For the marketer, triggers should be a specific kind of auto responder that creates an up-sell or cross-sell email, crafted to be sent automatically when a user initiates an event within a given campaign or on a website. Triggers allow you to reach people the moment they're most likely to read and respond, providing the perfect opportunity to drive incremental revenue.

Effective triggers depend on assigning the most contextually relevant offers to the user’s already demonstrated interest. It’s impossible to overstate how vital the relevance is to the effectiveness of any trigger effort. The recipient’s interaction with your email creative is a insight into what sort of offer he or she will respond to next. You have to be ready to develop the right kind of creative to have available for any triggered offer.

However, in the whirlwind to implement such high impact programs, it's easy to lose focus on the subscriber experience. To truly optimise results and foster your relationship with the subscriber, keep these tips in mind:

Plan triggered or follow-up campaigns carefully

It is easy to set-up a ‘Welcome’ or ‘Confirmation’ triggered email and forget about it, but it is advisable to re-visit your emails every month and read them afresh – is the content still relevant? For example, pay attention to any seasonal references or information on products which are no longer available. Sending an out-of-date or irrelevant email when someone signs-up immediately gives the impression that you haven’t thought about what you are doing. All benefits of using a triggered campaign could be lost in an instant.

Remember to set frequency limits

Don’t bombard your audience. It is possible that they may sign-up to receive information on more than one topic/event/product, thus generating a myriad of triggered emails. If they are swamped by emails from you they will quickly lose interest and may miss reading the one that contains exactly the information they need. To avoid this, prioritise campaigns and set frequency limits to keep your audience engaged, but not switched off.

Don't forget about recency

Behaviour-based campaigns work well due to their timeliness and relevance. If a supermarket you use frequently for purchasing of bulky items emails you a shopping list to remind you to reorder the goods again, you will likely do so. However, if you have just booked a holiday for the summer you are unlikely to book another one until the same time next year. Therefore, asking you to book a holiday say, a week later, will have a negative conditioning effect on response.

Abandoned shopping carts

An extremely smart tactic to bring back lost sales is to check-up on those people who never complete the checkout process. If you have already captured the customers’ email address, you can easily send them a friendly message informing them that you’re currently trying to improve your checkout process, and you apologise if they found anything confusing. In addition, you might want to give them a coupon code as an additional incentive for bringing them back.

Add an “email me when in-stock” feature

Anytime a customer visits a product detail page that displays an “out of stock” notice, give them the option to be emailed if the item becomes available again.

Summary

Trigger-based campaigns work best and are easiest to execute if you work out a plan or blueprint at the beginning. Decide on a common behaviour that would be easy to trigger a message off e.g. newsletter subscription via your website, and create that ‘Welcome’ message. Once you have optimised the results from a well-managed campaign targeted to your database, you’ll never look back and will find that you've created a seamless, response-driving, trigger-based email program.