:: TRIGGER-BASED MARKETING: TIMING IS EVERYTHING
Imagine being able to time a marketing campaign so that it hits exactly when a customer's needs require it. Life-changing events such as the purchase of a new home, the opening of a business, or a child approaching college age could alert marketers to send out messages that communicate to customers specifically about a product or service they need, when they need it most. Today’s trigger-based marketing programs seize the moment by capturing just-in-time data and then turning that data into executable campaigns before the window of opportunity with customers and prospects has begun to close.

Companies that engage in trigger-based marketing programs are yielding as much as a 400% improvement in response rates. They are marrying their knowledge of customer behavior and preference with trigger-based campaigns that “strike while the iron is hot” – all without busting the marketing budget.

Defining Triggers
Triggers represent specific moments in time that offer a unique marketing and sales opportunity with added relevance for the customer because of other events or issues happening in tandem. They generally fall into four categories:

• External triggers - product development cycles, mergers and acquisitions, changes in market conditions, and competitive actions.
• Customer life triggers - birthdays, a new baby, a home relocation, changes in marital status.
• Behavioral triggers - customer opening a new account, changes in purchasing patterns, and changes in spending levels or account values.
• Communication triggers - when a company already needs to reach out to the customer at various points, whether it be a welcome packet or change in service notice, opening up a new opportunity to educate and cross-sell.

Today’s web-based solutions provide pre-defined triggers to automatically initiate marketing programs. Typically, a customer action, such as one of the events outlined above, creates the mechanism for marketing materials to be pushed out to the consumer. This is done by establishing a set of business rules that act on pre-assigned criteria and push out a desired piece of mail, email, or a telesales call to the consumer. Trigger-based marketing programs take existing customer data and profiles, and apply business rules against that data that systematically drive a communications piece through execution enabling companies to deliver "right-offer, right-time" communications.

What’s the secret to creating an effective trigger campaign? Relevancy. And creating relevancy depends on being in front of the customer with the right offer, in the right place and, above all, at the right time. What use is a great college loan offer to a family whose kids are still in elementary school, or a killer cable package to a household that moved in a month ago and just had their satellite dish installed? Relevancy requires looking at customer behavior and preferences to determine the best messages for addressing individual customer concerns and/or needs, and then aligning those messages with the precise time a customer needs to make their buying decision. Get the timing right, and you’re assured of increasing relevancy, and right along with it customer response and program revenue.

One example of a highly effective triggered-based program is often referred to as an Onboarding Program. The concept of Onboarding, or “Welcome” Programs, has been around for a while, but until now marketers have attempted these complex programs with less-than-inspiring results. What was missing that finally catapulted this concept from something that looked great on paper to a methodology that began delivering improvements of 3x-10x?

Often where marketers got stuck was in the execution of a trigger-based program. Where do you get the information that is so vital to your program? How do you ensure it’s being leveraged at just the right time in the customer relationship to make it the most effective? Marrying all that data can create hundreds if not thousands of combinations – how can you mail and print that number of personalized campaigns cost-effectively?

From Data to Delivery, Automation is Vital
Today, the answer to many of the past’s problems lie in the advancements of automation. Automated processes help companies more frequently and accurately capture customer data (both demographic and behavioral), better enabling marketers to pinpoint specific individual needs. As an example, many companies are adopting Web-based customer preference centers. These preference centers walk customers through an automated process that enables them to self-select information or product areas of interest and their preferred channels for contact – even their preferred frequency of contact. This information can then be synched with the trigger-based marketing program to further direct the “when, what, where” of each communication sent to that customer.

Assisted by new, on-demand technologies which leverage templates for highly versioned communications, companies can effectively deliver a different communication to each customer automatically without the bottlenecks of more manual processes. What’s more, the communications can be delivered over a variety of channels based on customer preference and time-sensitivity, allowing you to mail thousands, or just a few at the appropriate time, cost-effectively.

Even the delivery method can be automatically triggered with up-front planning to determine what role each channel (direct mail, email, call center, etc.) will play in the communication program based on vertical, service, and product – and of course, customer preference. Once the channel strategy is in place, you can create choreographed streams of communications relevant to your customers, using as many channels available to reach them at the appropriate time.

Real Results
The benefits of automated trigger-based direct marketing are significant – even jaw-dropping at times. The biggest gains are seen in improved ROI that is experienced in direct marketing response rates and cross-sell efforts due to better targeting. More efficient and effective prospecting is also achieved as automated processes provide an engine that continuously gathers data, tests it, and refines it for increasingly accurate customer mining. Trigger-based marketing programs also strengthen customer relationships by providing better orchestrated communication streams that offer unlimited options for personalization at the most opportune times.

For any marketing program, relevancy is the key to driving customer interest and behavior. Creating trigger-based programs that are activated by specific customer events and actions increases the relevancy to that individual, inevitably increasing your program results.

Getting Started
In implementing trigger-based programs, keep in mind some critical success factors. First, keep it simple. Start by using some of your current creative and go with known business rules. Don’t re-create the wheel. Don’t try to reconfigure your current systems or dramatically change internal processes – that’s a sure path to nowhere. Your trigger-based solution should conform more to your internal culture and processes than you to it. Also, start with a heavy emphasis on measuring results. You’ll be able to learn and test on-the-fly, so layer in new business rules and continue to hone messages and offers to ensure you are getting the most from your new-found flexibility and speed. And finally, test, test, test…because with more automated trigger-based marketing approaches, you can.

Andy Frawley
CEO, Click Tactics

This article originally appeared in Target Marketing and can be found at here.

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