📣 Marketing

Trigger Marketing

Triggered Marketing · Event-based Marketing

Definition

Trigger marketing is automated communication fired in response to specific user actions or events, giving the message maximum relevance to the moment.

Why triggers beat scheduled sends

A broadcast campaign goes to every subscriber at the same time, regardless of whether they are
thinking about a purchase. A triggered message arrives when the person has already shown intent:
viewed an item three times, added to cart and did not buy. That is the source of the click-through
difference — triggered emails are typically clicked two to five times more often than broadcasts.

The mechanism is simple: the shopper leaves a signal, the system catches it, the communication
arrives at the right moment.

Standard triggered scenarios in e-commerce

Trigger	Event	Action
Abandoned cart	add_to_cart with no purchase within N hours	Email or push with the cart contents
Price drop	A wishlisted item gets cheaper	Push notification about the discount
Return after a pause	A visit after 30+ days away	Email with what is new plus personal recommendations
Post-purchase	purchase	Email asking for a review plus accessory recommendations
Loyalty threshold	Cumulative order value reaches a tier	Notification of the new tier

Building a system that does not annoy

The main risk in trigger marketing is aggressive frequency. If someone receives three abandoned-cart
reminders in a day, they will not leave another cart — because they will not come back.

The rules of a sane system: no more than one reminder per occasion per 24 hours, a global cap on
automated communications (three a week, for instance), and a separate opt-out per notification type.

Tip: test the trigger delay. For an abandoned cart, the best send window is usually one to
three hours after the event — not instantly and not a day later.

Frequently asked questions

Which events are most often used as triggers?

An abandoned cart (an add with no purchase), a product viewed several times without buying, a loyalty threshold reached, a return to the site after a long absence, a first purchase (a trigger for upsell or a review request), a birthday or the anniversary of a first order.

How does trigger marketing differ from personalization?

Trigger marketing is about timing and occasion: the communication is tied to an event. Personalization is about content: what to show each person. In practice they overlap — an abandoned cart campaign shows exactly the items in that person's cart.

How do you avoid irritating people?

Frequency capping across a period. A cooldown between triggers of the same type. Channel prioritisation, so the same message does not arrive by email, SMS and push at once. Opt-out per notification type. And testing frequency through an A/B test.

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