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What is the trigger marketing?

Boosting sales is always a relevant topic for any business, but companies often don't have enough money to increase website traffic. That's why you have to deal with existing audience using detailed segmentation.

In this case, marketers can find help in trigger marketing. Triggers are the base of marketing automation, and in this article, I'll tell how to use triggers in order to boost sales.

The level of use of different digital decisions will depend on understanding this concept. If you don't understand the concept of using triggers, all systems of marketing automation, CRM, mailing services and chat-bots will be similar for you. No jokes! How to boost sales without investment. Trigger marketing.

The basic elements of trigger marketing

Trigger marketing consist of 4 elements

  • Triggers
  • Action
  • If/else
  • Waiting period

Triggers are the cause that launches some kind of process.

Triggers can be different, and the more options to launch any process, the better.

You already use trigger marketing in your business. For example, when a client leaves his request on your website and you call him – it's a trigger. Or when he just subscribes to your news and you start the automatic mailing. It's a trigger too, but the most primitive.

The more advanced soft you use, the more triggers are in your arsenal.

Action – after the trigger works, an action must happen. It can be sending emails, SMS, manager's call, dialing, texting in messengers, etc.

You should realize which user's actions show his readiness for purchasing. For instance, you see that someone has visited the page where you sell the fridge 8 times and hasn't bought it. In this case, it's appropriate to send him emails with a discount for this fridge, detailed review at this item or buyers' feedback.

Thus, multiple visits to a certain page are a trigger for you and sending an email is an action itself.

If / else filter is a segmentation function. It is the concept "If the event happens, do something". For instance, a contact has opened the mail. It's a trigger. After that system asks "Is this contact a client?". If yes, make an action "Send another mail". If no, make an action "set the task for a manager". You can segment clients by different criteria.

Waiting period - you always set the waiting period in automation. Here's an example. User visit the website page 5 times (it's a trigger), then the system checks "is he a client or a subscriber" (if/else). If he's a client, it sends a mail with a discount.

After that system waits two days (a function of waiting period) and makes checking again "has the client bought an item or not".

Now, if no, it sends mail once more. Here's another example. The client has signed up for a webinar and the system waits till 7 pm to send a message with the alarm.

Types of trigger marketing

Now let's look at the main types of triggers and actions. These features are in almost every CRM system or marketing automation service. Choosing the system, you need to pay attention to the number of triggers, filtering options and variants of actions. By the interface design, such systems are almost all the same.

Opened / didn't open the letter. Clicked / didn't click on the link in the letter.

It's the most common trigger. You send clients letters with your share. 20% of them have opened and seen your offer, and all the other hasn't. You can make a repeated mailing for those who haven't opened the previous one. Thus, you increase openability up to 40%.

Image source ActiveCampaign

In the system it looks like that:

Variable Automation in ActiveCampaign

A trigger based on a visit to a specific page of your site

You can also set up tracking for the number of visits.

For example, when a client re-visits a page with a description of your service, a trigger works - the client receives an email, and the manager gets the task to call this client. By analyzing the client's path through your site, the system or manager can understand what exactly the visitor needs at the moment.

You can also notice a repeated visit to the site and immediately call the client.

Tracking the client's actions in ActiveCampaign

Trigger based on lead scoring

I wrote about scoring in another article. Briefly, it is a system of awarding points for different actions. Opening the letter - 1 point, clicking - 2 points, leaving the request - 5 points, visiting the page - 5 points, etc. When the client scores a certain number of points that you set by yourself, the trigger will work and do an action.

It's possible to make combined automation. At the time of reaching 100 points, the system waits until Tuesday and sends a letter with a promotion saying that the client is active and can use the promotion code until Wednesday.

There is also a condition, if there is a phone number in the client's card, a notification will be sent to the manager and the task to call will be set.

A trigger based on the lead scoring

Deal stage changes trigger

Different types of businesses have different stages of a deal. Someone sends an offer, someone makes an appointment.

For example, you have a template for a commercial offer, and after making the call you send it.

As soon as you transfer the client's card to another stage of the deal, the trigger will work, and the system will send to the client an email with all the important information.

Moreover, you can set another trigger: when the client clicks on the offer, the manager will receive a notification that the offer is being watched right now and he has to call the client. And if the client doesn't open the offer within the time you need, the system itself will send another letter.

Deal stage changes trigger in Pipedrive

Trigger based on date, time and day of the week

It's a very useful trigger if your business is tied to certain events: birthdays, holidays, days of the week, etc. One of my favorite cases is an online store for children. You ask the young mother to indicate child's date of birth while she's signing up.

Now, when the child is one year old, the system will send offers to buy diapers, when the child is three, the system will send clothes when the child goes to school, the system will send goods for the school. The child grows so do your LTV.

Now let's talk about triggers at a specific time and day of the week.

Naturally, you can independently schedule mailing for a certain time and send it to the database. All mailing list services have this feature. But how is it possible to make the letters come to the subscriber on Tuesday at 8 o'clock in the evening? Firstly, everyone has different time zones.

However, our system distinguishes the time zone and automatically picks up. The same goes for the days of the week.

Field trigger in the client card

Every CRM system has fields you can create. But here be careful! In most systems, you create fields to filter the search for contacts and so that the manager can see the data when making a call. Trigger marketing allows you to use fields as a trigger, but for some reason, a lot of users miss this opportunity. I'll try to clear things up.

Let's take as example a business in which job segmentation is important.

Let's assume you want to send one information to business owners, another to sales managers, and third to marketers. So, a person has filled in a mini-questionnaire in the sign up form.

For instance, a person has mentioned that he is a marketer. It's a trigger for us and we'll send him content for marketers. The same goes for other fields.

It is important to understand that it's not a field where you can write something at random. We have variants of the answer. And the system perceives them as a specific trigger. If the contact field contains "marketer", you need to perform step A, and if the field contains "business owner", then perform step B.

Combined triggers

Obviously, the triggers can be combined. You can set several conditions for action depending on the data on the client card.

For example, a client indicated in a sign up form that he's a business owner and has an online store. But the system also realized that he's from New York, he has visited one of the pages of the site more than two times and got 50 points in scoring.

And the system will send an email or perform some other action only to those people who match this parameter.

The more segmentation options, the better. The more triggers and filtering conditions, the better.

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