When I talk to business owners about triggered emails, I get a lot of excuses that “we haven’t been that good about data capture” or “our systems don’t really talk to each other – how am I supposed to get this information to be useful?”

Listen, I feel that pain. But I don’t like excuses. Even if you haven’t been capturing ANY information deliberately, there are dates you can use to increase your customer engagement and drive more one-to-one interactions via email marketing.

Let’s talk about a few ways to HACK Date-Based Triggers if you don’t have integrated systems.

You can watch this video and/or read the text below:

1. Date they signed up for your email list. 

Yep, every email service provider keeps track of the date your subscriber was added. This might be the date they opted in from a website form the date you added them from another system but the bottom line is, your ESP keeps track of this for you without you lifting a finger.

And you can do some fun stuff with this date! 

For instance, celebrate the anniversary of them becoming “An Insider.” Set up a date-based anniversary trigger for the date they were added to your email service provider and send a celebratory email their way thanking them for being on your list. Recap some of the valuable things you’ve sent them because of their engagement and if you’re feeling frisky, give them a little incentive to come celebrate with you in person or online.

2. Birthday Emails

I’ve got a whole bunch of other content around this important triggered email for your business, so today I just want to talk about what happens when you DON’T HAVE A BIRTHDAY on file for your subscriber.

Send a birthday email anyway.

You can use subject lines like:

“Did we miss your birthday, Erica?”

“Happy Birthday, Erica!”

“Erica, we missed our invitation to your birthday party.”

And when they open the email, be honest. Use the hook to ask for their birthday so you can ACTUALLY celebrate with them in person. Give them an incentive for adding this info to their profile, like free shipping on their next order or a special in-person reward. 

3. Anniversary emails

You don’t have to have integrated systems to send an anniversary email to your subscribers. If you have a membership program and want to celebrate the yearly anniversary of a member joining, you can simply set a yearly reminder to upload the anniversary of any NEW members to your email service provider. That date won’t change, and even though there is a small chance a member will cancel BEFORE their anniversary (a data change that would be harder to catch without integrated systems), that’s a win-back opportunity. Look at me glass-half-fullin’ it.

SUMMIN’ IT UP

I just gave you THREE date-based triggers for your business to consider, that don’t require a ton of data capture, integrated systems, or extraneous list manager. Which will you implement to your business mix? I challenge you to put ONE of these programs into place today.