7 questions about trigger marketing our data experts are asked all the time

Trigger marketing can seem complicated sometimes—but it doesn’t need to be. That’s why we asked some of our trigger marketing experts to answer some of the most common questions we get from marketers that we work with.

What are triggers, and why do they matter?

In the simplest terms, trigger marketing is getting the right message to the right person at the right time. Marketers do this by identifying consumer life events that will trigger a specific marketing message. Examples of these events include everything from putting a home on the market, applying for a mortgage or auto loan, requesting an insurance quote, getting married, starting a family, graduating, retiring and even incorporating that new business. By identifying these events ahead of time, marketers can respond to those signals almost immediately with a series of pre-determined messages and offers.

Whether you’re dealing with individual consumers or businesses, triggers signal customers in a transition state. Marketers can use this information to offer timely, relevant solutions to customers’ real needs, creating stronger relationships in the process.

What types of triggers are out there?

There are many consumer triggers that correlate strongly with consumer purchase behaviors. Some examples include:

• Lifestyle triggers: These include expecting parents, new parents, newly engaged, newly married and newly single
• Household triggers: These include pre-movers, new movers, new homeowners and household composition change
• Enterprise triggers: These include new business formations, expanding businesses, and businesses seeking credit.
• Credit triggers: These include consumers who have applied for various lending products, including mortgages, unsecured loans, auto loans, credit cards, etc.

Trigger data is sourced from a variety of publicly available information and self-reported sources, such as ecommerce activity, public records, IP retargeting, and even coupon and rebate redemptions.

New data is available on a daily or weekly basis and can be appended against your existing customer file or used to create prospect lead lists.

Learn more: The 3 major types of lifecycle triggers (and how to reach customers with this data)

What value does trigger marketing offer that traditional marketing doesn’t?

“The greatest value is efficiency,” says Tad Leblond, director of client strategy for Deluxe Data-Driven Marketing. “Triggers help marketers find consumers and businesses exactly when they need a given product instead of trying to predict that they need that product.”

And because customers are more receptive to your message at these moments, “we have found that many consumer and business triggers can outperform even the best predictive models and yield better response, lower acquisition cost, and higher return on marketing spend,” says Leblond.

While traditional marketing methods still work, they’re nowhere near as effective as an ongoing trigger program. “Consumer life event triggers have a short fuse,” explains Elissa Rodd, vice president of Deluxe Data-Driven Marketing. “Consumers tend to make decisions within a limited window before and after the life event occurs.”

Across Deluxe’s clients, trigger-based marketing programs consistently outpace the performance of traditional marketing programs: “We typically see 100-200% lift over traditional demand generation prospect marketing efforts by using trigger based marketing campaigns,” according to Rodd.

Learn more: Data-driven trigger marketing campaigns: The start of a beautiful relationship

Are triggers only effective for customer monitoring?

Not at all, says Rodd: “These are the most receptive leads you can buy in the market, so you should be using them in all your marketing outreach—both new customers and your existing customer base.”

Whether your current growth strategy lies in acquiring new customers, or deepening relationships with existing customers through cross-sell, trigger marketing can help you compete in a highly competitive environment. “Consumers who are going through a major life event are more likely than their peers to be both willing to try new brands and leave brands they had been actively engaged with previously,” says Rodd.

Why is multi-sourcing triggers so important?

Aggregating data from multiple providers allows you to find the first instance of a person indicating trigger behavior—and reach out at the earliest possible relevant moment. And according to Alexandra Moss, vice president of Deluxe Data-Driven Marketing, “it’s probably the most important aspect of a successful life event trigger campaign.”

“We find that no single source has enough coverage,” explains Moss. “So we like to aggregate information from multiple sources, as well as multiple providers, to make sure that we have a robust data set.”

Rodd agrees: “The key is finding more life event triggers than anyone else. By aggregating data across multiple partners, who are all finding consumer triggers via different purchasing and intent signals, we can use our data to find more leads faster.”

In other words, if your competitors only get data from a single, non-aggregated source, there’s a good chance you’ll get to a customer first.

Learn more: Data aggregation: what it is, and why it matters

How important is timing with a successful trigger marketing campaign?

In a word, very. As Moss puts it, “These people are hand-raisers. They are, in that moment, looking for a product.”

Among our own clients, Deluxe finds that marketing responsiveness starts to decline significantly each week after the triggering event occurs. A few business days might not seem like much of a delay, but “if I’ve already moved and bought my mattress, sending me that piece of mail is not effective,” says Moss.

Marketers essentially have a 30-day window where a product is top-of-mind for the individuals they’re targeting. As a general best practice, Deluxe recommends performing initial outreach in the seven or eight days immediately following a trigger, and multi-channel retargeting throughout the rest of the month.

We haven’t had success with triggers in the past. How is Deluxe different?

There are three key components that are necessary for a really successful trigger marketing program:

1. coverage
2. speed to market
3. accurate performance measurement

“Missing out on just one can lead to lackluster results,” says Rodd. “Luckily, Deluxe covers all three.”

In fact, says Rodd, “When we compare ourselves to the leading providers in the marketplace, we find Deluxe has two to five times the coverage of those providers, and we find leads faster by one to two weeks.” That’s crucial to combatting the weekly drops in response rates post-trigger.

And when it comes to accurate campaign measurement, “Our proprietary matching algorithm helps ensure that marketers are not missing any of the new revenue these campaigns drive,” says Rodd. “You can see the true impact of these campaigns on your bottom line.”