Triggered Emails: How to Increase Conversions and Keep Customers Coming Back

It is essential for online businesses not only to attract new customers but also to retain existing ones. According to the CEE Ecommerce Report 2018, repeat customers generate up to 80% of all ecommerce revenue.

Automated emails showcasing blog posts, promotions, and product novelties are a simple and efficient way to interact with your customers. These allow you to increase the number of conversions by bringing customers back to the store and driving repeat purchases, without any additional investments since this tool is already integrated into the eSputnik service.

What is a triggered email?

Triggered emails are emails (or sequences of emails) that launch and stop with a so-called trigger. A trigger fires under a specific condition, that is, a certain user activity (or inactivity) in an online store,  to which the email marketing service reacts automatically.

Typically, triggered emails target specific user audiences, directing their attention to a specific product and, as a result, driving them to a purchase. This personalized approach helps maintain customer loyalty to your brand and convert subscribers into customers into regular buyers.

The eSputnik system allows tracking the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns down to an email. It also enables you to monitor open and unsubscribe rates, as well as link clicks to the website. Triggered emails will help you improve communications with your audience and increase your online sales revenue.

What business challenges can trigger emails solve?

• Increasing conversion rates of an online store,
• Retaining existing customers and search for new ones,
• Increasing the average order value;
• Optimising marketing budget investments,
• Establishing an emotional connection with the audience.

Triggered emails can be an excellent sales channel that will help you reduce the seasonal traffic drops and the average monthly number of sales. To give your customers an incentive to buy from you, you can not only use the price factor (promotions, discounts, sales) but also offer extra services, such as preferred delivery methods.

How to increase conversion rates with email marketing, a case study by Promodo

Let's look at what types of triggered emails can work for online stores, and what revenue these can help generate, with a Promodo's email marketing case study of Zootovary.com, a Kiyv-based pet supplies chain.

Before starting the project, Promodo’s email marketing specialists needed to collect as much customer data as possible. The solution was to develop a quiz which offered users to receive a discount in return for answering all questions in the form. Since Ukraine is not a member of the European Union, the GDPR principles don't apply to the companies who only target Ukraine audience. That is why Zootovary.com didn't have to explain the purpose for collecting this information.

This series of triggered emails was aimed at all the visitors who have opted in on the website. The first email with the questionnaire was sent right away; the second email with a reminder of to answer the question was sent in two weeks after the first email. Thanks to the reminder emails, the form completion rate increased from 11% to 14%.

However, this result seemed insufficient for the team. Aiming to further increase the questionnaire form completion rate, the marketers added a visual block to all Zootovary.com’s triggered and promotional emails. The block was only displayed for those subscribers who hadn’t completed the form.

Within 4 months of using the reminder block in Zootovary.com's email campaigns, marketers gained a 4.8% increase in the form completion rate. As a result, the questionnaire was filled out by 20% of active subscribers over the period of six months.

Personalization in Triggered Emails

Having gathered enough customer data, the Promodo’s marketing team needed to leverage it in email campaigns. For this, the marketers launched several triggered email campaigns.

1. Happy Birthday Email

A customer receives an email on their pet’s birthday. Depending on the pet’s species, an image of a dog, a cat or a neutral picture (for owners of other animals) is automatically added within the email. There is also the pet’s name in the email body, that helps marketers personalize the email as much as possible.

2. It’s time to buy pet food!

These emails are sent periodically, depending on two factors: the pet’s species and the weight of the previously purchased food package. To configure this triggered email, Promodo’s marketers used the following data from the questionnaire form:

• Owner’s name
• Pet’s name
• Pet species
• Food package weight

The email also contained a banner with a call-to-action button.

At the same time, Promodo’s marketers used additional triggers which helped them engage with a wider audience.  

• Browse abandonment emails

If a user has visited the site but hasn’t yet made a purchase (or taken any other target action), after a while, they receive an email with their viewed products and product recommendations.

• Cart abandonment emails

If a user has added a product to their cart but hasn’t completed a purchase, they receive an email with a reminder of an incomplete transaction asking them to complete their order.

• Reactivation emails

The customer reactivation email campaign is targeted at those users who haven't visited the website and made any transaction over the past 6 months.

• Welcome emails

As soon as new subscribers register on the website, they receive a first welcome email asking them to confirm their subscription. Several more emails with additional information are sent at intervals of 3-4 days.

Results

A series of personalized triggered emails turned out to be much more efficient than regular ones. With non-personalized triggered emails, the performance was as below:

• Average open rate — 35%,
• Click rate — 10%,
• Transaction rate — 15%.

At the same time, personalized triggered emails demonstrated much better performance:

• Open rate — 40 to 70%,
• Click rate — 25%
• Transaction rate — 30 to 35%.

As for the key business indicators of the online store, introducing the questionnaire along with basic and personalized triggered emails has led to even more impressive results. The average monthly revenue generated via the email marketing channel has increased by around 30% and 20% users from the target audience completed the questionnaire.

During the work on this project, the Promodo's email marketing team proved that personalized emails help you not only demonstrate your attention to each customer and increase customer loyalty, but also convert subscribers into regular customers.

Further ways to increase conversion rates in email marketing

• Extend a personalized workflow with a purchase reminder considering other types of animals and a broader choice of products.
• Develop a series of triggered emails with product recommendations based on an already completed purchases.
• Improve the content of triggered emails to make them more attractive to subscribers.
• Conduct an A/B testing of particular email elements such as headers, text, buttons, etc.