Triggered emails are outperforming standard direct marketing emails but make up only 7% of marketing emails delivered. These vastly underutilized campaigns boast an average of more than 50% compared to the 20% cross-industry average open rate. They can also drive two to five times more revenue than standard emails. While the results speak for themselves, setting up a trigger campaign can be a complex task. Here are four tips to help you get started:

Knowing your customer and their buying journey is the first place to start in developing a triggered email program. Remember, not all customers purchase alike, identify or use already existing, customer personas and map out the varying experiences while moving through the purchase funnel. This viewpoint will allow you to identify key opportunities to communicate with the customer through a triggered email message.

One of the most commonly deployed trigger emails is the abandoned cart communication. Your customer places items in their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase, and an email is deployed within 24 hours of cart abandonment reminding them of the item they left behind. Depending on your business needs and customer, other opportunities may lie in loyalty triggers such as birthdays and anniversaries, abandoned search, back in stock and price drops. The key to each of these opportunities is that it’s timely and relevant to the customer.

A trigger email campaign will require collaboration among multiple teams. Create a detailed project management plan that will allow you to work seamlessly with creative, IT, CRM, analytics and e-commerce teams. Preliminary scope meetings with these teams will be essential in ensuring that you fully understand the workload and turn-around time for each required task, and scheduling regular status meetings will help ensure that you’re on track to meet deadlines.

While the functionality may be automated, this doesn’t mean that triggered email campaigns are entirely plug-and-play. Consider seasonality and relevancy when developing your plan. During the holiday season, consider reskinning your creative and adjusting your messaging to reflect the time of year. Creating a cultural and event calendar that includes major holidays, sporting and pop culture events will be a beneficial tool when planning triggered email campaigns. These events could both create an opportunity for a new behavioral trigger and be valuable in terms of messaging and creative. The more timely and relevant your emails are to your customers, the better.

Triggered emails are likely to garner higher response and return rates compared to a linear email marketing campaign. They allow you to create marketing that responds to the behavior of each customer and puts your message in their inbox when it’s most relevant to them in their buying journey.