Trigger Programs Put Subscribers in the Driver’s Seat
Trigger programs are an excellent way to establish and nurture relationships with your email subscribers. The beauty of triggers is that they are highly relevant to recipients because they are based on something that the subscriber has done – an exchange or an event in time that “triggers” the email.
Triggers are automatically generated based on a subscriber’s behavior or profile, and can be set up based on a number of different actions such as completing a survey, clicking a link, opening an email, joining a mailing list, updating a profile, making a purchase and so on.
There are two types of trigger programs:
Welcome opt-in campaigns are a type of trigger program that is sent automatically immediately after someone subscribes. They serve as the foundation of your relationship with your subscribers and present the perfect opportunity to get off on the right foot and learn a host of valuable information about them – giving your company an advantage in the long term.
Studies show that subscribers engaged through a welcome program have an open rate on subsequent email that is more than 40% higher than those who haven’t received welcome email, and can significantly increase customer satisfaction, decrease opt-out rates and increase order size.
When executing a welcome program:
- Funnel your new subscribers to a concise landing page to capture only data essential to completing registration.
- After registration is complete, immediately send out a confirmation email to express your thanks and invite the new subscriber to set preferences.
- Once you have captured subscribers’ preferences, make sure to deliver consistently against those preferences, and provide the opportunity to update their choices.
Drip campaigns are another type of trigger program frequently used as a sales cycle management tool. Particularly for industries with long sales cycles, drip campaigns can be a very effective technique for keeping prospects in the pipeline. Drip marketing is defined as a communication strategy that sends – or “drips” – a specified sequential set of messages to customers and prospects at predetermined intervals.
Transactional emails based on actions such as a purchase, customer support inquiry, account payment, subscription or cancellation, and shipping or out-of-stock notices are some of the most relevant and thus most acted-on types of drip campaigns, and provide up-sell or cross-sell opportunities.
Other kinds of content that can you incorporate into drip campaigns include:
- Educational content – things like Webinars, white papers and guides. This provides immediate value and a halo effect around good will and thought leadership.
- Events – like an invitation to a seminar, a party at a tradeshow or a networking event. Your campaign could include offers around discounted registration or an invitation to a “bonus” event followed by a formal invitation and a last chance offer.
- Special offers that motivate engagement with your products, services and people – for instance, you can entice a subscriber pre-conversion to try your product for free, or you can offer consultations.
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