• by Jess Nelson , July 15, 2016

Emails celebrating customer milestones like anniversaries or birthdays drive a large share of email-based revenue, according to a recent study.

Yes Lifecycle Marketing collected data from 24 billion emails running across its marketing platform in 2015, and then evaluated the performance of triggered campaigns using Yesmail360, its cross-channel marketing analytics platform.

Triggered email marketing messages are emails sent based on a customer’s behavior or history, such as a welcome email, abandoned cart notification or location-based geo-targeting messages.

Yes Lifecycle Marketing evaluated 12 different types of triggered email campaigns, including welcome, reactivation, abandoned cart, account update, birthday, purchase confirmation, order and shipping information, return, browse abandonment, anniversary, activation and backorder campaigns.

Although triggered emails only account for 2.3% of total email volume, its influence on conversion rates far outweighs it size. Triggered emails account for 4.4% of all email opens, 9% of all clicks, 10.2% of all orders and 9.7% of email revenue.

When compared with traditional business as usual campaigns, triggered campaigns double open rates from 14.5% to 28.7% and click-to-open rates from 11.1% to 22.5%. In addition, triggered campaigns quadruple unique clicks from 1.6% to 6.5%.

"As email volume continues to increase, it becomes more and more difficult for marketers to stand out from the noise and effectively engage consumers," states Michael Fisher, president of Yes Lifecycle Marketing. "Triggered campaigns tackle this challenge head on. They are relevant, timely and demonstrate interest in consumers' actions."

Triggered campaigns are designed to elicit an immediate response, which is a crucial step in the path to conversion.

Email volume is expected to increase between 4.5% and 4.6% year-over-year and to top 3 billion users by 2020, per The Radicati Group, which provides research on email campaigns. 

Triggered messages offer marketers an opportunity to deliver relevant, timely emails to consumers that invite engagement between a brand and customer, an opportunity to help emails standout in the crowded inbox.