Everything you need to sell online

Set up an online store in minutes to sell on a website, social media, or marketplaces.

Event-Triggered Emails And How To Make $$$ With Them

How to Send Trigger Emails That Keep Customers Coming Back

9 min read

How does your business re-engage the recently departed visitor, thank its loyal customers, recovers abandoned carts, and encourage repeat purchases? Has it implemented a solution that can do all of these at once?

We are referring to a real marketing tool, though it may sound like magic. Event-triggered emails are not only over 100% more effective than conventional email newsletters, they are automatic and self-driving upon proper configuration. This article will explain them to you from top to bottom.

How to sell online
Tips from e-commerce experts for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.
Please enter a valid email address

What are event-triggered emails?

Triggered emails are sent to a subscriber upon their taking a specific action.

They may contain information about an order’s delivery status, a reminder of the products left in the shopping cart without having completed checkout, or even just a birthday greeting.

As soon as the action occurs, (for example, the calendar hits the customer’s birthday), the automated message is sent to the subscriber without any human effort required. Most email providers have options for the trigger email functionality on their paid plans.

Your trigger emails might include dynamic content, meaning that the email can be intelligently customized to suit the event’s purposes.

well-configured template allows you to automatically fill the email in with the name of the recipient and other relevant details in natural, appealing places.

When do I use trigger emails?

Having a well-oiled trigger email system is a cornerstone of marketing automation. They let you stay in touch with your customers during nonworking time, and they do it in a way that isn’t creepy ;-) 

At the same time, trigger emails are a tried-and-true mechanism for catching customers who might fall out of your sales funnel.

Amazon trigger email offers to rate your purchase right after you bought the product

Amazon trigger email offers to rate your purchase right after you bought the product

These email systems are used to stir up and re-invigorate cold leads, increasing someone’s readiness to purchase, and they work easily across a number of use cases. Suppose one (or many) of the following events happened to you, just as they do to any e-commerce shop.

Someone writes to you and includes their contact details, whether it’s received privately or via social media. By virtue of doing so, the assumption is that they maintain some level of interest in your product or niche, but they might not be ready to buy yet. How do you follow up with every single one of them?

When a customer volunteers his or her contact details to complete an order, you ought to be capturing this in a database to use for your own marketing purposes. When done manually, this is a very taxing task.

You want to send your customers content that is useful and time-relevant, and you ought to want to do so as easily as possible. Worthwhile trigger email systems can not only respond to the user’s individual actions (returning to one of your mailings five times, taking any other specific action that can be measured across your sales funnel), but they can respond to an event in real human life (like a three-year anniversary of their registering for your site or a birthday).

Mail chains and their content can be automated in response to a person’s readiness for purchase.

For example:

  • The first email might express gratitude for a completed purchase
  • The second might include links to useful content
  • The third might share a free e-book
  • The fourth offer a personal discount.

By considering the data generated when people open these emails, you more clearly see the people who are the more likely motivated buyers. With a threshold for interaction identified, you can automatically spring your coupon or special offer to further urge a sale. When that threshold is well-defined and customers are glad to receive your emails, you differentiate yourself from other spammy companies.

How to create a trigger newsletter

Trigger emails are supported by most modern email marketing services, like Omnisend, MailChimp, Getresponse, SendSay, Selzy, and the like). There are some services that specialize in trigger emails specifically like Mandrill, Customer, Mailtrig.

Some platforms offer ready-made automations for personalized offers. For instance, Omnisend provides pre-built workflows for cross-selling, abandoned cart recovery, and more.

Before choosing your provider, you ought to design your trigger chains first so that you know what types of features you’ll need. Send a few emails manually to small segments of your customer base and see which triggers perform best for you. For example, send some thank yous to newly registered members, then send some delivery status updates, then offer additional products to those who have recently completed checkout. By looking at the open rates and tracking clicks on links within the email, you get a clear sense of what works and what doesn’t.

Your trigger events of course ought to be tailored to the nature of your business and its ability to respond to customer requests. Customers of a hypothetical cosmetics store might react well to a personal discount after a completing a certain number of purchases and the customers of a hypothetical children’s clothing store will be happy if you can remember a baby’s birthday.

I loved this table on the website and was glad to receive the reminder

I loved this table on the website and was glad to receive the reminder

Here is an example of a trigger email campaign for responding to new clients:

  1. Once registered, a visitor receives an email 1-2 days later with some kind of pitch to make a purchase. If a purchase is completed within some amount of time from receiving this email, the chain continues and they get another email (say, of products related to the one they purchased) a day later.
  2. If response to the first letter is poor, the followup email instead comes in 3-4 weeks .
  3. Thank you notes and discounts are sent automatically upon the completion of future purchases.
  4. The customer periodically receives an email about any interesting new products.

    segment subscribers

    A personalization lesson from Sktchy: they segment subscribers into countries and use a native word for greeting. “Kroshka” means “baby”, I can’t help smiling every time I receive the newsletter.

***

To sum up:

  • Trigger emails save your business significant save time when it comes to marketing and sales.
  • Before deciding on a trigger email provider, do some experimentation on your own to see what works best for you.
  • Depending on your needs, you may want a more specialized trigger email provider.

 

Table of contents

Sell online

With Ecwid Ecommerce, you can easily sell anywhere, to anyone — across the internet and around the world.

About the author

Lina is a content creator at Ecwid. She writes to inspire and educate readers on all things commerce. She loves to travel and runs marathons.

Ecommerce that has your back

So simple to use – even my most technophobic clients can manage. Easy to install, quick to set up. Light years ahead of other shop plugins.
I’m so impressed I’ve recommended it to my website clients and am now using it for my own store along with four others for which I webmaster. Beautiful coding, excellent top-notch support, great documentation, fantastic how-to videos. Thank you so much Ecwid, you rock!
I’ve used Ecwid and I love the platform itself. Everything is so simplified it’s insane. I love how you have different options to choose shipping carriers, to be able to put in so many different variants. It’s a pretty open e-commerce gateway.
Easy to use, affordable (and a free option if starting off). Looks professional, many templates to select from. The App is my favorite feature as I can manage my store right from my phone. Highly recommended 👌👍
I like that Ecwid was easy to start and to use. Even for a person like me, without any technical background. Very well written help articles. And the support team is the best for my opinion.
For everything it has to offer, ECWID is incredibly easy to set up. Highly recommend! I did a lot of research and tried about 3 other competitors. Just try ECWID and you'll be online in no time.

Your ecommerce dreams start here

By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.
Your Privacy

When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. More information

More information

Strictly Necessary Cookies (Always active)
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.
Targeting Cookies
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Functional Cookies
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.
Performance Cookies
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources, so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our site.