6 Trigger E-Mails You Simply Must Do in 2011
The call came in the Sunday after Christmas.
“You’re up, right?” The voice bellowed. I was but the person on the other end had better hope his reason for calling at 3:37 in the morning was life-altering, I thought to myself. Even if I gave him credit for not knowing I was in a Pacific Time Zone, 6:37 AM on a Sunday is not really the best time to chit-chat with me about business (or anything else for that matter.)
Before I had a chance to respond, the voice (aka Tom) continued: “We had a terrible 4th quarter. Christmas sucked. We missed all our numbers by millions. I have to reforecast and set new budgets for next year.” He went on but I admittedly had tuned him out.
As much I adore Tom, I was losing inches off my tongue every nanosecond from biting it. Hard.
Tom, in his infinite wisdom, had put all his eggs in the social media basket for the fall. He’s a good friend of mine but not a client which translates to “since he wasn’t paying me for my advice, he wasn’t listening to it” when I told him that disabling his multi-million dollar e-mail program in favor of the likes of Twitter was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
Tom babbled on for about five more minutes about God knows what before he got to the meat of the matter. “So what do we do now? What’s our plan for 2011?”
“Perhaps you should ask me after I get back from Bikram at 8. It IS 3:30 here afterall.”
Dead silence.
Without so much as an apology, Tom replied “Ames, this is life or death for us. We’re stuck with a boatload of excess inventory and all our new stuff comes in at the end of January. I need a plan. Tony (VP of Marketing) and Kathy (Marketing Director) are both out till the second week of January. What can we do NOW?”
For the next two hours (ending just in time so I could make yoga at 6:00), Tom and I went over his plans to dump his inventory. It’s only the 5th but he’s gotten rid of about 65% of it, which is much better than either of us had anticipated. To what end? Well, the discounts Tom had to offer were much larger than they would have been if he had sold it in season but a lot of times that’s the price you have to pay these days for getting rid of stuff.
How did Tom do it?
Triggered e-mail.
Companies seem to have thrust e-mails down pat but VERY few do jack with triggers, which surprises me because on average, triggers perform 4-6 times your best performing thrust e-mails.
What triggers should you do? Here are a few of the best performing triggers –
Abandoned Cart Programs – a lot of folks have one e-mail they send out for abandoned carts. If you have less than 3, you should go back to the drawing board. Sending out just one is very 1998. I like the Great Garden Plants program.
Abandoned Search – companies lose a lot of traffic from failed searches (or from what they think are successful searches but are a failure in the user’s mind). Contacting your users after an abandoned search is often THE very best thing you can do for your site. Literally. (Remember, a failed search from a user’s perspective is one where they use the text search box and then subsequently abandon, for any reason.)
Abandoned Site – Sign up for 1800flowers.com program and you’ll get a good example of an abandoned site e-mail. Do e-mails like these work? Like gangbusters. The key is the timing – and every company has their own magic formula.
EBOPP – e-mails based on past purchase. These e-mails accounted for getting rid of half of Tom’s excess inventory. They’re super effective. A lot of folks try these and fail the first couple times out. If you’ve tried this type of e-mail before and it hasn’t been successful, try it again but this time look at the timing of when you send it out as well as the format/design. Many companies make the mistake of overdesigning these e-mails – like any other trigger you do, EBOPP’s are meant to look like one-to-one e-mails not overly designed e-mails for the masses.
EBOSI – e-mails based on selected interest. With the exception of their from address (which sucks), Amazon does a fantastic job at these e-mails. The key here is choosing the right number of products to feature — too few or too many render these e-mails useless.
Thank you for signing up – you should have thank you e-mails for catalog requests, e-mail sign-ups, orders, filling out polls and surveys, downloading white papers, attending webinars, and so on. A rule of thumb: anything that the user does right on your site deserves a thank you.
There are dozens of others that really work but the ones listed above are a great start. One of the very best things about triggers is that you can develop them once, tweak them, and then use them for years (with slight modifications, of course.)
Sherry Chiger (@sherry_chiger on Twitter) writes some of the best stuff out there about e-mails. (Click here now for more from Sherry.)
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/amyafrica
January 6th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Amy, thank you for this article; a true “how-to” list.
I appreciate your direct, to-the-point style on this topic which stands out from the more common vague and philosophy-based “consider my theory” lists. I’ve bookmarked it and printed a copy for both my e-commerce promotions and e-mail marketing folders, just so I don’t miss forget these tactics when our e-commerce site launches.
I look forward to reading more from you…thanks!
January 6th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Hi Blair -
Thanks for the kind words!
If there’s an ecommerce/mobile topic you’d like me to address in a future post, please let let me know.
Best,
Amy
January 7th, 2011 at 12:16 am
What triggers do you suggest for non ecommerce sites?
January 7th, 2011 at 10:52 am
That’s a FANTASTIC question Marjorie. Thank you!
If you don’t have a cart, abandoned lead form program serve the same purpose. (Often times they actually work better. They’re SUPER effective.) Please note: This is appropriate for abandoned inquiry sign-ups no matter what type they are — podcasts, webinars, sales calls, whitepapers, etc.
EBOSI’s work really well — especially if you’re aggressive in the response. “I see you are looking for {this}, here’s the info you need to make your choice. Link, link, link.”
Non-ecommerce sites tend to lose a lot of folks on search (usually the search functions are not as strong on service-type sites) so abandoned search e-mails work well. (They work best if they are customized.)
Thank you confirmations are very easy to do and they work like gangbusters. You’ll see quick results if the e-mails are thorough and very one-to-one. Very simple graphics (if any), personalization, etc.
January 11th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Amy these are all great..
One area you leave out however is the critical role of content curation/solicitation in new customer acquisition. Lot’s of people appreciate the ability to use email to engage people you already have a relationship. But what about new customer acquisition?
We see many of our customers leveraging triggered email after the sale or service and asking for stories. “Why did you go to Hawaii?” “Can you send us a picture of you on that Snowboard?” or “What was the first meal you cooked on your new Viking Range Mrs. Baggott?”
These are not reviews, but similar situation stories that drive new traffic from Search Engines, Social Networks (another triggered email is to remind people to share their stories once they are live) and convert that traffic into new prospects & customers.
People love to talk about themselves and triggered emails are the best way to get them talking.
January 11th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Great point Chris! I classify those type of e-mails EBOPP’s (e-mails based on past purchase) but you’re right, they probably should have gotten a separate mention as they work so well!
January 13th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Amy…very nice article.
With regard to thank you messages, what are your thoughts on having the thank you on the post landing page vs. email?
Ex: When a person sends an email to their member of Congress on our site, we typically thank them on the landing page after they click send. Should we send a 2nd thank you by email as well…even if it’s basically the same message.
January 13th, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Thanks Mark!
Yes, I recommend both an e-mail AND a landing page.
In a perfect world, the e-mail would have different content but if you have to push the same thing, it’s better than nothing. (An e-mail like yours would be good if it was signed by a real person and looked like a letter.)
Trigger e-mails are beneficial for a lot of reasons: they often improve your deliverability; you get better open and clickthrough rates; and your overall conversion (to action, if not order) will be better, to name a few.
Also, you will likely notice that thank you confirmations are often kept (in other words, people don’t delete them) so your site visitors will have a nice reminder of you in their inbox!
Hope this helps,
Amy
January 19th, 2011 at 5:13 pm
How does an abandoned search trigger e-mail work? Who is doing this now? BTW Amy thanks for the site feedback in the Dec. Issue of MCM. We are relaunching soon!
January 20th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Hi Eric -
You’re welcome! Glad you got something out of it!
Abandoned search triggers work just like EBOSI’s. Here’s a link to an EBOSI post I did a couple weeks ago: http://amyafrica.com/email-marketing/the-silent-yet-deadly-ebosi/.
Some companies call as well, especially on larger orders.