Improving Email Subscriber Targeting With Triggered Messages

This is an excerpt from “Segmentation and Targeting,” the second of five eBooks in Alterian’s “Creating Engaging Email Series.”

Given the typical company’s resource constraints, marketers must use triggered and sequenced messages that utilize existing segmentation schemes.

Welcome campaigns are one example of a sequenced email campaign. Here’s a few others:

• Map out continuity campaigns for leverage. An ancillary benefit of using sequenced strings of messages is that much of the work involved in creating individual messages for particular campaigns can be reused in others. Coupling this approach with a behavioral segmentation strategy will enable you to craft mailings triggered by behaviors and/or events, thus reusing messages designed for other subscribers.

This approach can also be applied to some transactional and service opportunities, such as follow-up cross-sell offers or customer surveys that get triggered after these events occur. Automotive and equipment manufacturers such as HP will often time their message not only to where the subscriber is within their lifecycle, but also within the lifecycle of the product or service they are selling.

• Tie campaign triggers to product lifecycles. Understand the lifecycle of your products and services, and trigger mailings around the different stages of that product lifecycle. For example, one of the top U.S. banks sends mortgage rate notices to those subscribers who have opted in to get their mortgage information. The bank only sends these messages for 45 days because its research shows that this is the lifecycle for when people are in market for a mortgage.
These product lifecycle mailings can also be tied to subscriber segments that have indicated interest in these products either through their stated preferences or by their online website behavior.

• Tie subscriber life-stage to sequenced messaging. Segments that are established from subscriber demographics can be used to steer relevant messages that map to the customer’s life-stage. The ability for the marketer to adjust creative elements that are targeted to certain subscriber demographics will improve the relevance of the message and the message’s ultimate performance.

For example, one of the two major U.S. automakers changes the creative for their welcome message email based upon the age and demographics of the user. A request for vehicle information from one segment may render the creative image of the vehicle with surfboards or skis on the roof, while to a different segment it may show an older couple riding through the lovely fall colors of New England. Content remains king, and this approach to life-stage sequenced messaging requires marketers to tie content to segments in the most relevant manner.

David Daniels is CEO of The Relevancy Group.