How To Create Great Email Marketing Campaign For Saas Company
Email marketing is a highly efficient element of digital marketing. With the right approach, it’s possible to achieve an ROI of 3,800% and higher. Different email marketing tactics can be used to meet business goals. Whatever other elements your digital marketing campaign contains, email should be one of them.
SaaS companies need to implement the right email marketing tactics to convert customers and retain their existing clients. An email is an excellent marketing channel since it allows you to personalize your messages. Meanwhile, your target audience is more likely to trust a well-designed personalized email than they would a catchy ad.
Let’s take a closer look at how to build a solid SaaS email marketing campaign.
1. Choose the Right Time
The key to achieving the best effect with your email marketing campaigns is sending messages at the right time. Many studies have been done to figure out which day of the week and time of the day are optimal for sending promotional emails.
The best time to send an email is 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. At that time, the majority of people already had their coffee and finished sorting their inboxes.
Another time to consider is between 8 p.m. and midnight. During this time, your recipients are likely to check their inboxes before going to bed. However, if you send an email after they are asleep, it could get lost among other tasks early in the morning.
While it can be efficient to send emails in the morning and in the evening, there is a catch. The information about the best email sending time is easy to find online. That’s why the majority of companies try to send emails at 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. As a result, your email can get lost.
That’s why it’s imperative to study your target audience closely to figure out what “the right time” is for your clients.
2. Send One Email per Day
You may have a huge variety of content and an impressive number of promotions to share with your customers. However, bombarding your subscribers with emails is a bad tactic. People are already overwhelmed by numerous emails from different companies. If you keep sending several messages a day, they may end up in spam.
Even if you have a large volume of information to share with your customers, don’t send more than one email per day. If you can’t offer anything exceptional daily, you can send one message per week.
If you are a daily sender, consider alternating your content. For example, you could be sending promotional emails one day and educational messages the next. The goal is to keep the customers interested without overwhelming them with salesy behavior.
3. Keep Your Email List Clean
Your email marketing strategies are only as good as the quality of your email list. If you are sending messages to the wrong recipients, you could ruin your sender’s reputation and get the wrong idea about the efficiency of your strategy.
Your email list must consist of customers or potential customers, who are interested in the content you share. Otherwise, they’ll be clicking the spam button, lowering your sender’s score, and nullifying your email marketing efforts.
A bad email list can contain a spam trap. A spam trap is an email address, which triggers the spam filters and can get your address blacklisted. There are several ways you can get a spam trap email address on your list:
- Making a typo when retyping customer details.
- Using an email address that was valid in the past but was repurposed by the provider to become a spam trap.
- Purchasing a ready-to-go email list
While it may be hard to avoid typos sometimes, you can stay away from bad email lists. When a company offers you a list, you don’t have any idea which people are on it. The best thing that can happen is that they send your email to the spam folder. The worst thing – you’ll be blacklisted.
To keep your email list clean, you can take advantage of email validators. These programs are specifically designed to check each address on your list to make sure it is good to go.
4. Create High-Quality Content
Just like for any marketing strategy, the success of SaaS email marketing depends on the quality of content. The information you include in the emails must be concise, valuable, and appealing to the target audience.
Everything from the subject line to the call to action (CTA) must be created with user needs in mind. Meanwhile, you should be careful about email design to avoid spam folder. Some tactics like using all bold letters in the subject line or implementing spam trigger words.
No matter how good your content is, if you trigger the spam filter, email users will never see it. Both content and design are integral to the success of your SaaS email campaigns.
You can easily repurpose some of the content you use for other marketing tactics (blog writing, social media posts) and include it in your emails. Educational content is especially appealing to email users. By repurposing content, you can save money, thus increasing your email marketing ROI.
5. Segment Your Email List
Personalization is one of the pillars of a SaaS email marketing campaign. Today, customers expect a high level of customization from any vendor, from a retailer to a SaaS software provider. To make sure your message is as personalized as possible and build a solid relationship with your customers, consider segmenting your email list.
Here are a few ways to do it:
- Segment your email list according to the demographics (age, gender, company position, etc.) of your target audience.
- Learn more data about your customers by sending a quiz or a survey. Then segment them by their interests, buying behavior, and other preferences.
- Divide your audience by email engagement by keeping track of open rates and click-through rates.
- If you are catering to specific geographical areas, segment your audience by its location.
- Segment your audience according to the way they interact with your company e.g. do they purchase an annual subscription or use monthly services?
- Divide your audience by the position in the sales funnel.
Creating user segments can help you design personalized messages without trying to cater to each lead separately.
6. Use Various Types of Emails
When you design your email campaign, you need to take full advantage of different email types. Whether you are confirming registration or offering a free trial with a subscription, each email should be crafted with the customer’s needs in mind. Here are the types of emails, you can take advantage of:
- Transactional email – designed to react to the user’s actions. For example, a welcome email confirms registration or newsletter signup. Meanwhile, a notification email lets users know about subscription changes, new features, or holiday promotions.
- Lead nurturing email – designed to convert prospects into customers or subscribers.
- Seasonal emails – designed to acknowledge holidays and create seasonal offers. For a SaaS business, it could be holiday discounts for new or upgrades for existing users.
- Promotional email – designed to notify users about promotions for lead nurturing and retention purposes.
- Onboarding email – designed to help users get started with your product and offer them support.
- Educational emails – designed to educated your customers and offer solutions for its pain points.
You can design an email template for each type of email to simplify the design process. You may want to consider creating email templates for each segment of your audience.
7. A/b Test
When you design your SaaS email marketing campaign, you need to pay special attention to a/b testing different variations of each message. A simple change in the heading could improve your conversion rate tremendously while changing email sending time could help nurture more leads.
Various things to test in your SaaS email campaign include:
- Colors
- Graphics
- Subject lines
- Headings
- Sending time
- CTA
Figure out which combination works the best for your leads and subscribers. When you understand which elements create the best response, each one of your emails will become highly impactful.
A/b testing is an integral part of any marketing strategy, be it social media ads or blog posts. Unlike with paid ads, a/b testing your emails is virtually free. Take full advantage of the opportunity and use the knowledge acquired through testing to adjust the rest of your marketing efforts.
8. Work on Your Website
No matter how well-designed your emails are, they won’t convert as many leads as you need without a solid website. By creating top-notch content for your website, you can increase engagement and streamline your best email marketing efforts.
Your website should be designed to be appealing to your target audience. Each page must carry value. Otherwise, when you link to the website in your email, you can’t be sure that the customer would convert. Pay attention to social proof marketing.
Meanwhile, without a robust website, you can’t create a high-quality email list. It must be optimized for detail sharing with lead magnets, proper CTAs, and technical SEO elements.
9. Lean on Marketing Automation
Email marketing automation can lend you a hand while you are implementing your SaaS email strategy. To keep your subscribers happy while focusing on key aspects of your marketing efforts, you can take advantage of various automation opportunities.
A great example of automation is automating transactional emails (e.g. using software to send welcome, sign up, and purchase emails automatically).
Here are a few tips to consider when implementing automation for SaaS email marketing.
- Take the time to choose email automation software carefully. It should be designed to cater to the needs of a SaaS company.
- Consider taking an agile approach to automation. Take it one step at a time and see how each works before proceeding to the next stage.
- Develop customer personas and automate your emails to cater to each one.
- Make sure to implement multi-channel marketing campaigns
These tips can help you nurture leads, save money, and achieve your marketing and business goals without breaking the bank.
The Takeaway
Email marketing is a highly useful tool for any SaaS company. If you want your company to succeed regardless of the size of your marketing budget, take advantage of this high-ROI approach.
By building a clean email list, segmenting your target audience, sending the right email types, and implementing personalization, you can promote your brand, increase conversion and retention rates, and bring value to your subscribers.