'Happy Birthday' messages drive around 10 percent of email order revenue

Although they account for only two percent of all emails sent, triggered marketing messages -- those sent to mark birthdays and other events -- generate 10.2 percent of email-driven revenue and 9.7 percent of email-driven orders.

This is among the findings of a study by Yes Lifecycle Marketing, the company behind marketing and analytics platform Yesmail360, which shows that people are twice as likely to open triggered messages as they are general marketing emails.

"As email volume continues to increase, it becomes more and more difficult for marketers to stand out from the noise and effectively engage consumers", says Michael Fisher, president of Yes Lifecycle Marketing. "Triggered campaigns tackle this challenge head on. They are relevant, timely and demonstrate interest in consumers’ actions. In addition, they are designed to elicit an immediate response, which is a crucial step in the path to conversion".

The findings reveal that triggered emails generated double the click-to-open (CTO) rate (22.5 percent vs 11.1 percent) and more than four times the unique click rate of business-as-usual campaigns (6.5 percent vs 1.6 percent).

But the report also shows that even marketers who are implementing triggers aren't necessarily using them to their full advantage. Nearly three-quarters of brands (72 percent) send welcome emails to new customers with two percent of these messages leading to purchases. Yet re-marketing and milestone triggers, such as birthday and anniversary emails, outperform welcome emails significantly. However, far fewer brands send these campaigns, indicating that marketers are missing an opportunity for engagement and conversion.

More information on the effectiveness of trigger emails can be found in the full report, available to download from the Yesmail website.

Photo Credit: Elena Schweitzer/Shutterstock