We regularly get the question of which triggers work best for email marketing. Of course, this differs from webshop to webshop. One web shop is more suitable for retention, where the other web shop needs more sales through a newsletter. I will briefly go over triggers that will help you.
Your first impression says it all
You can only make once a first impression on your customers. Your first impression has to be good. That way you will be better remembered. And that's what you want!
You do this by welcoming new newsletter subscribers, or 'onboard' them. This is how you introduce your customers to you, your web shop and what you have to offer.
Welcome flow
Trigger 1: Onboarding 1: who are you, and what do you do?
Has your customer just signed up for the newsletter? Then set up a trigger with the following rule:
You now grab all customers who just signed up for the newsletter.
In your email, include who you are and what you do. What content can your customers expect in your newsletters, and what do you stand for? Be clear about this. Did you promise a discount code to a new newsletter subscriber? Include a discount code in your newsletter.
Trigger 2: Onboarding 2: what benefits do you offer?
Now that your customer knows what to expect, move on to the next onboarding email. In your second onboarding mail, you show what benefits you offer as a web shop. Think of benefits for ordering, receiving the package, but also the return policy. How fast do you deliver your products? And what are the shipping costs? Or do you have no shipping costs at all? Name all this. You may know this yourself, but your customer does not.
You set this up with the following rule:
Trigger 3: Onboarding 3: The social proof email
Your final email to introduce you to your customers. In this email, you provide social proof to your customers. These are reviews from other customers to show how trustworthy you are. After all, what other customers think is important to your new customers!
You configure this trigger with the following rule:
Encourage customer loyalty
Once you've introduced your customers to your online store, and they've gotten used to you, you'll want to retain your customers. Because retaining existing customers is many times easier than acquiring new ones.
Trigger 4: Thank your customer after the first order
Did your customer place an order? Yes! You want to thank your customer for that! You do this by filtering your customers who were the first to place an order:
With this rule, you set up that your customers get an email from you one day after their first order. In this email, thank them for their order. If necessary, give away a discount code. Customers can really appreciate this behavior!
Trigger 5: Segment your customers into VIP customers
You may want to reward high-volume customers. They are important to you because they generate a lot of revenue. A trigger for VIP customers is easily configured with the following rule:
With these specific rules, you filter out your VIP customers (customers who have a lifetime purchase value of more than €1,000). You specifically grab VIP customers in this example who haven't ordered in a while (3 months or longer). In the email, express how much you value your customer. Reward them for ordering so much at your webshop.
Trigger 6: Contact your customers on their birthday
How fun is it to give your customer a present on their birthday? This is easy to set up in Reloadify with the following rule:
By entering 'minus two', the customer will get your email 2 days before their birthday. Do you give your customers a gift? A discount code? Or something completely different? The choice is yours!
Trigger 7: Celebrate milestones with your customers
You really keep your customers loyal if you celebrate milestones with your customers. How about customers who first ordered from you exactly 1 year ago? When you email them on the very day, 1 year later, with: "Congratulations, one year ago today you ordered from me for the first time!", you are being very personal!
You set this trigger with the following rule:
Encourage even more purchases
You already knew your customers buy from you. Sometimes you have to encourage them even more to buy from you or to make an additional purchase from you.
Trigger 8: Get your abandoned shopping carts back to the customer
A trigger that always scores well with us is the abandoned shopping cart. A flow for abandoned shopping carts works best: a reminder, another reminder, and then maybe an extra push in the right direction by offering your customers a discount code. You can read how to set up a flow for your abandoned cart in Reloadify here.
Trigger 9: Offer cross-sell products
How cool is it to introduce your customers to similar products after purchase? You do this by setting up this rule:
Customers who ordered 7 days ago and purchased a certain product in a category will receive this email. In your email itself, you need the following dynamic row:
Drag a row into your newsletter and enter the following text in the e-mail (for example): You may also find this interesting:
❗ The block itself is not filled yet. It will be filled with products from your webshop that you set up yourself. It is therefore important that you set up these products in your web shop. Often you see on a product page the product + a block underneath with "recommended products" or "other customers also bought". These are the cross-sell blocks that we load directly into this email with this row. Don't have this set up with every product in your shop? Then this will not work optimally for you.
Trigger 10: Stimulate repeat orders
Do you know the retention time of a certain product? For example, toothpaste: will it last a month? Or for example with dog food. Think of all the products that can go out as it were. When something runs out, you want to alert your customers that the product that is about to run out may be purchased again. This is called a repeat purchase. Your customers will appreciate getting a reminder that a particular product is running out. You set this up with the following rules:
In the 'product' box you enter the product in question, of course. The number of days you enter is just before the time that the product is about to run out.
In the e-mail you make something beautiful out of it: "We see you're running out of dog food! That's a pity! You can easily order a new batch by clicking on the product below."
Trigger 11: Get your customers back to your website
There will always be customers who have forgotten about you. Get these customers back with a so-called win-back email. These customers have once ordered from you, but not recently. Therefore, you want to bring your webshop back to their attention. You do this with the following rule:
You pick up the target group that has not ordered anything from you for six months.
In the e-mail you can make something like: "We haven't seen you on our website in a while. We miss you! Will you come back to us again? Order now with 10% off with the following discount code: X."
Next is to send a follow-up email: you grab your customer group who have not ordered from you for, say, nine months:
In this email, you give the customers a higher discount code, in order to persuade them to still proceed to purchase.
Trigger 12: Request reviews
Not every customer wants to write a product review. Of course, you as a website owner have an interest in the reviews. To get your customers to write a review, you have to make it easy for them. In addition, there must of course be something for the customer to get. 💰
Trigger 13: Refer a friend
Shopping together is much more fun than alone, right? We agree! To attract existing and new customers to your shop, you can let your existing customers invite a friend. This 'refer a friend' email is easy to automate in Reloadify.