Do you know the need for SaaS email marketing for businesses? SaaS companies face significant challenges in customer acquisition, retention, and revenue growth without email marketing. Relying only on ads instead of email marketing makes growth costly and uncertain.
An email marketing strategy can update a SaaS business’s customers about new products, offers, discounts, and deals. This strategy directly connects the business with its clients. Apart from this connection, is this marketing effective for SaaS? Yes, you can advertise your business more effectively than traditional methods. Even generating more ROI becomes easy. So, want to learn more?
This blog is here to help you with the top 20 SaaS marketing strategies you can apply. You will also learn its importance here and its definition, components, and reasons for SaaS failure. Ensure you don’t miss the top examples to get a clear idea of how to create yours.
So, let’s begin the discussion with the definition of SaaS email marketing.
Table of contents
- What is SaaS Email Marketing?
- Importance of SaaS Email Marketing
- Top 9 Features of SaaS Email Marketing
- Top 7 Reasons for SaaS Email Marketing Failure: What to Consider?
- A Step-by-Step Process of Optimizing SaaS Email Marketing
- Top 20 Best SaaS Email Marketing Strategies
- Examples of Top SaaS Email Marketing
- End Note
What is SaaS Email Marketing?
SaaS email marketing is a marketing strategy where marketers use emails to promote software services. A business can share updates, offers, or important news through this. You can send these emails to current users or people who signed up to learn more about your product.
Customize your emails to send them in different patterns based on the people from different groups. For example, you can send updates to active users and reminders to those who stopped using your product.
You can use email marketing tools to handle your marketing more efficiently. They allow you to send emails at the right time, create professional email templates, and track how well your emails are doing.
SaaS companies use emails to welcome users, keep them interested, and share product updates. Let’s see what types of email marketing they focus on:
- Welcome Emails: Say hello to new users through proper warming welcome emails.
- Trial Reminders: Let users know their trial is ending, so they must hurry up!
- Reactivation Emails: Get inactive users back and how you care about them by sending reactivation emails.
- Product Emails: Tell your users about new features your customers will love.
- Promotional Emails: Offer discounts or deals and highlight your promo codes.
- Survey Emails: Gather feedback from your customers about the experience.
Importance of SaaS Email Marketing
Among other marketing approaches, email marketing is the best method for SaaS. But how?
One can promote new products, updates, and discounts through email marketing. The SaaS market will reach its highest point this decade! So, it is the best way to get into this business and promote through email marketing.
So, the importance of SaaS email marketing is:
Affordable and Effective
The most affordable and effective method for SaaS businesses is email marketing. Marketers prefer this strategy as it saves time and money. A plus point is that most SaaS emails are automated, keeping communication consistent and better.
Brings More Sales
In email marketing, you mention deals and discounts for your SaaS products. It means you attract your users as they become interested in the deals. They check your products, and then they purchase them. Most users purchase from the website directly, which leads to more sales.
Understand Your Audience
From your email campaigns, you can understand your audience. An interesting fact is you can define how many people open your emails and click on the links. You can find out what works best for you. Based on that, you can improve your existing strategy.
Build Loyalty
Consistent communication builds trust and loyalty. When you send helpful and personalized emails, you care about your users, and their needs matter. It builds a strong bond between you and your users that also makes them loyal.
Promote New Products or Features
With emails, you can inform directly about your new products or features when you launch them. You can explain how the feature works, share success stories or offer early access to create excitement.
Top 9 Features of SaaS Email Marketing
In email marketing, you will find new features for SaaS to see what works best for it. By implementing these features, you can run a better email campaign.
So, the features of email marketing SaaS are:
1. Ready-Made Email Templates
Try different email tools to get automated email templates, as this saves time and effort. Creating new patterns or formats for email marketing sometimes becomes difficult as you have other work to do. So, choose a design, customize it to match your brand, and send your email.
2. A/B Testing for Emails
Test different versions of your emails to choose the best one. You can compare subject lines, images, or content to see your audience’s favorite version. Use the curious gap to best use these insights to increase engagement rates.
3. Personal Touch in Emails
Personalized emails make marketing more effective, and you can do that by addressing users’ names. Design your content based on your user’s activity or preferences. Always remember people get engaged when they find the message is meant for them.
4. Smart Content Adaptation
Create content that solves users’ problems and remains useful to them. Instead of using the same old boring emails, add dynamic emails like unique information about your SaaS products or offers. Make your email content better than your competitors.
5. Mobile-Friendly Design
People mostly prefer cell phones to check their emails. So, ensure that your emails look good on small screens. Email marketing platforms now ensure designs fit perfectly on any device for a better reader experience.
6. Interactive Elements
Animation, polls, buttons, quizzes, etc, make an email more engaging. People love these interactive elements and participate in them. You can even contact and collect feedback directly from your audience about these elements.
7. Smart Audience Segmentation
In email marketing, one can send the right message to the right person. How to do that? Well, segmenting the audience based on their perseverance and behavior. Using this feature, you can make your SaaS email marketing successful.
8. Automated Email Sequences
Set up automated messages in email marketing for things like welcome emails, product announcements, or reminders. Automation keeps communication consistent and helps in building customer relationships without manual effort.
9. Real-Time Campaign Tracking
Remember to monitor how your email campaigns are doing. Check the real-time data to see open rates, clicks, and conversions. Based on the results, you can easily adjust your strategy to improve the overall outcomes.
Top 7 Reasons for SaaS Email Marketing Failure: What to Consider?
For SaaS products, sometimes email marketing fails. This happens due to some major mistakes that most people don’t consider. They try their best; however, they don’t get their expected results.
So, what are the reasons behind these failures? What to do then? Experts suggest that there are mostly the top 7 reasons for this failure. You must learn about these reasons to avoid them in your marketing campaigns.
So, all these seven reasons for SaaS email marketing are:
When You Send Only One Email
Experts say that a human brain needs to encounter information at least seven times to retain it. Otherwise, they don’t remember it. So, it means one email is not enough here to make your users remember you.
So, what to do then? Well, send a series of emails to keep them engaged. You must solve their questions and show how your product helps them. If you don’t know how to send so many emails, check bulk email guidelines to do it properly.
Ignoring Exclusion Lists
If a potential customer signs up for multiple email lists, they might receive too many emails. This can annoy them and cause them to unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam. Using exclusion lists, which means excluding certain contacts from receiving your email campaign, keeps your messages targeted and relevant.
Weak or Unclear Copy
Many campaigns fail because of poor and unclear copywriting. Common issues include boring subject lines, unclear messages, or content that does not match the reader’s knowledge level. Focus on writing explicit, engaging emails that show real value.
Not Segmenting Your Audience
People have different needs and interests, so you must work on this issue. Segment the audience and send personal and helpful emails based on their preferences. This new email marketing idea directly connects you with your target audience.
Failing to Clean Your Email List
Keeping inactive addresses in your email list can affect the campaign’s results. Regularly clean your list and avoid the awful shortcut of buying email lists to remove inactive or incorrect addresses. This helps ensure your messages reach engaged recipients and maintain a strong sender reputation.
Using Spammy Subject Lines
Subject lines like “Win Cash Now” or “Congratulations, You’ve Won” trigger spam filters and turn readers off. Even overly formal phrases like “Dear Customer” can make emails seem impersonal or spammy. Keep subject lines or email headers clear, direct, and focused on the benefit to the reader.
Not Following Up
When you don’t follow up, this becomes another reason for the email campaign’s failure. If you follow up, it reminds your audience of your offer and keeps them interested. Consistent follow-ups help guide prospects through the customer journey in email marketing and increase engagement.
A Step-by-Step Process of Optimizing SaaS Email Marketing
Step 1: Plan Your Strategy
To optimize email marketing for SaaS, prepare a proper plan for the process. With it, you can stay on the right track and achieve your goals by moving to the next step.
Step 2: Gather Email Addresses
When the plan is ready, you should gather the addresses of interested users. Offer a free trial so that users become interested in sign-ups. Remove all inactive emails from your list to keep it updated.
Step 3: Create and Send Emails
Create emails by mentioning deals, discounts, and updates about your products. Then, send them to your users.
Step 4: Check Your Results
Results help you define your success and check your email’s performance. Check different things, such as open rates and click rates, to analyze your performance. Try different subject lines to figure out the best response. Adjust all the changes and improve your emails.
Top 20 Best SaaS Email Marketing Strategies
You have learned the seven reasons that can fail your email marketing for SaaS. So, how do you make your email marketing successful? You can follow some strategies that can make your campaign successful and help your business grow.
So, what are these strategies? Well! Here, I will share the 20 best email marketing strategies that you should know to implement in your email marketing.
Have a look at the 20 best email marketing strategies for SaaS:
1. Balance Informational and Promotional Content
Combine informational and promotional content to keep your emails interesting. Otherwise, the email will be boring if you share only information in an email or promotion.
So, ensure you share actionable tips, case studies, and helpful guides with discounts. This keeps your users engaged and gives relief from constant annoying marketing messages,
2. Run Interactive Contests
Introduce different interactive contests to your users through emails. In this way, you can keep them engaged, and they will wait eagerly for your next contest. Make these contests related to SaaS. With this interaction, you can offer a better user experience to make your email campaigns successful.
3. Offer Choosing Options
Your audience and their preference should be your priority. Let them control the emails that they receive from you. Keep an option so that they can choose from categories such as newsletters, product updates, or promotional offers. With this step, the risk of losing mass subscribers will be reduced.
4. Customize Emails to User Behavior
Customized emails make the users feel better as you speak directly to them according to their preferences. Focus on tips or add particular features based on the user’s interests. Work on your existing strategies to update them to match user’s behaviors.
5. Go Beyond Simple Personalization
Well, using a user’s name is good, but you should go beyond that to make your campaign successful. So, behavioral data should be included to offer personalized recommendations.
For example, send an email mentioning, “Congrats on your first month!” or “We wish you a Happy Birthday.” These creative and thoughtful touches build an emotional connection with your audience.
6. Use Feedback Surveys
With surveys, you can define what your users want from you and what you need to change. You can even measure customer satisfaction. Follow up with personalized emails and let them know their feedback is valuable and inspires you to update your products.
7. Test Email Variations
Same pattern emails can be boring as users’ preferences can differ and may change. So, you can test different email formats with different subject lines. Implement strong call-to-action (CTA) buttons to figure out what works best.
8. Use Consistent Branding
Identity is essential for every business, and you should use consistent brandings for your SaaS product. Use your logo, brand colors, and voice across all emails. You can add your signature and contact details to make your brand more authentic to your users.
9. Guide Users Throughout Their Journey
Users need guidance at each stage of email marketing. Start from the beginning with a welcome email so that they can start their journey. Then, share feature guides to take them to the next step. After that, share deals and offers with a strong CTA. This guidance gives a smooth experience throughout their journey.
10. Automate Important Messages
Set a series of automated emails to keep your users updated. You can make a sequence like welcome emails, celebrations, product promotions, discount offers, and reminders. Automation ensures that your users get the emails on time without manual effort.
11. Promote Annual Subscriptions Thoughtfully
Send emails mentioning the annual plans clearly, such as exclusive features, special discounts for the new year, etc. Limited time offers to excite the users to purchase one within the time limit.
12. Encourage Small Engagements
Introduce different small engagements such as an attachment to an interesting article related to your product, registration for a webinar, taking part in a quiz, etc. This builds a better connection between you and your users.
13. Segment by Customer Lifecycle
You must separate your users into different groups based on the location and customer journey stage. According to their life cycle, you must share relevant and impactful emails. Also, try a new strategy to offer rewards for long-time subscribers.
14. Focus on Team Engagement
Suppose your product supports team collaboration and customizes design content for team leaders or managers. Offer tips on onboarding new members, optimizing productivity, or updating features that benefit team projects.
15. Plan Email Schedules Carefully
Prepare an email schedule to send your emails at the right time. You can keep the emails engaged when you send them at the right time. You can create a balanced relationship between you and your users with a proper schedule.
16. Review Data Regularly
You must review your data to adjust strategies to make the email campaigns successful. Begin by checking the open rate, click-through rate, and conversions. You can take the right step at the right time based on the results.
17. Try Video Content
In your emails, you can attach animation, informative, or tutorial videos that go with your SaaS products or promotions. This makes the emails more attractive, and people get the message you want to convey through the videos.
18. Ask Questions to Improve Conversations
In your emails, you can ask your users open-ended questions. Ask them for their feedback or suggestions on how to improve services. According to their suggestion, you should improve your services.
19. Create Eye-Catching Subject Lines
Grab users’s attention by writing emails with eye-catching subject lines. Try different formats such as “Get Exclusive Access,” “50% Discounts- Don’t Be Late!” or “New Features Just Launched,” etc. Remember, subscribers open an email when they find the subject line interesting.
20. Why Not Social Media?
Some users may want to visit your SaaS business social accounts to double-check your authenticity. So, add your social media links to your emails as a part of SaaS email marketing. They might contact you through social media to make a purchase from you.
Examples of Top SaaS Email Marketing
Well, examples make every concept and confusion clear. You can generate new ideas with examples, which also works for email marketing. So, different companies have introduced their different email marketing strategies.
Some offer affordable marketing, some are attention-grabbing, and some send welcome emails with string CTAs. So, what are these examples? Well, here’s your answer!
So, the best examples of the best SaaS email marketing platforms are:
1. MailBluster’s Affordable Email Marketing with Personalization
People prefer affordable email marketing, and many businesses use this strategy. MailBluster is one of them to offer the best email marketing services at a cheap rate. They mention this as a smart strategy in their emails. They also use a clear call-to-action button to direct the customers to the next step.
Key takeaway:
- Highlights cheap rate
- Strong CTA
2. Shopify’s Warm Welcome Email
Want to grab your users’ attention by appreciating them? Shopify knows how to make new users feel appreciated. Its emails use a polite tone and set personal and clear expectations. It mostly thanks users for signing up. They warmly greet their subscribers with welcome emails to set a great impression.
Key takeaway:
- Personalized emails
- Warm welcome email
3. Litmus’ Attention-Grabbing Promo Email
People’s never-ending love for emojis and its implementation in email marketing are masterstrokes. Litmus has taken this idea and uses animation well in its promotional emails. These emails capture their subscribers’ attention and make them more interested in the services. In this way, Litmus makes their purpose clear.
Key takeaway:
- Smart visual elements
- Emojis make emails more memorable.
4. Uber Discount Offer Email
A clear message in an email makes users curious and helps them learn more about the product. Uber uses this strategy to promote its products. If a discount is being offered, it is mentioned clearly in the email, such as “Flat 50% Off,” “Take 10% Off,” etc.
Key takeaway:
- A simple and clear message
- Mentions the discount
- Clear call-to-action button
5. Grammarly’s Progress Update Email
Want to share your updates through fund infographics? Grammarly does that to share their weekly writing stats through emails. Not only this, but they also add some interesting promo codes to their emails to engage their customers. This works as magic for their email marketing. So this encourages users to purchase their service.
Key takeaway:
- Fun infographics
- Highlights users progress
- Uses Stats that increase engagement
End Note
Finally, you need SaaS email marketing to connect your customers through product promotion and updates. This has been proven to be the most effective marketing strategy for SaaS.
Personalizing emails can build a strong connection and improve results. Segmenting your audience and testing your campaigns can also positively impact your SaaS business through email marketing.
I believe you have read my recommended 20 best strategies you can apply through email marketing for SaaS. Try to avoid the reasons that can be the causes for the failure of this email marketing. Check out the examples here, and then design your emails for the campaign.
So, give your best and try email marketing for SaaS businesses to see your business grow. Contact MailBluster, the best SaaS email marketing platform, offering SaaS solutions at an affordable rate.
Contents
