What is Triggered Email Marketing?

Triggered email marketing is the process of "triggering" an email to a consumer based on their behavior or a specific time in their customer journey. Within the email marketing community this is also referred to as "retargeting." You may have experienced this by having visited an eCommerce website, adding an item to your shopping cart, initiating the checkout process, leaving the website, and subsequently receiving an email in your inbox with the item that you left in your shopping cart. There are several variations of triggered email marketing but this is triggered email marketing in its most basic form.

How is Triggered Email Marketing Used in eCommerce Marketing?

Most eCommerce brands, from Fortune 500 companies like Walmart.com and Amazon.com down to small scale Shopify stores, leverage triggered email marketing as a mechanism for retargeting online shoppers who have shown interest in their brand. Because triggered email marketing campaigns are so accurately targeted down to the item or webpage that was viewed, they outperform "batch 'n' blast" messages in every single metric including open rate, click rate, click-to-open rate, and conversion. This is the primary reason that email marketing services and teams leverage triggered email marketing, because it's highly effective in the grand scheme of eCommerce email marketing strategies.

How Does Triggered Email Marketing Performance Differ from Batch 'n' Blast

As I stated earlier, triggered email marketing campaigns outperform "batch 'n' blast" messages in every single metric including open rate, click rate, click-to-open rate, and conversion. According to Neil Patel, triggered email marketing open rates are 74.9% higher than standard batch 'n' blast email campaigns. Similarly, triggered email marketing click rates are 161.9% higher than than standard email marketing campaigns. Furthermore, 77% of consumers have stated that they are more likely to buy from a retailer that sends personalized communications such as re-marketing or triggered emails. 82% of online shoppers say they’d likely spend more money with a retailer if its emails were more personally relevant. This is why relevant, triggered emails will almost always outperform your bulk email marketing campaigns.

A/B Testing Your Triggered Emails

Just like anything else in the email marketing space, you need to test in order to continuously improve your campaigns. This is the best way to maximize your open rates, click rates, and your conversion rates. Most email marketing service platforms have features in place to test your triggered emails. You can setup 50/50 split tests, or even setup an automatic winner once a specific threshold has been met.

What Are Some of the Most Common Triggered Email Marketing Campaigns for eCommerce?

• Cart Abandonment: Retargeting a triggered email marketing campaign to a user who added an item, or multiple items to their online shopping cart before abandoning the checkout process altogether.
• Browse Abandonment: Retargeting a triggered email marketing campaign to a user who browsed specific webpages or items, without making a purchase. ‍
• Purchase Upsell: Retargeting a triggered email marketing campaign to a user who purchased an item with another item that compliments their purchase. ‍
• Back in Stock: Retargeting a triggered email marketing campaign to a user who browsed specific a specific item that was out of stock, with a notification that alerts them that the item is now "back in stock.".‍
• Price Drop: Retargeting a triggered email marketing campaign to a user who browsed a specific item without making a purchase, and notifying them that the price of that item has now dropped.‍

Leveraging More Triggered Email Marketing

As you can see it greatly benefits eCommerce brands, who either have an email marketing team or who leverage an email marketing service, to have a sound triggered email marketing program. These campaigns will supercharge your entire marketing efforts and bring incremental revenue growth to your brand. Brands that can master, test, develop, and optimize their triggered email marketing program are the ones who reap the most benefits and drive the most revenue.