Email Automation Beyond Drip Sequences: Behaviour-Triggered Campaigns

The Problem With Timed Sequences

A drip sequence sends email 1 on day 1, email 2 on day 7, email 3 on day 14 — regardless of what the contact has done in between. If the contact purchased on day 3, they still receive the day-7 email encouraging them to purchase. If they haven't opened a single email, they still receive the day-14 email as if they had.

This indifference to behaviour produces declining engagement over the sequence and, more importantly, misses the moments when a contact's behaviour signals high intent. Behaviour-triggered campaigns solve this by making the contact's actions the clock, not the calendar.

The Highest-Value Triggers

• Cart abandonment: strong purchase intent signal, typically highest conversion rate of any automated email
• Browse abandonment: weaker signal than cart but high volume, especially valuable for high-consideration purchases
• Post-purchase: the highest-trust moment in the relationship — the optimal time for cross-sell, upsell, and review requests
• Win-back: triggered by a defined period of inactivity — reach contacts before they're fully disengaged
• Price drop on viewed items: high relevance, directly addresses a previously expressed interest
• Restock notification: for out-of-stock items a contact viewed or waitlisted

Building Suppression Logic

Suppression logic prevents a triggered email from sending to a contact for whom it would be irrelevant or counterproductive. Cart abandonment suppression: if the contact has already purchased the items, don't send. Welcome suppression: if the contact has already received the welcome sequence, don't resend on re-subscription.

Every triggered campaign should have a suppression list that is checked before send: has this contact received this sequence in the past X days? Have they completed the target action? Are they in an active customer service interaction? Are they in another active nurture sequence that would conflict? Suppression logic is less glamorous than trigger design but equally important.

Testing Trigger Timing

The optimal send time after a trigger event is not always immediate. Cart abandonment emails sent within 30 minutes outperform those sent after 2 hours in most verticals — but the optimal timing varies by product category, price point, and audience. An immediate email can feel surveillance-like for some products; a 2-hour delay can feel more natural.

Test three timing variants for each key trigger: immediate (within 5 minutes), short delay (1–4 hours), and longer delay (24 hours). Measure both open rate and conversion rate for each variant — high open rate with low conversion rate indicates the email content isn't matching the contact's state of mind at the send time.