Our inboxes are flooded with emails, some that are relevant to us and others that aren’t. Lifecycle email marketing campaigns generate as much as 9X greater results than other types. Yet, few email marketers take advantage of thinking of email in such a way and delivering the right message at the right time.
Most email service providers make it easy for you to set up your basic lifecycle programs. The hard part is how to structure the program and optimize the communications. Here are the top four lifecycle triggered emails you should set up to help optimize your channel.
1. Welcome Message
When it comes to a new email subscriber, this is your first opportunity to build a relationship and make an impression on your new customers. The Welcome email tells the customer about the benefits of signing up for email from your brand. It should have several links and have an example of the types of communications you’ll be providing. You can also take a similar approach to other types of Welcome trigger campaigns such as a lead generation Welcome email.
2. Abandon Shopping Cart
Customers will put items in a cart, or start to purchase your product or service, and then get distracted with something else. They still want to buy your item; they just forgot about it. Abandoned Shopping Cart is a great program to re-engage the customer. This is a great email to build out if you have the infrastructure to support it.
3. Purchase Confirmation
The customer made a purchase – they bought a pair of shoes on your site. The next step is to deliver a Purchase Confirmation email. This email will be sent to both people who have opted-in, and those who have opted-out, because it is a service-oriented communication. The email will give the customer a receipt of their purchase. If it’s a physical good that’s being shipped to them, it might have the shipping information in there as well.
But Purchase Confirmation actually has another, longer-term role that a lot of brands have a hard time figuring out how to use from a business perspective. You have a lot of data right there about what a customer just bought. It’s a great opportunity to deliver a subtle upsell. In a service communication, roughly 30 percent of the message can be a marketing communication, as long as the primary message is about the account.
4. Post-Purchase Feedback
Post-purchase feedback campaigns will give you a chance to learn what your customers love or don’t love about your product. Also, happy customers make the best advocates for your product. Email is a great tool to reach out to your customers in a triggered fashion, and to learn about how they feel about your product or service. The information they share with you will be invaluable. It will allow you to have a direct line of communication with them.
There are many other types of triggered lifecycle email campaigns, and the options may seem overwhelming. The key is to take a look at types of campaigns that will have the greatest amount of impact and are easiest to set up. The better you can be at delivering the right message at the right time, the higher will be the performance from your email channel.