All you need to know about Trigger email campaigns.

1. AUTOMATING EMAIL
MESSAGING FOR
GREATER RELEVANCY
& REVENUE
Mike Ricciardi, Senior Director
Channel Marketing, Sallie Mae
&
Ryan Phelan, VP, Strategy,
Acxiom Digital Impact

2. • Introductions
Agenda
• Triggers in the
marketplace
• Real World Example
• Wrap up!

3. About Us
• Driving overarching email strategy
across multiple product lines and
brands including both B2C and B2B
customers/prospects.
• Prior to Sallie Mae Mike was at
Staples – the world’s 2nd largest
online retailer – managing various
parts of their direct-to-consumer
loyalty, retail and online marketing
Michael Ricciardi
Sr. Director, Channel Marketing
strategies including email

4. • Industry Experience
– Vice President, Strategy at BlueHornet
– Director, Email Marketing & Acquisition
at Sears Holdings
– Responsible for East Coast Operations at
Responsys
• Thought Leadership
– DM News : Email Gets Personal (Cover
Story)
– Keynote address – March 2012, EEC12
– Ranked as one of the top 40 Digital
Marketing Strategists in the country by
OMI
– Co-Chair of the EEC
– Member of:
Ryan Phelan
Vice President, Strategic Services

5. Sallie Mae & Upromise
Sallie Mae is the nation’s No. 1 financial services
company specializing in education.
Celebrating 40 years of making a difference, Sallie
Mae continues to turn education dreams into reality
for American families, today serving 25 million
customers.
With products and services that include 529 college
savings plans, Upromise rewards, scholarship search
and planning tools, education loans, insurance, and
online banking, Sallie Mae offers solutions that help
families save, plan, and pay for college.
Sallie Mae also provides financial services to hundreds
of college campuses as well as to federal and state
governments.

6. Triggers in the Marketplace

7. How many triggers do you have?
(Show of Hands)

8. They’re
incredibly
effective and
highly
profitable

9. Triggers
• Next Logical Product (NLP)
– An email sent to a consumer post purchase based on a
predisposition analysis of consumers common next
purchase
• Browse Remarketing
– Emails sent based upon a consumers browse behavior on
the website with information on products they’ve seen
• Event Based
– Based upon an event that happens and corresponding
email is sent
• Transactional
– Email sent informing the customer about a business
transaction and regulated separately under law

10. NLP triggers
• Sent days after the
purchase
• Learn from the data
that you have!

11. Browse Remarketing
• Don’t send a
webpage – be
smart
• Differentiate
between serious
interest and
browse

12. Event Based
• Updates
• Birthday
• Surveys
Always check the logic and the
exclusions!

13. Transactional Email
• Keep the intro copy short
• Organize the email clearly for
the customer to comprehend
• Hyperlink the order number
• Use 20% of the real estate for
promotional copy
These emails average 60%+ open
rate and can be a large revenue
source

14. Challenges Ahead
• Lack of resources
• Multiple dependencies
• Waiting for the final product
• Lack of testing
• No time
• Lack of education
• Don’t know where to start

15. We’re challenged
with lack of
• Time
• Resources
• Money
…but we keep sending tons of non-relevant email

16. Triggered emails are what make the money tree grow!

17. Simple Triggers
• 3 email Win-Back Program
– If customer has not opened an email in 2 months send
email
• Post purchase email in one category
– If customer buys X, send an email after 5 days
• Social shares
– If customer shares 3 emails, send a “thank you for
being a great customer” email
• Welcome series (if needed)
– If customer signed up through X, then send an email

18. Real World Example:
Upromise by Sallie Mae

19. How Much Automation?
• More than we could list on
several pages
• 4x more than the average
company and growing
4x more based on most recent EEC/Epsilon Benchmark Report
• Emails going out 24x7x365

20. Why Automate?
• Increased Relevance
• Allows for individual level targeting that cannot be
achieved repeatedly in manual sends
• Significant improvement in timeliness
• Much Higher Response & Revenue
• Due to the improved relevance, response to the
automated programs are on average 4x higher
• Reduced Costs and Better ROI Over Long Term

21. How to Get Started
1. Test your Ideas & Start Small
A. Identify all the opportunities to leverage automation to
improve revenue and efficiency
B. Prioritize based on opportunity and set up an
easy, manual test to prove the concept and show lift
over control – even if control is no communication
C. When building your proof of concept keep in mind
what the biggest improvement should be –
timeliness, targeting, etc. - and ensure that is captured

22. How to Get Started
2. Prove the Value & Expand
A. Show your test results to leadership in order to get the
funding/resources needed to grow
B. Test into expansion in
touches, segmentation/targeting, content, landing
environment
C. Identify opportunities to leverage the concept
» Other brands/products/services
» Customer service and satisfaction improvement
» Different channels

23. How to Get Started
3. Continually Adapt & Improve
A. Once you have momentum include into annual plans
with goals, budgets and resources assigned
B. Set up the right automated reporting that is tied to
your goals and simplify day-to-day so you can work on
the next opportunity
C. Don’t let it get stale – automated campaigns need to
adapt as the world around them change

24. How Big Can It Get?
Phase I
Email Deployed
Targets Collected Targets Provided to Marketing
• 1 Version
Monday-Friday 1x Per Week
• No Dynamic
Content
Current State

25. What’s Next
• Still opportunities to build more new and
better coordinate the existing systems
• Multi-channel triggering and optimization
• Time of day and frequency optimization by
customer type and preferred device

27. What did we learn..
• Look at the easy wins for triggers
• Define the rules and exclusions
• Start small and build on success
• Define your success
• Test and adapt your programs over time

28. Thank you
Ryan Phelan Mike Ricciardi
Vice President, Strategic Services Sr. Director, Channel
ryan.phelan@acxiom.com Marketing, Michael.Ricciardi@salliemae.co
402-630-5836 m
@ryanpphelan
@acxiom
www.linkedin.com/in/michaelricciardimarketing/
© 2011 Acxiom Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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