You Are Being Targeted

An article on trigger marketing and how you are being targeted.

Trigger marketing is essentially an event based marketing strategy that occurs due to a certain activity. It is more than likely that you’ve actually been the target trigger marketing yourself.

You know when you’re, minding your own business, doing some online shopping for a few new cat toys for your beloved fur babies (you know you spend too much money on them but it is what it is) and then you think, ‘wait, I could probably find this cheaper on eBay’? So you go on eBay, have a browse and find that yes, this lead for my cat is $2 on eBay (click here if you’re interested) as opposed to $20 at Petbarn. Forgetting about your cart on Petbarn, already filled with 22 items of unneeded but oh so wanted cat items, you move on to eBay to continue your shopping for a quarter of the price. Petbarn is more than likely to send you an email or give you a notification to say ‘Hey! Don’t forget about us! You haven’t wasted your money on us yet!’, but like, not exactly in those words. That’s trigger marketing.

Trigger marketing aims to create a trigger in your mind to recall a brand name to influence your purchase.

Online websites seem to be big believers in this strategy, and from my possibly too personal anecdote above, they probably have good reason too. In cases where a brand main competitor is not eBay, for example a make-up brand, as consumers we may check other sites for the same products at a cheaper price, but they are often very similar in price, or too cheap to not be dodgy, in this instance trigger marketing would be an effective strategy to remind the consumer to purchase.

This can be equally as useful for the consumer if they actually have forgotten that they were in the middle of an online shopping spree and need to be reminded to check out.

Some forms of trigger marketing however, are not so helpful but instead just plain pushy and on the verge of being deceitful. I shall mention another anecdote that I’m sure you are just dying to read.

Buying an outfit online through Fashion Nova, I notice a banner ad on the top of the screen to let me know that a promotion code that I could use to get 10% off my order is going to expire in 10 minutes. Frantically, I scroll through what items I want to buy, select the right size and colour, making crucial decisions as to what I want in my cart, and hurry to enter the promo code and process the purchase by entering my card details. Fortunately, I have manage to make my purchase within the 10 minutes and gotten 10% off. Awesome. The timer has finished. Except, what is that I see? Oh, the timer has just automatically reset.

Silently laughing to myself, I realise that I have fallen for their marketing tactic. I mean, I was always going to make the purchase, but I could’ve done it with less anxiety about the possibility of not receiving that 10% discount.

Turns out, I didn’t even love the clothes when they arrived, and I’ve worn them about twice, but every time I look at that pair of trousers, I remember that evil timer that I fell victim too.

Another example of trigger marketing, based on the event of me simple browsing the website.

While this experience didn’t exactly put Fashion Nova in my good books, I definitely remember making that purchase vividly and am glad for it as now, as a marketing student I have the benefit of learning about these sneaky tactics and will hopefully not fall for it again.

But we’ll see.