Singin' Like A One-Note Comedian
By Randall Litchfield

If your emails all share the same purpose, look, feel and - notably - promotional hype, chances are you should expand the repertoire. Email communications should be as multi-faceted as the customer relationship itself. Triggered messaging is an ideal tool to help you achieve this in an automated yet intimate manner.

It's surprising how few marketers use this effective and easily implemented device. The central requirement is a good email marketing database that triggers the actual deployments according to rules and criteria that you prescribe. Its other role is to receive the responses and enrich the individual customer profiles accordingly. It becomes part of your closed-loop process of client communications. The more you communicate, the more information you receive back, the richer the profile, the more relevant the next communication, etc., etc.

Once in place, there are many ways to integrate this process into your existing communications. Inbox clients use triggered messaging for a range of purposes such as billing reminders, customer service replies and auto responses to new subscribers. The potential uses are really as varied as the information fields that reside in your customer profiles. Here are some of the main types:

Event Triggers

• Personal dates such as birthdays, anniversaries, spouse's and children's birthdays
• Holidays such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter, Mother's Day, Independence Day
• Other - back to school, tax deadlines, allergy season, early child care, car maintenance, garden care, etc.

Content Triggers

• Web site - notification of new, relevant content
• Investment portfolio changes
• New product information that has become available

Behavioural Triggers

• Purchase history - type of product/service, recency, transaction size
• Interests - sports, ski conditions, crafts, reading, dining out
• Volunteer/Charitable - tsunami in Southeast Asia, blood donations, famine relief
• Ethnic - Chinese New Year, St. Patrick's Day
• Work place - business milestones and anniversaries

Triggers have the power to make virtually every customer communication unique - or at least appear that way. Relevance is the operative word, and triggers are one of the easiest ways to add this vital ingredient to your messaging.