In today’s competitive digital landscape, SaaS (Software as a Service) businesses face the challenge of attracting and nurturing leads throughout a long and complex customer journey.
Marketers are constantly seeking ways to shorten this journey and increase revenue. This is where email marketing for SaaS comes into play.
Utilizing email campaigns and communications can be a game-changer for your SaaS company, helping you drive sales, increase brand awareness, and maximize ROI.
In this blog post, Dolma will delve into all aspects of SaaS email marketing, including its advantages, the main email categories for SaaS companies, tips to streamline your email marketing strategy, and examples from top brands.
Let’s get started!
What is SaaS Email Marketing?
SaaS email marketing refers to the process of promoting your SaaS business through targeted email campaigns to customers and prospects.
With over 4 billion people using emails daily, it’s a channel that has the potential to work wonders for your business in terms of sales, brand awareness, and ROI.
Apart from marketing and sales, email marketing can also be used for valuable communications with existing and prospective clients, such as account verification or password change notifications.
Benefits of Email Marketing for SaaS
Before diving into the details of SaaS email marketing, let’s explore some of its top benefits:
Boosts Your ROI
Emails can significantly contribute to boosting your ROI by nurturing prospects at the decision stage. Sending timely campaigns to prospects who are ready to make a purchase can make a huge difference.
Ensure that the content you deliver is relevant to this stage and consider offering incentives such as webinars or free trials to entice prospects.
Maximizes Authority In Your Industry
A consistent email outreach strategy helps promote and educate your audience about your service, allowing you to stand out from the competition.
By providing valuable resources such as surveys, checklists, and infographics, you demonstrate your willingness to support your customers.
This not only helps you build authority but also allows you to improve your service over time.
Increases Website Traffic
By creating top-notch email campaigns, you can direct your target audience to your website and nurture them with valuable content.
Including compelling call-to-action buttons in your emails can prompt readers to click and visit your website, increasing the chances of conversion.
To achieve the best results, optimize your website and ensure a consistent customer experience across all channels.
Enables A Personalized Marketing Approach
Email marketing allows for personalized content delivery through features such as custom fields.
By adding personalization elements like the recipient’s name to the subject line and email introduction, you can create a more personalized and engaging experience for your subscribers.
Email segmentation and marketing automation further enhance your ability to deliver highly targeted messages and drive faster action from your subscribers.
Main Email Categories For SaaS Companies
To effectively support your business objectives, it’s essential to consider four main email categories in your SaaS email marketing strategy:
Marketing Emails
Marketing emails are designed to nurture prospects at different stages of the marketing funnel, building trust and authority in your industry.
These emails can include:
- Content newsletters: Share top-of-mind resources such as blog posts and whitepapers with subscribers.
- Promotional emails: Inform your customers about your latest marketing activities to generate more traction.
Product Emails
Product-related newsletters play a crucial role in enabling your customers to understand and fully utilize your SaaS product.
These emails can contribute to customer retention and product improvement over time.
Some examples of product emails include:
- Updates: Inform your subscribers about feature updates and how they will benefit from them.
- NPS surveys: Gather feedback from customers to improve your product and services.
- Company announcements: Share your latest news with your audience and make them feel part of your team.
- Onboarding: Provide new users with a dedicated automated sequence that explains your product and its features.
Transactional Emails
Transactional emails are follow-up messages that reassure customers and prospects that they have completed a specific action.
Examples of transactional emails include:
- Welcome email: The first email customers receive when signing up for your list.
- Confirmation email: Follow-up emails to confirm that actions such as payment, purchase, or card expiration have been completed.
- Receipts: Share billing information with paying customers.
Sales Emails
Sales emails are meant to go the extra mile in increasing conversions, especially for premium plans. Consider implementing the following SaaS email marketing campaigns:
- Offers: Provide incentives such as gift cards and discounts to encourage leads to move further down the marketing funnel.
- Win-back campaigns: Plan re-engagement emails to motivate churned customers to purchase your service again.
How To Start A SaaS Email Marketing Strategy With Success
Now that you understand the main email categories for SaaS companies, it’s time to build an effective email marketing strategy.
Follow these steps to ensure success:
1. Set Your Goals
Before creating any email campaigns, it’s crucial to have clear goals in mind. Define the purpose of your campaigns, whether it’s to drive sales, increase brand awareness, improve customer success, or upsell/cross-sell.
Setting distinct objectives will help you track your email performance and make necessary adjustments.
2. Choose Your Email Marketing Software
Selecting the right email marketing software is essential for the success of your strategy.
Look for a scalable solution that offers features such as ready-made email templates, email deliverability, marketing automation and segmentation, mobile responsiveness, A/B testing, flexible pricing, reporting and analytics, and behavioral tracking. Consider platforms like Moosend or Campaign Monitor.
3. Grow Your Email List
To start email marketing for your SaaS business, you need to grow your email list with opted-in subscribers.
Avoid sending campaigns to leads and customers who haven’t permitted you, as this may increase spam rates and harm your brand reputation.
Collect email addresses through methods such as content upgrades, opt-in forms during purchases, landing pages, giveaways, and signup forms.
4. Create Different Segments
Personalization is key in email marketing. Utilize customer segmentation to create sub-lists based on shared characteristics of your customers and prospects.
Segment your list based on firmographic, demographic, geographic, technographic, psychographic, and behavioral criteria.
Collect data from your analytics and CRM tool to further enhance segmentation and conduct customer surveys to gather missing data.
5. Share Interesting Email Content
By sharing meaningful and relevant content in your email campaigns, you can engage your subscribers. Create compelling subject lines to make your emails stand out in crowded inboxes.
Try out different types of email content and design customizable templates to suit your needs. Write straightforward, creative, and inviting email copy to increase conversion rates.
6. Build Automated Sequences
Automated email sequences, also known as drip campaigns, are essential for nurturing leads and moving them down the marketing funnel.
Create automated sequences that nudge prospects within specific time intervals.
For example, after someone downloads an infographic, send follow-up emails offering more information or a free trial.
Use automation to create a consistent outreach plan that boosts lead generation and conversions at different customer journey stages.
7. Analyze Your Email Performance
Regularly analyze your email performance to ensure that your campaigns are effective. Track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribes, conversion rates, and bounce rates.
Understand your audience in-depth, emphasize their pain points and habits, and make adjustments to improve your email marketing metrics over time.
Use an email marketing platform with robust analytics and reporting features, and consider integrating it with tools like Google Analytics.
SaaS Email Marketing Examples
To inspire your SaaS email marketing efforts, let’s explore some top campaign examples from leading brands:
Moosend Monthly Content Newsletter
Moosend creates monthly blog digests to share its latest content marketing resources with subscribers.
In this email, customers and prospects are informed about valuable resources that can help them improve their email marketing strategies.
GoDaddy’s Win-back Email
GoDaddy sends win-back emails to inactive customers, offering a 30% promo discount to entice them to return. This email provides an incentive for customers to re-engage with the brand and make a purchase.
Squarespace’s Trial Expiration Campaign
Squarespace sends trial expiration emails to users whose free trials are about to end. The emails notify users about the upcoming expiration and prompt them to upgrade their subscriptions.
This campaign aims to convert trial users into paying customers.
Shopify’s Onboarding Email
Shopify’s onboarding email sequence guides new users through the platform’s features and offers a free course on marketing operations.
This email helps new users get started and ensures a successful onboarding experience.
Dropbox Customer Survey Email
Dropbox sends customer survey emails to gather feedback on their service. The email includes a concrete survey with a rating scale, making it easy for subscribers to provide feedback.
This campaign helps Dropbox collect valuable insights from its customers.
Figma New Feature Update
Figma sends emails to inform customers about new product features. Customers can easily claim the new features and further explore the product by clicking clear call-to-action buttons in the emails.
Miro’s Welcome Email Campaign
Miro sends a welcome email that introduces new subscribers to their collaboration platform. The email includes a personalized subject line and engaging copy, inviting subscribers to learn more about the product and join the community.
Conclusion
Implementing an effective email marketing strategy is essential for the success of your SaaS business. By utilizing email campaigns and communications, you can drive sales, increase brand awareness, and maximize ROI.
Remember to set clear goals, choose the right email marketing software, grow your email list with opted-in subscribers, create different segments for personalized targeting, share interesting email content, build automated sequences, and regularly analyze your email performance.
Take inspiration from top SaaS email marketing examples and craft compelling campaigns that resonate with your audience.
By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to achieving email marketing success in the SaaS industry.
