7 Triggered Email Campaigns to Inspire Your Marketing Strategy

Email marketing has long been the go-to channel for brands to connect and engage with their audiences. However, in a landscape saturated with messages, standing out from the crowd can be difficult.

According to a study by Forrester Research, triggered email campaigns can produce 400% more revenue and 18 times more profits than traditional email marketing campaigns. That’s because they are focused, relevant, and often engage recipients precisely when and where it matters most.

If you’ve yet to fully integrate triggered email campaigns into your marketing strategy, you might be missing out on a substantial opportunity to connect with your audience in a more personalized and impactful way.

In this blog post, we share seven triggered email campaign types along with real-world examples you can use to inspire your own marketing efforts. Learn more about what type of campaign triggers are built into MessageGears here. 

What is a triggered email?

A triggered email automatically sends in response to a predefined event trigger or specific user action. The goal of these emails is to deliver highly relevant and timely content, making them a vital part of a brand’s email marketing and customer engagement strategies.

Whether it’s confirming an order, tracking a shipment, or suggesting products based on previous choices, triggered emails are there to provide customers with the information they need exactly when they need it. 

Types of trigger emails

Here are seven common trigger emails you can incorporate into your marketing strategy:

• Welcome
• Transactional
• Milestone
• Notification
• Cart abandonment
• Re-engagement
• Remarketing

Now, let’s take a look at these in more detail:

1. Welcome emails

A welcome email is the first communication a new subscriber or customer receives from a company shortly after signing up for a newsletter, creating an account, or making their first purchase. This type of email is an opportunity for you to make a positive first impression and set the tone for what to expect from future correspondence. Don’t forget to include a call to action (CTA) to promote further engagement.

2. Transactional emails

Transactional emails are the unsung heroes of digital communication, quietly but effectively delivering crucial information to users when they need it most. These emails include order confirmations, shipping updates, and account updates.

They tend to have high open rates because they are directly tied to user actions and provide valuable, timely information users expect to receive. While transactional emails are primarily about providing information, brands can still use them to reinforce branding, build loyalty, and even open doors for upselling opportunities.

3. Milestone emails

Milestone emails are celebratory messages that mark significant moments in a customer’s journey with your brand. They can be birthdays, subscription anniversaries, loyalty tier upgrades, or any notable milestones in your customer’s interaction with your brand. They offer a chance to show appreciation and help customers feel valued at crucial moments throughout the lifecycle.

4. Notification emails

The purpose of notification and alert emails is to relay important information relevant to the receiver. Common notification types include security alerts, back-in-stock updates, and order changes. For example, a customer adds an item to their cart that goes out of stock before they complete their purchase. The brand can trigger an email notification to the customer as soon as the item is back in stock.

Or a customer receives an email notifying them of a change in their flight time or departure gate, making their travel experience as frictionless as possible. These emails play a pivotal role in ensuring the right users stay informed and engaged with relevant updates.

5. Cart abandonment emails

If you have an ecommerce store, you know how much cart abandonment costs businesses each year. The average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%. Most people add items to their shopping cart for a good reason, but it’s easy to get distracted and forget to complete the purchase. But all is not lost. Recovering even a small percentage of abandoned carts can significantly impact revenue.

Send an abandoned cart email to remind customers about what they left behind. If it makes sense, include an incentive, such as a limited-time discount code or free shipping, to encourage users to return and make a purchase. 

6. Re-engagement emails

Keeping customers engaged is a focus of almost every campaign, but inactive subscribers are an unavoidable reality in email marketing. A re-engagement or winback campaign can help rekindle connections with inactive or disengaged subscribers.

This audience previously showed interest in your brand by subscribing to your email communications, making a purchase, or engaging with your content but has become less active over time. You have nothing to lose by reminding these lapsed users why they fell in love with your brand in the first place to try and bring them back into your email marketing fold.

7. Remarketing emails

Remarketing emails are highly targeted. They focus on individuals who have demonstrated interest in your brand but fail to take a specific action. By delivering targeted, timely, and personalized content, these emails can rekindle interest, bring relevant traffic to your site, and ultimately drive conversions. Effective remarketing involves continuous optimization. A/B test different email variations to identify what resonates most with your audience and maximizes conversion rates. 

Add automation to your email marketing

Trigger emails are the most effective way to engage your email subscribers. It’s a bold claim, but no other email type will ever be as relevant as those sent in direct response to particular user actions. From recovering lost sales to nurturing customer relationships, trigger email campaigns offer crucial benefits at every stage of the buyer journey.

If you want advice on how to create or improve your trigger email campaigns, contact MessageGears to get started. Start using email automation the right way and see the difference it can make to your marketing.