I recently celebrated my 38th birthday. (Yes, happy birthday to me!) As such, I received a rather unwelcome volume of automated birthday messages. Some of these were decently created. Most were sent straight to the trash (along with a few unsubscribes). One was able to surprise me.

But it’s actually not the good one that surprised me. It was how bad most of them were.

I had multiple brands sending discounts (always welcome!) but with products included which I have never purchased. And it wasn’t just products, many of these emails were promoting entire product lines I had no history purchasing. I said to all of these companies (and I even Tweeted at them), do better.

Blueshift found that triggered emails had crazy-better response rates but I want to go a step further. I am all about triggered messages and lifestyle / lifestage messaging, but use the data at your disposal to help someone get what they want and need.

Example: I love Bonobos’ sweaters. Love. In the past year I have purchased pants, a sweater, and a blazer from them. They know this. Why didn’t they send a birthday message with a discount and their latest blazer / sweater combo?

Think about how you can use the data at your disposal to send a triggered message with context. You will be amazed at the ROI of that effort.