• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 18, 2013

Although it has historically made up a small share of all marketing emails, “triggered” messaging is on the rise -- and it’s no mystery why.
 
Triggered emails -- including welcome messages, order confirmations, and the like -- yielded 70.5% higher open rates and 101.8% higher click rates compared to Business As Usual (BAU) messages in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to new data from Epsilon.
 
As a result, the use of triggered messaging was up 73% year-over-year in 2012, the email marketing specialist reports.
 
“Utilizing triggered messages is a proven strategy to maintain subscriber engagement,” said Judy Loschen, vice president of digital analytics at Epsilon.
 
“However, more is required to predict and meet the needs of [clients’] customers and subscribers,” Loschen added. For starters, she suggested shooting for greater personalization of marketing messages.

Industrywide, triggered messages still only accounted for 5% of total volume, according to Epsilon.
 
In addition, the report’s so-called email activity segmentation evaluation revealed that for the third consecutive quarter, over 50% of the average brand’s opt-in email list had no activity.
 
“In Q4 2012, 63% of the average email file was unengaged with marketers’ email programs,” said Loschen. “Marketers cannot assume that their task is complete after they receive an opt-in to their email program.”
 
Epsilon’s quarterly analysis was compiled from some 7.3 billion emails sent in the later months of 2012.
 
Among Business As Usual messaging, open rates increased both quarter-over-quarter -- by 0.6% -- and year-over-year -- by 10.6% -- resulting in an overall open rate of 27.4%, according to Epsilon.