Triggered Marketing Communications Sends Response Rates Sky High
Marketers are well aware that communications triggered by certain events can be a powerful way to drive results. But it’s unusual to get our hands on specific data that clearly demonstrates exactly how powerful triggered marketing really is.
For the first time, Kefta Inc., an ASP software company in San Francisco, aggregated its clients’ results from triggered email communications, and the numbers show dramatic lifts in response. The client base is varied, including such companies as General Motors, Verizon, BSkyB, Societe Generale (the European bank) and Napster. The results derive from a composite of clients, but cannot be ascribed to any one client in particular.
The lifts gained from triggered marketing were examined in two areas of marketing opportunity. The first is reactivation, like an abandoned shopping cart, or an uncompleted form or reservation. Triggered email sent to a “dropped” customer asking them to come back and take action achieved a whopping 70-85% open rate and click-through rates of 15-45%. The conversion rates from these triggered emails came in 2 to 10 times higher than normal. In fact, according to Kefta CEO Philippe Suchet, ordinary emails to these customers experience half the response rates on all three dimensions-open rate, click rate and conversion rate. “On average,” he notes, “triggered communications get anywhere from 2 times to 15 times better results.”
The second marketing opportunity explored is invitations to refer. Typically, a referral request sitting on a website will get a very low response from the casual visitor. However, when an email request for referral is sent to someone who has just taken some action-received a product, for example, or completed a survey-the response rates soar. “We are seeing open rates of 2 to 2.5 times higher than in the base case of a referral email campaign,” says Suchet. “The referral rate itself is 4 times higher, so the total result rises as high as 14 times greater than the standard email.”
Liz Roche, vice president at the META Group, is not surprised by these results. “Essentially, triggered campaigning is another form of lead qualification,” she says. “You are modeling customer behavior and generating a communication based on the most likely behavioral profile. Referral and reactivation are flip sides of the same marketing coin. Open rates and click-through rates are generally atrocious when not driven by some customer need.”
Roche cautions, however, that the numbers must be analyzed carefully. “I am often skeptical of conversion rates, because the denominator can be selected incorrectly” she notes. “It’s crucial that the ‘before’ numbers be based on the same algorithm as the ‘after’ numbers. Faulty numbers can set unreasonable expectations-and then the marketer unnecessarily considers the campaign a failure if it doesn’t perform as billed.”
As a result of Kefta’s experience with triggered campaigns, Suchet offers the following guidelines for setting up a successful triggered program:
- Develop a customer-centric focus. “The entire system must be set up to support event-triggered marketing,” Suchet observes. “It’s not easy, but it’s essential that you have the capability to send a specific communication to a specific customer at a specific time.”
- Profile your customers and prospects, and gather information on their behavioral patterns.
- Give serious consideration to the most appropriate actions you want to stimulate.
- Test, and test again. All the great marketing experience and instincts in the world cannot replicate the results of a well-constructed test. “Let your testing teach you more about the optimal events in each segment,” says Suchet. “Assume you don’t know the answers. Let the customers tell you.”