Five strengths of event-based marketing

In our digitalized world, there's a need for customized strategies for targeted and personal customer interactions. Event-based marketing, which is triggered by individual events, is particularly successful in this regard. The figures speak for themselves: single push triggers on mobile devices are 1,490% more successful than notifications that come all at once (Blueshift, 2020).

The most important aspects in brief

• Events, i.e. small occurrences in the interaction between customers and the company, can be used sustainably for marketing and customer loyalty.
• It's important to identify the right events – favored goods, clicked menu items in online stores or visited websites can be useful.
• Event-based marketing is well received – as long as the strengths of the method are used wisely.

Event marketing: definition of event-based marketing measures

Event-based marketing or event marketing, also known as trigger marketing, event tracking or event-driven marketing, should not be confused with marketing at events. On the contrary, it is a personalized, digital form of marketing for targeting customers and building a personal connection based on individual events.

The event here is a predicted or fundamental occurrence between the product and the customer that can be clearly assigned to the person. Successful event-based marketing allows companies to respond to customer needs at a defined moment such as a shopping cart abandonment, adding or deleting products from the cart, clicking on a specific menu item or an app login.

Event-based marketing consists of two important components: the unique identification of users and the tracking of their behavior. When users visit a website or mobile app, they are automatically assigned an anonymous identity. This identity is recorded and stored so that behaviors on the website or app can be analyzed.

Event-based marketing: 5 central strengths

But how exactly does event-based marketing work in practice? Companies can benefit from five aspects in particular.

1) Browsing activity analysis

To identify specific actions that effectively lead to a purchase, companies need robust data about users' browsing activities. What products are customers looking for? And can they find these products right away? Knowledge about browsing behavior helps to anticipate events and make customer-specific adjustments. Activity analysis is therefore an important pillar of event-based marketing.

2) Knowledge about actual purchasing behavior

If a potential customer adds products to the shopping cart and removes them again, it can be assumed that they show a basic interest in making a purchase. Event-based marketing utilizes this knowledge: because now it's possible to send the potential customer a personalized e-mail with special offers or discount promotions. Purchasing behavior can therefore be analyzed and predicted based on actual behavioral data.

3) Individualization of online experiences

A customer's birthday is an important personal event that companies should use regularly to interact. By individually congratulating customers on their birthday and conveying a gift in the form of a discount code or voucher, an emotionally positively charged interaction takes place – the customer feels appreciated.

4) Increasing brand awareness

Event-based marketing is a great opportunity for increasing awareness of your brand and positively impacting it. Offer a discount to new customers who make a purchase through your app in the first week of the month – or raffle off a gift card among all new registrations – and, of course, promote this on social media. In this way, event-based marketing can have an equally positive effect on the brand and on revenue.

5) Customer loyalty through real-time service

Event-based marketing not only opens up sales opportunities, it also provides a valuable opportunity to build customer loyalty to the company or product. Use real-time events, such as signing up for your newsletter, to reward your customers directly with special offers. The important thing here is the immediacy of the response – if you don't send the welcome or thank-you email until the following week, it's already too late.

How to optimally implement event-based marketing

Now you also want to implement event-based marketing? No problem – implementation will succeed with these four tips:

1. When analyzing the activities of your clientele, rely on the appropriate online tracking – and remember that third-party data, i.e. cookies, will soon be abolished!
2. Update the selected events regularly and adapt your marketing to the behavior of your clientele.
3. Be sure to select the right events. If you respond to every single cart abandonment and visit, your customers may feel tracked and you will diminish the effectiveness of the individual triggers.
4. Event-based marketing shouldn't be the only tool in your marketing toolbox. A balanced mix of interlocking measures is better!

Conclusion: implement event-based marketing and benefit from more intensive customer interaction

Event-based marketing provides sustainable help in responding to changing customer needs and turning individual events into genuine connections. To do this, companies need detailed knowledge about their customers in order to reach them at the events that have the greatest impact. Use triggers with intelligence – and supplement purely sales-based measures with event marketing with added value for the customer.