By Rogier van der Veen

Event-driven email marketing uses a customer's preferences, interests and specific online activity to generate – or ‘trigger’ - an associated email. A prospect researching a product or service via an organisation’s website might be sent a message containing additional, related, information. Or an email offering a discount or suggesting alternative products can be sent to a customer that starts shopping online but abandons their basket before buying their goods. Other examples include sending birthday greetings on the relevant date, and the offer of a gift that relates to previously-expressed interests.

Used intelligently, dynamic email campaigns can introduce an element of ‘old-style’ customer service to ecommerce because the content of the messages is based on each individual customer’s online behaviour and lifecycle events. Event-driven email marketing can also strengthen an organisation’s relationship with the customer, regardless of whether they make a purchase – the key is to provide information that is timely, relevant and of value and therefore encourages continued engagement.

The criticism often levied at ecommerce is the lack of human interaction, which prevents it being timely and truly personalised. However, intelligent event-driven email marketing tackles this issue head-on by providing the missing ‘customer service’ link that many consumers feel enhances the online shopping experience.

Event-driven email marketing requires a CRM-focused approach that ensures as much information as possible about each customer’s needs, interests and upcoming events in their life is gathered and made easily accessible. However, it must be remembered that the same rules for respecting the customer apply for dynamic email campaigns as for any other. Very simply, customer data is key and must be used to generate communications that ensure the recipients feel valued and individual.

For more information, a free white paper is available from E-Village. ‘Event-driven email marketing campaigns: why technology must be combined with insight’ is the latest in our series of white papers. It offers an overview of the practicalities of event-driven marketing, as well as how to avoid the pitfalls, and is available to download from: http://www.createaclang.com/en/Downloads/

About the author and E-Village

Rogier van der Veen is UK business development manager for CRM-based email marketing tool, Clang (www.createaclang.com), which has recently launched in the UK by digital marketing technology specialist, E-Village (http://www.e-village.eu).

A pioneer of e-commerce, Rogier has over ten year's experience of promoting email marketing as a core business strategy that enables organisations to attract, engage and retain customers. He has implemented many successful email campaigns for a variety of organisations, and his achievements include winning an EMMA (email marketing award) for for Robeco, a ‘large asset management’ company.

Current Clang customers include (direct and via partners) include: Albelli, BCD Travel, GM, G-Star, Holiday Cottages Group, KLM, MySecurityCenter, Shell, and The Phone House.