When prospects and customers register for or simply view your content, respond to your previous messages or provide you with data insights that you can use to your advantage, they are essentially “triggering” you to take action. Are you making the most of the opportunity they are presenting by using an automated response? Research shows that automated emails typically out-perform non-automated emails, as they are generally more personalized, relevant and timely.

As you put an automated email plan in motion, here are five “triggering” events to include:

1. New subscriber: You should have a pre-programmed welcome email ready to send when a new prospect signs up for your newsletter, news feed or other information. This is your opportunity to make a great first impression, so be sure it’s sent quickly, ties to their recent action (e.g. “thanks for subscribing to our newsletter”) and either details the perks of your subscriber program or perhaps contains a compelling call to action (e.g. “here’s a 10% off coupon on our subscription service.”) The good news is that this type of message should be very well received by your subscribers: welcome emails typically enjoy a 50-60% open rate, making them one of the most successful emails to send.

2. Content download: Your prospect or customer has just downloaded a report, a recorded webinar, an e-book or other content from your website. In addition to providing their desired material, send an automated follow-up, asking if they have any questions or would like to learn more about applying the knowledge to their own business. Perhaps offer additional content, such as a video, demo or free consultation that prompts them to take the next step in solving their particular challenge. Again, since your automated response is timely, relevant and personalized, it should be very well received.

3. Browsing activity: By tracking your subscribers’ browsing history on your website, you can see the products that interest them the most. With that knowledge, you can create automated, personalized product offers. For example, you may notice that a particular prospect spends a lot of time browsing the bundled software section of your site. With this knowledge, you can suggest various bundled products via email, highlighting a few of the most popular items and potentially offering a new customer discount.

4. Email activity: Let your prospects’ responses (or more likely, non-responses) trigger automated emails as well. For example, for those who didn’t use the new subscriber coupon mentioned above, remind them that the deadline to use it is coming up. Or, send a follow-up reminder message just to those prospects who opened or clicked on your previous email campaign message. After all, sometimes your busy prospects may just need a simple prompt to take action.

5. Holidays: Halloween, Valentine’s Day and the first day of summer are just a few times of the year when you can send a creative, automated message to your prospects. Of course, you’ll want to send your campaign well in advance to get your prospect thinking ahead – and taking action – in advance.

Conversica and the Power of AI for Automated Emails

This blog post would not be complete without mentioning AI and how it powers automated email replies. In the past year, we’ve engaged with Conversica, a partner of ours, to optimize lead nurturing for our clients by automating intelligent replies to the prospect messages they receive. The Conversica platform works by creating a virtual persona that interacts directly with prospects, nurturing them via natural language email exchanges to convert leads into qualified opportunities. When the prospect is ready to make a purchase, the software alerts a sales rep to make contact and close the sale. By leveraging AI as an automated attendant or “sales assistant,” companies are seeing vast improvements in lead quality and sales results.

As Conversica demonstrates, there’s no doubt the time is now to level up your email marketing strategy. Whether it’s automated, triggered emails that provide timely, relevant and personalized messages, or AI-powered intelligent replies that enable sales reps to more efficiently use their time, automated email has clearly arrived.

Got a question about how to program your triggered or automated emails or how we work with Conversica? We’re happy to talk any time.

Outward Media’s accurate, targeted email data can enable you to achieve better email marketing ROI by targeting your best prospects – including top-level executives -- and, ultimately, converting more prospects into customers. Take a look at our case studies to find out more.