8 SaaS Email Marketing Strategies for Lead Generation (2024)

In the competitive world of SaaS (Software as a Service), it can be quite challenging for businesses to reach their target audience and convert leads into customers.

That’s where SaaS email marketing comes in.

Understanding the art of email marketing is important for the sustainable growth of SaaS business.

Say goodbye to ineffective email campaigns and hello to an updated approach to attract loyal customers.

In this guide, you will learn the importance of SaaS email marketing and effective strategies to reshape your lead generation efforts.

Email Marketing for SaaS Companies

Email marketing for SaaS involves leveraging email campaigns and communication strategies to promote SaaS products and services.

It is one of the best SaaS marketing strategies to acquire new customers and maintain existing ones.

Why is Email Marketing Important for SaaS?

According to HubSpot, there are over 4 billion active email users, and 99% check their inboxes daily.

Email marketing is a powerful tool to nurture leads, retain customers, and maximize the value users derive from the software. A good email onboarding sequence can help you improve key SaaS metrics like the activation rate.

Here are some benefits of email marketing for SaaS businesses:

• User onboarding will move users through the engagement ladder and boost activation and subscription rates.
• Drip campaigns, personalized content, and targeted emails to help move leads through the sales funnel.
• Newsletters and educational content to help maintain a connection with users.
• Segmentation of subscribers to target specific user groups, delivering more relevant content.
• Reactivation campaigns for users who have become inactive.
• One-time campaign to leverage promotion events like black Friday.
• Cold outreach to acquire new customers.

Tip: Check out SaaS marketing essentials for the successful product launch and growth of your B2B business.

8 Best SaaS Email Marketing Strategies and Tactics

Implementing effective email marketing strategies for SaaS is important for the success of SaaS companies.

Here are some important strategies:

Customer Journey

It is important to get a clear idea about your customer journey as it guides SaaS marketers to create personalized and effective user experiences.

It is like a roadmap that outlines user interactions with a SaaS product or service, from the first time they land on your website to becoming a loyal customer.

Here are the stages of the customer journey you need to focus on to attract and retain customers more successfully:

• Customers find out about your SaaS product. You can contact them by sending a welcome email, newsletters, or webinar invitations.
• They compare your SaaS product to competitors. You can send educational emails or free trial invitations to let them experience the product.
• Customers are ready to choose your product. You can send personalized emails with special offers or discounts to encourage conversion.
• After the customers have converted, turn them into loyal users. It can include onboarding emails, product updates, and customer support resources.
• Turn satisfied customers into brand advocates who will refer your SaaS product to others. Your email campaign can include referral programs or feedback requests.

Create an Email List for SaaS Product

To start SaaS email marketing, you must create a list of subscribers for successful email campaigns.

You can create a list of your subscribers by:

• Offer compelling content that serves as a lead magnet.
• Encourage signups by offering exclusive offers, special discounts, or limited-time promotions.
• Design visually appealing landing pages highlighting the benefits of subscribing to your email list.
• Keep signup forms simple by asking only essential information like name and email address.
• Offer a free tool. You can use FoxyApp to quickly add a tool to your website.

Pro tip:

Provide clear information about how you will use subscriber data and offer an easy opt-out option to unsubscribe to maintain trust with your audience.

Segment your Target Audience

Segmentation is key to success when working with email marketing. It is an effective email marketing strategy to target users based on their specific preferences.

Segments can help decide which campaigns or relevant content you can send each segment to increase engagement and conversion rates.

You can segment your email list based on user behavior, preferences, and characteristics such as:

• age, gender, or income
• customer lifecycle stage
• job or industry
• region or country
• interests or values

A good segmentation will boost your email marketing metrics:

• Improve open rate
• Improve click-through rate (CTR)
• Keep unsubscribe rate low
• Keep spam report rate low.

Send Personalized Emails

Personalized emails are a powerful tool for SaaS email marketing campaigns as they help build stronger user connections and increase engagement.

If you are collecting data from your subscribers, you can use it to create personalized messages to make them feel valued.

Tips:

• Align your messaging with your segmentation and targeting
• Use engaging subject lines to improve open rates.
• Address your subscribers by their name to get their attention.
• List some features relevant to the user’s subscription plan.
• Celebrate user milestones and achievements within your SaaS product.

Use Email Automation for SaaS Product Onboarding

Send automated emails to subscribers based on predefined triggers or schedules to deliver targeted content and nurture leads.

You can send automated emails to people based on their engagement with your product.

For example, you can send emails based on user actions to ensure that emails are timely, relevant, and responsive to user interactions.

• Onboarding emails after signup.
• Activation emails when users complete a specific action.
• Teach users about key features of your app.
• Send a reminder about the free trial end approaching to play on FOMO
• Reactivation emails for inactive users.

Choose the Right Time to Increase Open Rates

Timing is crucial for email deliverability in successful SaaS email marketing as it determines whether recipients view emails.

You can use email marketing metrics to see what time and day of the week results in more open rates.

People in different time zones may open their emails at different times, so you must determine where your target audience resides and segment your emails.

According to HubSpot research, the best times to send a marketing email are 9:00 AM - 12 PM EST and 12:01 PM - 3 PM EST.

1 AM - 3 AM EST is not the ideal time.

Tuesdays are the best days for email marketing, and Sundays are the worst.

Another key to improving open rates is often cleaning up your email list.

If you are working with B2B emails, a big part of your database will expire over time as people change jobs.

Clean your database often using tools like EmailListVerify. It will also avoid hard bounce, which can impact your domain reputation.

Running some deliverability tests before any big email campaign is also recommended.

Warmup Inbox, the free inbox placement tester, will tell you if your email will land in the spam or promotion folder.

A/B Test to Increase Conversion Rate

A/B test is a split testing method to compare two versions of an email to check which one performs better regarding engagement or conversion rates.

Conduct A/B tests on subject lines, content, format, length, multimedia, CTAs, and sending times for successful email marketing.

You can split-test automated emails to see which one has more open rates.

For example, create two versions of an email, one with an image and one without an image, to see which one performs better.

Choose the Right Email Marketing Tool for SaaS

The right SaaS tools are essential for successful email marketing campaigns.

These tools provide features such as:

• Email automation
• Templates
• List management
• Campaign analytics
• Strong email deliverability
• Optimization for mobile devices

Email marketing tools are split into two categories:

• Tools for transactional email and newsletter (opt-in email)
• Tools for cold outreach

Some tools you can use for transactional email :

• MailerLitte
• Mailchimp
• Activecampaign
• Drip

Some tools you can use for cold outreach email :

• Woodpecker
• LemList
• WarmupInbox

Pro tip: There are also plenty of tools to build an email database. You can find the list of growth hacking tools we recommend here.

Final words

Email marketing is a powerful tool for SaaS companies to promote their products and services.

However, it’s important to note that the content is relevant, aligns with your brand, and enhances the overall user experience.

If you choose the right email marketing software and implement these best strategies for your SaaS product, you’ll be one step closer to turning leads into loyal customers.

FAQs

What are some common challenges in SaaS email marketing?

Common challenges in SaaS email marketing include email compliance with regulations like GDPR, managing subscriber lists effectively, optimization of emails for different devices, and maintaining high deliverability rates.

How do I increase the open rates of emails?

You can improve email open rates by crafting compelling subject lines, audience segmentation, content personalization, send times optimization, and maintaining a clean subscriber list.

Is email marketing profitable?

Email is one of the most profitable marketing channels. The cost of tools to send email is minimal. You, however, need a good copywriter, which could be expensive.

Do cold emails work for SaaS?

Cold outreach can be a good channel for SaaS with an enterprise plan. Could outreach is a sales approach, so you need a sales department to lead the effort. Sales are relevant only for SaaS with high user lifetime value, as it is a costly channel.