Email is a powerful marketing tool for SaaS (software as a service) businesses.
It’s a way to communicate with your customers, provide them with valuable information, and build brand awareness. Not only that, but email marketing can help you retain customers, generate new leads, and increase conversions. In fact, research shows that email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders.
The key to success with email marketing is to have a solid strategy in place. In this post, I’ll outline eight essential email marketing strategies for SaaS businesses.
1. Personalize your email marketing content
Email personalization is a must for SaaS businesses, and really any business, that wants to build a strong relationship with their customers.
But, in order to personalize your email marketing content, you need to have access to a lot of data about your subscribers. This is where email list segmentation comes in. When you segment your email list, you can organize your subscribers into different categories based on their interests, behaviors, purchase history, and more.
Then, you can use this data to create highly targeted and personalized email marketing content that’s designed to appeal to each segment.
For example, let’s say you have a SaaS business that offers a project management tool. You could segment your email list based on the size of the companies your subscribers work for, and then create different email marketing campaigns that speak to the unique needs and challenges of each segment.
Or, a virtual assistant could segment your email list on your behalf based on your subscribers’ purchase history, and then create email marketing campaigns that promote your upsell or cross-sell opportunities.
2. Use segmentation to target your email marketing campaigns
Segmentation is a powerful tool that allows you to divide your email list into different segments based on specific criteria. This allows you to target your email marketing campaigns more effectively.
There are many ways you can segment your email list, but some of the most common include:
• Demographics, such as age, gender and location
• Purchase history, such as whether or not a customer has made a purchase in the past
• Engagement level, such as whether or not a subscriber has opened your emails in the past
By segmenting your email list, you can ensure that your subscribers receive content that is relevant to them. This can help to increase engagement and drive more conversions.
3. Automate your email marketing
Automation is a key component of any successful email marketing strategy. By automating your email marketing, you can save time and effort, and ensure that your emails are sent at the right time, to the right people.
There are many different types of emails that you can automate for your SaaS business, including welcome emails, onboarding emails, re-engagement emails, and more.
By automating your email marketing, you can ensure that your subscribers receive the right emails at the right time, without having to manually send them. This can help you to improve your email open and click-through rates, and increase your conversion rates.
4. Create a welcome email series
When a new subscriber joins your email list, it’s important to make a good first impression. You can do this by creating a welcome email series.
A welcome email series is a sequence of emails that automatically goes out to new subscribers. This is a great way to introduce them to your business and what you have to offer.
Your welcome email series can be as long or as short as you like, but it’s a good idea to include at least three emails. This gives you the opportunity to connect with your new subscribers and share more about your business.
In the first email, you can thank your new subscribers for signing up and let them know what they can expect from your emails. In the second email, you can introduce them to your business and share some of your best content. In the third email, you can encourage them to take the next step, such as signing up for a free trial or making a purchase.
5. Send a re-engagement email series to inactive users
If you have a list of subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails in a while, you can send them a re-engagement email series to try to win them back.
A re-engagement email series is a sequence of emails that are designed to rekindle interest in your SaaS product. The goal of these emails is to get inactive users to start engaging with your content again, and ultimately, to get them to convert.
In the first email of your re-engagement series, you can ask subscribers if they still want to receive emails from you. If they do, ask them to take a specific action, like clicking a link or filling out a survey. If they don’t, give them an easy way to unsubscribe. To add surveys to your site, you can use many tools like Jotform or Google Forms that provides a wide range of features for free.
If subscribers take the action you asked them to take, you can send them a thank-you email. If they don’t, you can send them a follow-up email a few days later. You can continue to send follow-up emails until subscribers take the desired action or until you decide to remove them from your list.
6. Use customer feedback to improve your email marketing campaigns
Customer feedback is a powerful tool that can help you improve your email marketing campaigns. By listening to what your customers have to say, you can identify areas of your campaigns that need improvement and make changes accordingly.
For example, if you receive feedback that your emails are too long, you can work on shortening them. By consulting an experienced digital marketer, you can refine your email marketing to achieve better engagement. If you get feedback that your emails are not relevant to the recipient, you can work on segmenting your email list more effectively.
In addition to using direct customer feedback, you can also use data from your email marketing campaigns to identify areas that need improvement. For example, you can look at your open and click-through rates to see how engaging your emails are. If you have a low open rate, you may need to work on improving your subject lines. If you have a low click-through rate, you may need to work on improving the content of your emails.
7. Create a sense of urgency with your email marketing
Creating a sense of urgency in your email marketing campaigns can help you drive more conversions.
When you make your offer time-sensitive, you encourage your subscribers to act quickly. This can help you increase your click-through rates and conversion rates.
You can create a sense of urgency in a few different ways. To further enhance your campaign’s impact, consider partnering with a reputable marketing agency that specializes in email strategies.For example, you could set a specific end date for your offer, like in the example above.
Or, you could use language that implies the offer is only available for a limited time, like in the example below.
8. Optimize your email marketing for mobile
The majority of people check their email on their mobile devices. This means your email marketing campaigns need to be optimized for mobile.
If you send an email that looks great on a desktop but is hard to read on a mobile device, you’re going to lose a lot of potential customers.
Luckily, most email marketing platforms make it easy to create mobile-friendly emails. Just make sure to preview your emails on a mobile device before you send them.
Conclusion
We hope this article has given you a solid understanding of how to use email marketing effectively for your SaaS business. With the right strategy, you can build brand awareness, increase user engagement, and reduce churn.