement. (We will talk more about this in a future blog post).
So where to start? Well one of the best things you can do, both in terms of using triggered email functionality and increasing engagement, is to send Welcome emails, and triggered birthday emails.

As we’ve noted before, once you reach about 11 your birthday becomes less of a big deal, so when someone takes just a moment to remember your birthday it’s a lot better than nothing!   Yes as a business you don’t want to look creepy by knowing their birthday, however with the right copy and the right tone, sending a friendly yet professional birthday email is one of the nicest things you can do and you will undoubtedly brighten your subscriber’s day.   If you don’t have anything to sell then just say Hi!  But don’t underestimate the willingness we all have to buy ourselves the treat we won’t get from our loved ones!

Are you doing triggered emails now and perhaps want to supercharge them? Integrate dynamic content into your triggered emails…. For example you could use dynamic content to show the items in their shopping cart they ‘forgot’ or send different weather updates to people in different areas. There are many ways you could use triggered emails, and our team have lots of ideas.

If you want to talk about how you could use triggered emails, email series, and birthday emails to enhance your email marketing comms program, talk to your you Account Manager or the Jericho service team – phone 09 360 6463 or email accountservices@jericho.co.nz