All About Email Automation Triggers

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Idealetter

#26

20 February 2024, Thu

Written by Jyothiikaa M D

All About Email Automation Triggers

We constantly focus on doing things well and figuring out if there's a better way to do things.

And, automating emails is one of those better ways to do things. They help you send the targeted emails on autopilot.

But this relies on using the right automation triggers to set off the emails at the right time for the right people. So, what are these triggers, and which ones make sense for your use case?

Email automation triggers are certain criteria or actions the contact performs that prompt an email.

In this edition, I will cover how different email automation triggers work, what to use them for, and how you can set them up. I will also discuss how these triggers can do more than just send emails.

I know all this can be a bit technical, but I'll try to make it as simple as possible.

In case you missed the memo, here's why you should automate emails –

Let’s get this straight. Setting up email automation triggers can seem like a hassle, especially if you are new to email marketing.

So, is it worth the trouble? Consider this:

◦ They enable personalized, targeted messaging based on user behavior/stage in the funnel.

◦ They scale effectively without spending extra effort and time
◦ Emails landing at the right time boost engagement and higher conversions.

Effective email triggers and when to use them

Now that we have seen why email automation can be a game-changer, let’s dive into different email automation triggers and when to use them.

#1: Occurrence of an event

This trigger lets a contact enter a journey based on a specific activity, i.e., an event recorded on your website/app or 3rd party platforms. These events could include user sign-ups, viewing a product page, watching a video, etc.

You must capture the user activity you want to use as an event to use it in a trigger.

Some examples where this type of trigger makes sense are-

A user views your pricing page, and you want to send them discounts or special offers to nudge them.
If someone visited the demo page but didn’t book a demo, you can send them a follow-up email and nudge them to finish booking.

#2: Contact added to a list

As the name suggests, this trigger gets activated when someone gets added to your email list. This might happen when someone signs up or fills out a form on your website, depending on your setup.

Of course, you can use this trigger to send emails when someone is added to a list. But here, we’ll show you how we used this trigger for other applications, such as cleaning your email list.

Here’s an example scenario: if you are a SaaS brand, you might relate to this. 👇🏼

You’ve made changes to your sign-up page, and now various members in your organization might try to test the page using multiple test email IDs (like name+123@company.com) to check if people can properly sign up to your platform.

Now, all these test email IDs with ‘+’ will get the welcome email. And, if you don’t remove them, they could end up skewing your email metrics like open rates, delivery, etc., since many of them would be your team members in that email list.

So you can create an automation using “contacts added to a list”, to create a system to remove email addresses with certain characters from your list to give you a final list.

An example of this can be seen below. 👇🏼 This first journey is our newsletter welcome email automation, so whoever signs up for our newsletter will get our welcome email, after which they get added to a list.

Now, this journey shown below gets triggered after they get added to the list. 👇🏼

This removes any email IDs containing ‘+’, so all our testing email IDs get removed.

So, when we send the next newsletter, we won’t be sending emails to these test IDs, thus getting a more accurate email performance metric.

#3: Form submission

This trigger fires when a contact submits a response within an email on an interactive/AMP widget. This can be used when the contact registers for a webinar, provides feedback, etc., through an interactive/AMP widget.

Here, we'll show you an example of how to use it to create a referral program via email.

You can add a form (like in the below image) in your email asking subscribers to refer their contacts to your course by providing the email id of the contact.

Once the subscriber fills this form, you may use this form submission as a trigger to send an automated invitation email to the person they referred in the form.

The person they referred can directly sign up for the resource from the invitation email. This allows you to effortlessly enable referrals and also to track how many people you got from it. Read this guide to learn more about this in detail.

#4: Change in contact property

This trigger lets you start a journey when a selected contact property changes value.

For instance, if a contact upgrades their plan from “gold” to “platinum,” you can automatically send them an email flow detailing their new plan's features and pro tips they can use.

While setting up this trigger, you must ensure that the changes to the contact properties are sent to your ESP via API, webhook, or integrations as may be applicable.

Once you have created your journey, you must configure which property you want to monitor by specifying the old value (gold) and new value (platinum). These fields can also be set as “anything," meaning any new change in the selected properties will trigger the journey.

#5: Occurrence of a date

This can be used to trigger the email on specific dates such as birthdays, anniversaries, plan activation dates, etc.

You can use this trigger when you want to:

Gift your contacts a special birthday offer!
Send monthly reports on product usage to your customers on a particular date every month
Celebrate the anniversary of a customer’s first purchase by offering loyalty rewards, thank you messages, or exclusive discounts.

While setting up this trigger, you can set up the frequency of the trigger- whether it is only once, monthly, or yearly. And, the contact property triggers this, so you need to ensure the date (like the birthday of each person) is mapped to each contact as a contact property.

#6: Contact enters or leaves a segment

We just discussed about triggering emails when a contact enters a list. Here's a more advanced version of the same concept.

A segment is a subset of your base contact list that is created based on certain criteria. The criteria can be the user's actions or changes in a property/event that you are recording. It could be anything from not opening emails in ‘x’ no. of days to not making any purchases in the last year.

You can create such dynamic segments that get updated automatically whenever a contact meets the segment criteria that you have set up.

And when they enter or leave such a segment, you can trigger a specific email to be sent to them. For example:

Sending a win-back campaign to inactive contacts who have not used your product in a long time, say, 60 days.
Triggering a loyalty program journey to contacts who have been repeat customers for a while.

To get the best results while using this trigger, ensure that your segments are well-defined with clear criteria for joining or exiting the segments.

#7: API/Webhook

This one sounds more complicated, but simply put, an API trigger allows you to trigger emails based on actions happening on your website, ESP, or external apps such as your CRM or payment system.

But what exactly is an API in the first place?

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of codes that allows communication between two programs.

Think of it as NASA’s communication system, which acts as a bridge between the Earth and the International Space Station (ISS).

It allows the ISS (website) to send the information to the Earth (ESP) through NASA (the API), which transmits the information to Earth (ESP), and then Earth (ESP) can use that information to take required actions (send email).

You can use an API trigger when:

Someone wants to reset their account password, and you want to email them instructions.
Someone has signed up on your website, and you want to send them the link to download a free lead magnet.
Any third-party actions and activities that provide an API endpoint.

#8: Connectors – Zapier, Make, Pipedream, etc.

Setting up APIs needs an expert developer. But what if you are not a coder?

No worries! Platforms such as Zapier and Make let you connect different apps and trigger emails without writing a single line of code. You can integrate these platforms into various aspects of your workflow.

For example, you can use Zapier to trigger a welcome email when someone joins your community or course hosted on an external platform (such as Slack, Circle.so, etc).

#9: Manual enrollment

Manual enrollment is the most hands-on trigger since you have to upload the contacts yourself, and because of this, it’s not completely automated.

But with this trigger, you have greater control over who the journey is sent to.

For example, if a sales representative has a few important clients who need to be enrolled in a specific journey, this trigger can be useful for sending them automated emails without setting up a bulk campaign every time for those clients.

In Mailmodo, you can set up this trigger by setting up a journey with “Manual enrolment” as a trigger. Once you update and publish all the journey details, click the “enroll” button, and upload a CSV file, or select your contact list.

And that’s pretty much all you need to know to start with triggers.

If you want more detailed step-by-step instructions on how to set up each of these triggers, you can check out our support page.

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That’s all, folks! I’ll see you next month with more tips and ideas. If there is something we can do better for you, please let me know by replying to this email.