Triggered Email Five Ideas

Triggered email is a great way to continue the dialog with your subscribers

Have you just begun to think about adding triggered email to your email marketing mix? Or, are you a long time marketer looking for some creative ways to revitalize an email communication program?
Whether you fit one of those scenarios or, just heard about triggered email I‘ve got a few ideas to help get your creative juices flowing. If you don’t know what a triggered email is hang on, I’ll cover that next. If you already know about triggered email just skip to the next paragraph.

What’s Triggered Email?

If you’re new to email marketing triggered emails are a great tool to add to your marketing toolbox. Think of triggered email as a sort of auto pilot (that should be reviewed annually). They can serve a variety of purposes and extend the conversation with your subscribers.

Triggered Email Marketing Ideas

1. The tried and true – new subscriber welcome series. For this triggered email campaign put together 3 -4 messages. The first one is your welcome message. Follow this up a few days later with a new subscriber offer, then an email about where else you can be found (for example: Facebook, Twitter, Google+) and wrap up this series with a message outlining customer service contacts.
2. The new product or service launch. For this series prepare a few messages that bring the subscriber up to launch of a new product or service. 
3. Special offer with purchase. For a given product trigger an email series when it’s purchased. This could involve many steps where the subscriber’s reactions/inactions to the message could trigger alternate messages.
4. Last chance/ customer reactivation campaign. This is another “classic” in email marketing. For this campaign you are targeting inactive customers to take a series of actions. This would be a short series of two messages but, would repeat on a given date picking up newer inactives on your list. Likely messages for this campaign are a one-time discount followed up with a “hate to see you go” message where you segment the truly inactive subscribers (almost) for good.
5. Subscriber “birthday” emails. For this triggered type you would send a special message on the anniversary date of subscribers sign-up date.

I hope these examples have given you some inspiration to create your own triggered email marketing campaigns. Feel free to use them, improve on them or just mix them up.

Now, it’s your turn. What are some of your ideas for triggered email campaigns? Leave them in the comments below.