Author: marketingsherpa

How does the selling process of a company affect the types of triggered emails it sends?

Let’s take a look at some data from the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Report to help answer that question. For B2C companies, the most popular trigger is the welcome email — with 64% of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers setting that trigger.

Q: What type of automated, event-triggered, lifecycle email messages does your organization deploy? Please check all that apply. (Breakout chart of B2C company data)

Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

B2C marketers were, not surprisingly, much more likely than their business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) peers to send triggered transactional emails — 60% of B2C marketers sends bills, receipts and order confirmations, while only 27% of B2B & B2G marketers do (see the following chart below).

B2B companies most frequently send thank you emails, with 48% of marketers indicating they did so — perhaps for activities like white paper downloads, watching demos or attending webinars.

Q: What type of automated, event-triggered, lifecycle email messages does your organization deploy? Please check all that apply. (Breakout chart of B2B and B2G company data)

Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

Companies that market to both a B2C and B2B customer were more like to send transactional emails than the B2B and B2G segment — 50% versus 27% respectively.

The other top triggered email for this group was welcome emails, which half of companies sent as well.

Q: What type of automated, event-triggered, lifecycle email messages does your organization deploy? Please check all that apply. (Breakout chart of companies that market to both a B2B and B2C customers)

Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

One way to get rolling with triggered emails is to answer this fundamental question:

What actions or events would signal that a customer wants an email from us?

As you can see from the above data, the most popular types of triggered emails tend to answer this question:

• Customers may want a confirmation that they registered for your email list, and more information about what they can expect from that list, which a welcome email can provide.

• Customers may want a confirmation that an action was taken (e.g., webinar registration), get the information in a different format that they can save (e.g., white paper download) or more information to follow up on an action they already took (e.g., webinar attendance), which is where a thank you email can be helpful.

• Customers may want a copy of a receipt or to know when a product they purchased will arrive, which transactional emails can help with.

But think a little broader. What else can event-triggered emails provide that customers might want to know?

I’m at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2014 at the Aria Resort in Las Vegas right now with the MarketingSherpa team. Tomorrow, Paul Ramirez and Ryan Blomberg from Eventful will present their case study, which won Best in Show in MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2014.

Here’s one lesson you can learn from that case study.

Visitors to eventful who find that their favorite artist isn't performing in their hometown can “Demand It!” and receive an event-triggered email when the band announces a concert in their city.

This is a great way to answer that fundamental question about triggered email:

What actions or events would signal that a customer wants an email from us?

What do your customers want that isn’t currently available? Can you set up a trigger to notify them when it is available? If you’re able to deliver on this, your emails transcend marketing and become a service, which should be the goal of all event-triggered emails.