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Triggered emails, sales funnel, dynamic segmentation, events and properties… When it comes to email marketing these terms are used on a daily basis and should form the basis of any email marketer's vocabulary. However, these buzzwords should not be used or seen in isolation, as they are part of something much more valuable known as "behavioral email marketing".
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Simply put, behavioral email marketing, is well, exactly what it sounds like. By observing the actions of your customers and marketing to them based on how they interact with your brand, it is possible to create automated email campaigns specifically targeted to customer behavior.
How is this possible? While behavioral email marketing can get quite complex, this 3-step approach will get you started and on your feet in no time.
Step 1: Outline and define your sales funnel from first interaction to post conversion. While doing this be sure to identify the different "states" you may use to classify your customers, as well as the relevant events and properties (event value) that change each state. This will essentially form the base of your strategy. Advice: Start small. Once your strategy is executed you can go back and optimize by adding additional states and events to become more targeted.
Step 2: The next step becomes a bit more technical and may require you to pull in some of your developer friends. At this stage, you would need to decide on which email marketing software to use. I recommend Klaviyo, but there are quite a number to choose from (we'll save that for a future article). Once you have decided on a platform, you will need to paste some code into your website to start tracking the actions of your users. Advice: It is important that you first define your sales funnel and goals, as this will ultimately determine which software to use. For example, If your sales funnel involves cross-channel integration you will need software that can cater for this.
Step 3: The final step is to re-create the sales funnel (you outlined in step 1) in your email marketing software. The best way to do this, is to create dynamic segments that will automatically add or remove customers based on their states and the events of your sales funnel.
For example, if you were wanting to target customers who have added products to their cart, but not checked out within 7 days, the conditions behind your dynamic segment may look something like this:
Only include customers who have "Added Product to Cart" at least once in the last 7 days AND Only include customers who have "Checked Out" zero times in the last 7 days
Customers who meet this condition will instantly be added to this segment. You can also use the exact same conditions to set-up a "triggered email" that will automatically send to customers who enter this segment.Advice: Each message you send should prompt them to perform the next event required for them to move down the sales funnel. This is where the content of your emails becomes crucial and the strategy becomes a bit more complex.
And that's it... By performing these steps you will now be able to mimic customer behavior through customer states, events, and properties allowing you to automate emails based on what your customers have or have not done. In return, your marketing efforts will be much more targeted resulting in an increase in ROI and profits, and an overall better customer experience.