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What are Email Triggers and Segmentation?

An email trigger is a specific action or data point that leads to the dispatch of an email. For example, when someone signs up for your newsletter, you send them a welcome email. Or, if someone clicks on a link in one of your emails, you could send them a follow-up email with more information on that topic. Segmentation, on the other hand, is the process of dividing your email list into smaller groups. For example, you could segment your list based on location, interests, or behavior. By segmenting your list, you can send more targeted, relevant emails to each group, leading to higher engagement rates. In other words, segmentation allows for personalization and relationship building at scale.

Why are Email Triggers and Segmentation Important?

For most organizations, the ultimate goal of emailing advocates is to increase participation—whether that means donations, event attendance, emailing their representatives, etc. But before an advocate takes that desired action, they need to actually engage with your organization and emails. The metrics used to track email engagement include open rates, clickthrough rates, and actions taken. So the question is: how can advocacy groups improve email engagement? In our opinion, personalization is the best way to improve engagement. Unfortunately, most organizations don't have the time to write individualized emails to hundreds or thousands of advocates. Fortunately, email and segmentation make the process a lot easier. Segmentation helps send targeted, personalized emails. Meanwhile, triggers save time and effort by setting predetermined actions for your email marketing campaigns. The result? Higher engagement and, in turn, more participation.

Segmentation Examples

Segmenting your email list helps send more targeted, relevant emails to each group, which can lead to higher engagement rates and stronger relationships. Advocacy groups can segment their email lists in various ways based on factors such as interests, behavior, and demographics. Here are a few email segmentation examples:

Engagement: One of our favorite ways to segment advocates is based on the ladder of engagement. This works by grouping people based on how involved they've historically been with your organization. You could even elevate your engagement campaigns by incorporating some element of gamification.
Interests: If your organization covers multiple areas, it can be smart to segment your list based on the issues or topics people have expressed interest in. For example, if someone has signed a petition related to climate change, you could send them targeted emails about that issue. The easiest way to gauge interest is by asking! When people sign up for your email list using a registration form, ask them a few questions like, “What issue(s) are you most interested in?” You can also send out annual surveys to see how people’s interests have changed.
Behavior: You can also segment your list based on how people have interacted with your emails or website. For example, if someone clicks on a link in one of your emails about volunteering, you can add them to a new segment targeting people who have expressed volunteer interest.
Demographics: Demographic factors such as age, location, or gender can be a valuable segment for some organizations. Sending emails based on voting district is one example of a demographic-based segmentation. This lets you speak directly about their representatives, issues, and events in their area.
Donor Status: You can segment your list based on whether or not someone has donated to your organization. This can help you send different messaging to people who have already demonstrated their support for your cause.
Event Attendance: Did someone attend an event? Place them in a new segment that can send them follow-up messages and related material.
Volunteer Status: Similar to the ladder of engagement, you can segment your audience by volunteer status. If someone has volunteered in the past, they are more likely to volunteer again. If someone hasn't volunteered, maybe it's time to educate them on the benefits of volunteering.

Email Trigger Examples

As we mentioned earlier, email triggers are events that cause an email to be sent. When thinking about email triggers, think about the advocate journey and the major milestones along that journey. Milestones include things like signing up for your email list, signing a first petition, attending an event, making a donation, volunteering, etc. These actions are important moments for not only your organization, but for the advocate as well, and they deserve to be celebrated. Here are some examples that your advocacy group could use as email triggers::

Welcome triggers: When someone signs up for your newsletter, you could send them a welcome email introducing your organization and providing information on your mission and goals.
Action-based triggers: If someone takes a specific action on your website, such as signing a petition or making a donation, you could send them a follow-up email thanking them for their support and providing more information on what they can do to help. In this example, "actions" include things like clicks on your website or previous emails; they could even include actions taken on social media.
Event-based triggers: If you're hosting an event, you could send targeted emails to people who live in the area or have expressed interest in similar events. As the event gets closer, you can send reminder emails. After the event, you can send follow-up emails asking for feedback and highlighting next steps for engaging with your organization.
Re-engagement trigger: If someone hasn't engaged with your emails in a while, you could send them an email asking if they're still interested in hearing from you. An example of a re-engagement trigger would be: if someone last clicked on an email over 90 days ago, then send them a re-engagement email. If they don't respond, you might want to remove them from your email list. Keeping a "clean" email list, i.e., an email list full of active readers, can help improve deliverability metrics.
Anniversary and birthday triggers: If you know an advocate's birthday, send them an email to wish them a happy birthday and thank them for their support. If you don't know their birthday, you can use the date they signed up for your email list to send them a happy anniversary. An easy way to celebrate birthdays in bulk is to run a report at the beginning of each month and send an email to everyone with a birthday that month.

Email Triggers and Segmentation in Action

Quorum has worked with hundreds of organizations that use Quorum Outbox to engage with their advocates. Here are a few examples of email triggers and segmentation in action:

At National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the advocacy and public policy team used location-based segmentation to target advocates. "People felt more engaged because we would put in information specific to their home state," said Jessica Hart, NAMI's Senior Manager of Field Advocacy. They would personalize the messages in their emails by mentioning elected officials and issues specific to the recipient's location.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) used a combination of segmentation and email triggers to improve their advocate education efforts. Based on interests, advocates were tagged "key contact in training" within Quorum and enrolled in a series of modules to teach them how to be successful grasstops advocates.
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society took event-based triggers to the next level during their annual fly-in. Using text keywords and shortcodes (e.g., Text "MSresearch to 52886"), the organization texted supporters invitations to educational events. They also used text and email for campaigns that ran before, during and after the conference. At the event, they ran two live calls to action right from the podium, displaying a live digital map that tracked the action as it took place. Nearly 1,000 messages were generated right on the spot.

As evident in these examples, there are countless creative ways to use segmentation and email triggers to get advocates involved. Not only can you save time and effort, but you can also scale your personalized emails, which can increase your open and clickthrough rates, and ultimately, help achieve your goals. [post_title] => Email Triggers and Segmentation for Advocacy Groups [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => email-triggers-segmentation [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-05-01 13:45:16 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-05-01 13:45:16 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://marketing-staging.quorum.us/?post_type=resources&p=9276 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => resources [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [queried_object_id] => 9276 [request] => SELECT wp_posts.* FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND wp_posts.post_name = 'email-triggers-segmentation' AND wp_posts.post_type = 'resources' ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC [posts] => Array ( [0] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 9276 [post_author] => 43 [post_date] => 2023-05-01 13:35:55 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-05-01 13:35:55 [post_content] => Email is a powerful tool for advocacy groups looking to engage and activate their audience. But with so many emails flooding people's inboxes, it can be hard to stand out. That's where email triggers and segmentation come in. By sending targeted, personalized emails, advocacy groups can increase their open and clickthrough rates, activate advocates, and ultimately, achieve their advocacy goals. Read on to learn what email triggers and segmentation are, why they're important, and how you can use them to improve your grassroots email campaigns.

What are Email Triggers and Segmentation?

Why are Email Triggers and Segmentation Important?

Segmentation Examples

Engagement: One of our favorite ways to segment advocates is based on the ladder of engagement. This works by grouping people based on how involved they've historically been with your organization. You could even elevate your engagement campaigns by incorporating some element of gamification.
Interests: If your organization covers multiple areas, it can be smart to segment your list based on the issues or topics people have expressed interest in. For example, if someone has signed a petition related to climate change, you could send them targeted emails about that issue. The easiest way to gauge interest is by asking! When people sign up for your email list using a registration form, ask them a few questions like, “What issue(s) are you most interested in?” You can also send out annual surveys to see how people’s interests have changed.
Behavior: You can also segment your list based on how people have interacted with your emails or website. For example, if someone clicks on a link in one of your emails about volunteering, you can add them to a new segment targeting people who have expressed volunteer interest.
Demographics: Demographic factors such as age, location, or gender can be a valuable segment for some organizations. Sending emails based on voting district is one example of a demographic-based segmentation. This lets you speak directly about their representatives, issues, and events in their area.
Donor Status: You can segment your list based on whether or not someone has donated to your organization. This can help you send different messaging to people who have already demonstrated their support for your cause.
Event Attendance: Did someone attend an event? Place them in a new segment that can send them follow-up messages and related material.
Volunteer Status: Similar to the ladder of engagement, you can segment your audience by volunteer status. If someone has volunteered in the past, they are more likely to volunteer again. If someone hasn't volunteered, maybe it's time to educate them on the benefits of volunteering.

Email Trigger Examples

Welcome triggers: When someone signs up for your newsletter, you could send them a welcome email introducing your organization and providing information on your mission and goals.
Action-based triggers: If someone takes a specific action on your website, such as signing a petition or making a donation, you could send them a follow-up email thanking them for their support and providing more information on what they can do to help. In this example, "actions" include things like clicks on your website or previous emails; they could even include actions taken on social media.
Event-based triggers: If you're hosting an event, you could send targeted emails to people who live in the area or have expressed interest in similar events. As the event gets closer, you can send reminder emails. After the event, you can send follow-up emails asking for feedback and highlighting next steps for engaging with your organization.
Re-engagement trigger: If someone hasn't engaged with your emails in a while, you could send them an email asking if they're still interested in hearing from you. An example of a re-engagement trigger would be: if someone last clicked on an email over 90 days ago, then send them a re-engagement email. If they don't respond, you might want to remove them from your email list. Keeping a "clean" email list, i.e., an email list full of active readers, can help improve deliverability metrics.
Anniversary and birthday triggers: If you know an advocate's birthday, send them an email to wish them a happy birthday and thank them for their support. If you don't know their birthday, you can use the date they signed up for your email list to send them a happy anniversary. An easy way to celebrate birthdays in bulk is to run a report at the beginning of each month and send an email to everyone with a birthday that month.

Email Triggers and Segmentation in Action

Quorum has worked with hundreds of organizations that use Quorum Outbox to engage with their advocates. Here are a few examples of email triggers and segmentation in action:

At National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the advocacy and public policy team used location-based segmentation to target advocates. "People felt more engaged because we would put in information specific to their home state," said Jessica Hart, NAMI's Senior Manager of Field Advocacy. They would personalize the messages in their emails by mentioning elected officials and issues specific to the recipient's location.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) used a combination of segmentation and email triggers to improve their advocate education efforts. Based on interests, advocates were tagged "key contact in training" within Quorum and enrolled in a series of modules to teach them how to be successful grasstops advocates.
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society took event-based triggers to the next level during their annual fly-in. Using text keywords and shortcodes (e.g., Text "MSresearch to 52886"), the organization texted supporters invitations to educational events. They also used text and email for campaigns that ran before, during and after the conference. At the event, they ran two live calls to action right from the podium, displaying a live digital map that tracked the action as it took place. Nearly 1,000 messages were generated right on the spot.

As evident in these examples, there are countless creative ways to use segmentation and email triggers to get advocates involved. Not only can you save time and effort, but you can also scale your personalized emails, which can increase your open and clickthrough rates, and ultimately, help achieve your goals. [post_title] => Email Triggers and Segmentation for Advocacy Groups [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => email-triggers-segmentation [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-05-01 13:45:16 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-05-01 13:45:16 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://marketing-staging.quorum.us/?post_type=resources&p=9276 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => resources [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) ) [post_count] => 1 [current_post] => -1 [before_loop] => 1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 9276 [post_author] => 43 [post_date] => 2023-05-01 13:35:55 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-05-01 13:35:55 [post_content] => Email is a powerful tool for advocacy groups looking to engage and activate their audience. But with so many emails flooding people's inboxes, it can be hard to stand out. That's where email triggers and segmentation come in. By sending targeted, personalized emails, advocacy groups can increase their open and clickthrough rates, activate advocates, and ultimately, achieve their advocacy goals. Read on to learn what email triggers and segmentation are, why they're important, and how you can use them to improve your grassroots email campaigns.

What are Email Triggers and Segmentation?

Why are Email Triggers and Segmentation Important?

Segmentation Examples

Engagement: One of our favorite ways to segment advocates is based on the ladder of engagement. This works by grouping people based on how involved they've historically been with your organization. You could even elevate your engagement campaigns by incorporating some element of gamification.
Interests: If your organization covers multiple areas, it can be smart to segment your list based on the issues or topics people have expressed interest in. For example, if someone has signed a petition related to climate change, you could send them targeted emails about that issue. The easiest way to gauge interest is by asking! When people sign up for your email list using a registration form, ask them a few questions like, “What issue(s) are you most interested in?” You can also send out annual surveys to see how people’s interests have changed.
Behavior: You can also segment your list based on how people have interacted with your emails or website. For example, if someone clicks on a link in one of your emails about volunteering, you can add them to a new segment targeting people who have expressed volunteer interest.
Demographics: Demographic factors such as age, location, or gender can be a valuable segment for some organizations. Sending emails based on voting district is one example of a demographic-based segmentation. This lets you speak directly about their representatives, issues, and events in their area.
Donor Status: You can segment your list based on whether or not someone has donated to your organization. This can help you send different messaging to people who have already demonstrated their support for your cause.
Event Attendance: Did someone attend an event? Place them in a new segment that can send them follow-up messages and related material.
Volunteer Status: Similar to the ladder of engagement, you can segment your audience by volunteer status. If someone has volunteered in the past, they are more likely to volunteer again. If someone hasn't volunteered, maybe it's time to educate them on the benefits of volunteering.

Email Trigger Examples

Welcome triggers: When someone signs up for your newsletter, you could send them a welcome email introducing your organization and providing information on your mission and goals.
Action-based triggers: If someone takes a specific action on your website, such as signing a petition or making a donation, you could send them a follow-up email thanking them for their support and providing more information on what they can do to help. In this example, "actions" include things like clicks on your website or previous emails; they could even include actions taken on social media.
Event-based triggers: If you're hosting an event, you could send targeted emails to people who live in the area or have expressed interest in similar events. As the event gets closer, you can send reminder emails. After the event, you can send follow-up emails asking for feedback and highlighting next steps for engaging with your organization.
Re-engagement trigger: If someone hasn't engaged with your emails in a while, you could send them an email asking if they're still interested in hearing from you. An example of a re-engagement trigger would be: if someone last clicked on an email over 90 days ago, then send them a re-engagement email. If they don't respond, you might want to remove them from your email list. Keeping a "clean" email list, i.e., an email list full of active readers, can help improve deliverability metrics.
Anniversary and birthday triggers: If you know an advocate's birthday, send them an email to wish them a happy birthday and thank them for their support. If you don't know their birthday, you can use the date they signed up for your email list to send them a happy anniversary. An easy way to celebrate birthdays in bulk is to run a report at the beginning of each month and send an email to everyone with a birthday that month.

Email Triggers and Segmentation in Action

Quorum has worked with hundreds of organizations that use Quorum Outbox to engage with their advocates. Here are a few examples of email triggers and segmentation in action:

At National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the advocacy and public policy team used location-based segmentation to target advocates. "People felt more engaged because we would put in information specific to their home state," said Jessica Hart, NAMI's Senior Manager of Field Advocacy. They would personalize the messages in their emails by mentioning elected officials and issues specific to the recipient's location.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) used a combination of segmentation and email triggers to improve their advocate education efforts. Based on interests, advocates were tagged "key contact in training" within Quorum and enrolled in a series of modules to teach them how to be successful grasstops advocates.
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society took event-based triggers to the next level during their annual fly-in. Using text keywords and shortcodes (e.g., Text "MSresearch to 52886"), the organization texted supporters invitations to educational events. They also used text and email for campaigns that ran before, during and after the conference. At the event, they ran two live calls to action right from the podium, displaying a live digital map that tracked the action as it took place. Nearly 1,000 messages were generated right on the spot.

As evident in these examples, there are countless creative ways to use segmentation and email triggers to get advocates involved. Not only can you save time and effort, but you can also scale your personalized emails, which can increase your open and clickthrough rates, and ultimately, help achieve your goals. [post_title] => Email Triggers and Segmentation for Advocacy Groups [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => email-triggers-segmentation [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-05-01 13:45:16 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-05-01 13:45:16 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://marketing-staging.quorum.us/?post_type=resources&p=9276 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => resources [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [comment_count] => 0 [current_comment] => -1 [found_posts] => 1 [max_num_pages] => 0 [max_num_comment_pages] => 0 [is_single] => 1 [is_preview] => [is_page] => [is_archive] => [is_date] => [is_year] => [is_month] => [is_day] => [is_time] => [is_author] => [is_category] => [is_tag] => [is_tax] => [is_search] => [is_feed] => [is_comment_feed] => [is_trackback] => [is_home] => [is_privacy_policy] => [is_404] => [is_embed] => [is_paged] => [is_admin] => [is_attachment] => [is_singular] => 1 [is_robots] => [is_favicon] => [is_posts_page] => [is_post_type_archive] => [query_vars_hash:WP_Query:private] => 3a7fc44fac5729b85106167f227f1487 [query_vars_changed:WP_Query:private] => [thumbnails_cached] => [allow_query_attachment_by_filename:protected] => [stopwords:WP_Query:private] => [compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => query_vars_hash [1] => query_vars_changed ) [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => init_query_flags [1] => parse_tax_query ) )

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Email Triggers and Segmentation for Advocacy Groups

Email is a powerful tool for advocacy groups looking to engage and activate their audience. But with so many emails flooding people’s inboxes, it can be hard to stand out.

That’s where email triggers and segmentation come in.

By sending targeted, personalized emails, advocacy groups can increase their open and clickthrough rates, activate advocates, and ultimately, achieve their advocacy goals.

Read on to learn what email triggers and segmentation are, why they’re important, and how you can use them to improve your grassroots email campaigns.

What are Email Triggers and Segmentation?

Segmentation, on the other hand, is the process of dividing your email list into smaller groups. For example, you could segment your list based on location, interests, or behavior. By segmenting your list, you can send more targeted, relevant emails to each group, leading to higher engagement rates. In other words, segmentation allows for personalization and relationship building at scale.

Why are Email Triggers and Segmentation Important?

So the question is: how can advocacy groups improve email engagement?

In our opinion, personalization is the best way to improve engagement. Unfortunately, most organizations don’t have the time to write individualized emails to hundreds or thousands of advocates. Fortunately, email and segmentation make the process a lot easier.

Segmentation helps send targeted, personalized emails. Meanwhile, triggers save time and effort by setting predetermined actions for your email marketing campaigns.

The result? Higher engagement and, in turn, more participation.

Segmentation Examples

Engagement: One of our favorite ways to segment advocates is based on the ladder of engagement. This works by grouping people based on how involved they’ve historically been with your organization. You could even elevate your engagement campaigns by incorporating some element of gamification.
Interests: If your organization covers multiple areas, it can be smart to segment your list based on the issues or topics people have expressed interest in. For example, if someone has signed a petition related to climate change, you could send them targeted emails about that issue. The easiest way to gauge interest is by asking! When people sign up for your email list using a registration form, ask them a few questions like, “What issue(s) are you most interested in?” You can also send out annual surveys to see how people’s interests have changed.
Behavior: You can also segment your list based on how people have interacted with your emails or website. For example, if someone clicks on a link in one of your emails about volunteering, you can add them to a new segment targeting people who have expressed volunteer interest.
Demographics: Demographic factors such as age, location, or gender can be a valuable segment for some organizations. Sending emails based on voting district is one example of a demographic-based segmentation. This lets you speak directly about their representatives, issues, and events in their area.
Donor Status: You can segment your list based on whether or not someone has donated to your organization. This can help you send different messaging to people who have already demonstrated their support for your cause.
Event Attendance: Did someone attend an event? Place them in a new segment that can send them follow-up messages and related material.
Volunteer Status: Similar to the ladder of engagement, you can segment your audience by volunteer status. If someone has volunteered in the past, they are more likely to volunteer again. If someone hasn’t volunteered, maybe it’s time to educate them on the benefits of volunteering.

Email Trigger Examples

Here are some examples that your advocacy group could use as email triggers::

Welcome triggers: When someone signs up for your newsletter, you could send them a welcome email introducing your organization and providing information on your mission and goals.
Action-based triggers: If someone takes a specific action on your website, such as signing a petition or making a donation, you could send them a follow-up email thanking them for their support and providing more information on what they can do to help. In this example, “actions” include things like clicks on your website or previous emails; they could even include actions taken on social media.
Event-based triggers: If you’re hosting an event, you could send targeted emails to people who live in the area or have expressed interest in similar events. As the event gets closer, you can send reminder emails. After the event, you can send follow-up emails asking for feedback and highlighting next steps for engaging with your organization.
Re-engagement trigger: If someone hasn’t engaged with your emails in a while, you could send them an email asking if they’re still interested in hearing from you. An example of a re-engagement trigger would be: if someone last clicked on an email over 90 days ago, then send them a re-engagement email. If they don’t respond, you might want to remove them from your email list. Keeping a “clean” email list, i.e., an email list full of active readers, can help improve deliverability metrics.
Anniversary and birthday triggers: If you know an advocate’s birthday, send them an email to wish them a happy birthday and thank them for their support. If you don’t know their birthday, you can use the date they signed up for your email list to send them a happy anniversary. An easy way to celebrate birthdays in bulk is to run a report at the beginning of each month and send an email to everyone with a birthday that month.

Email Triggers and Segmentation in Action

Quorum has worked with hundreds of organizations that use Quorum Outbox to engage with their advocates. Here are a few examples of email triggers and segmentation in action:

At National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the advocacy and public policy team used location-based segmentation to target advocates. “People felt more engaged because we would put in information specific to their home state,” said Jessica Hart, NAMI’s Senior Manager of Field Advocacy. They would personalize the messages in their emails by mentioning elected officials and issues specific to the recipient’s location.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) used a combination of segmentation and email triggers to improve their advocate education efforts. Based on interests, advocates were tagged “key contact in training” within Quorum and enrolled in a series of modules to teach them how to be successful grasstops advocates.
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society took event-based triggers to the next level during their annual fly-in. Using text keywords and shortcodes (e.g., Text “MSresearch to 52886”), the organization texted supporters invitations to educational events. They also used text and email for campaigns that ran before, during and after the conference. At the event, they ran two live calls to action right from the podium, displaying a live digital map that tracked the action as it took place. Nearly 1,000 messages were generated right on the spot.