When it comes to creating a community surrounding your SaaS business, there are plenty of tools of the trade. In fact, it seems like every week brings the introduction of some new marketing platform, social network, or brand-building hack.
And yet, for generating and maintaining a loyal audience, it’s hard to top the tried-and-true methods of email marketing. Email marketing has demonstrated its utility again and again, and can be an especially good fit for the SaaS industry. To get the best results, however, it’s important to enact the right strategy.
What are the Benefits of Email Marketing for SaaS?
To begin with, it helps to understand some of the unique benefits that email marketing brings to SaaS companies. Here are just a few examples:
- Because it allows you to segment your audience (more on that later), email marketing allows you to provide a personalized content experience to each user.
- Different types of email marketing campaigns can be used to reach customers in various stages of your SaaS sales funnel.
- Email marketing tends to have a high response rate, as it allows you to reach individual users directly in their inbox.
- Marketing emails can also be great vehicles for sharing content, driving website traffic, and shoring up your search visibility.
For these and countless other reasons, it’s beneficial for SaaS companies to invest in getting email marketing right.
How to Use Email Marketing to Build Your SaaS Brand
So what are the hallmarks of an effective SaaS email marketing campaign? Consider a few guidelines and best practices to get you started.
1) Solidify brand credibility.
Before you can promote your brand, it’s important to verify that your brand actually conveys the requisite professionalism and credibility. This is critical for earning the trust of your target customers (and email recipients).
One way to ensure a credible brand is to register it as an LLC. Not just anyone can register their company as an LLC, so completing the necessary legal requirements helps to verify that your business is serious, not just a side hustle or a hobby. Contact the best LLC formation service in your state to find out more about registering your SaaS business.
2) Segment your list.
Hopefully, you’ve already got a list of subscribers, including previous customers or individuals who have signed up for email updates via your business website.
Simply having one giant list can grow unwieldy, which is why it’s smart to break down your list into different segments. By taking a more granular approach to your email list, you can better provide unique and relevant content to each recipient.
There are plenty of ways to segment an email list, but some common options include:
- Demographics
- Stage of the consumer journey/position in the sales funnel
- Level of engagement with your brand
3) Provide personalized content.
Your emails should never be one-size-fits-all. To earn trust, you’ve got to show your customers that you understand their needs and pain points, and can provide them with content that speaks to their unique position.
There are plenty of ways for a SaaS business to personalize emails. Some examples include:
- Using personal greetings and subject lines.
- Sending birthday wishes to each subscriber.
- Carefully pairing content with audience segment.
4) Ensure mobile optimization.
Statistically speaking, we know that an overwhelming majority of your email opens will be via mobile devices. As such, it’s important to make sure your email newsletters use a format that accommodates all browser types and all screen sizes.
Pretty much all of today’s email marketing platforms are made to be mobile-first. Even so, it doesn’t hurt to send a few test emails and to verify that they work well across different devices. In particular, make sure:
- Everything loads quickly.
- All of your text is easy to read without a ton of scrolling, zooming, or pinching.
- All of your links are easy to click and work properly.
- Your calls-to-action are easy to spot, even for people just skimming.
5) Understand different email marketing types.
There’s more than one way to use your email marketing list. By understanding the different types of campaigns, you can optimize your results. Some examples of different types of marketing emails include:
- Discount or promotion codes, providing immediate value incentives to your SaaS customers.
- Monthly or bi-monthly newsletters, outlining new developments at your company, sharing company blog posts, etc.
- Referral emails, providing some kind of incentive for recipients who refer your business to a colleague or who leave you a positive online review.
6) Ensure value in each email.
If you want recipients to continue opening and reading your emails (maybe even occasionally forwarding them), you’ll have to make sure every single message you send provides some type of value. Always ensure an answer to this question: What’s in it for the reader?
Consider a few ways to add value to your SaaS marketing emails:
- Provide updates into new features or products that you offer.
- Share industry insights, enriching your subscribers with meaningful perspectives.
- Include recent videos, blog posts, or white papers that are relevant to your audience.
- Provide discounts or information about how recipients might save money on your SaaS solutions.
7) Use A/B testing.
Successful email marketing requires plenty of trial and error, and a penchant for continuous improvement.
One way to ensure continuous improvement is to conduct A/B testing, sending out slightly different versions of each email to different segments of your audience. Simply trying out a couple of different subject lines, or CTAs, can provide you with insight into what works and what doesn’t for your audience.
8) Keep tabs on analytics.
Of course, A/B testing doesn’t amount to much if you’re not collecting and analyzing data. Be sure you have an email marketing platform that provides you with plenty of actionable insights, including statistics that encompass your open rates, spam rates, and so forth.
Use your data to ensure you’re always moving toward higher and higher levels of engagement.
9) Ensure the right email marketing software.
We’ve referenced email marketing platforms a couple of times already, but it’s worth underscoring the importance of automation software.
Simply put, keeping track of different campaigns can be tedious. The ability to automate your email marketing efforts is essential for maintaining your efficiency, and for ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. Many automation platforms will use machine learning to deduce the optimal times to send emails to each recipient, boosting the chances that your message gets opened. This is just one example of how automation software can take your email marketing efforts to the next level.
10) Send trigger emails.
Trigger emails are messages that are prompted by specific actions. You can use your automation software to ensure that trigger emails are dispatched when needed, without manual effort on your part.
Some common examples of trigger emails include:
- Reminders that ping customers with abandoned carts, urging them to go back and finish their transaction.
- Welcome emails that are deployed to new subscribers.
- Emails that go out immediately after a purchase, asking for feedback.
- Follow-up emails that are sent a week or so after a download, requesting an online review.
11) Think holistically.
It’s important to remember that effectively marketing your SaaS company requires a full toolbox, not just email. And, when you do use email, it will be more effective when it’s harmonized with your other efforts.
Some examples:
- Emails are a great way to get more eyeballs on your company blog posts or YouTube videos, and to reach out to customers who may not connect with your brand on those channels.
- Your engagement statistics from social media (or just your website analytics) can provide a lot of insight into the kinds of subject matter that your customers care about. This can be invaluable as you fine-tune your email strategy.
The bottom line: You should always regard your email marketing as one important piece of a bigger puzzle.
For SaaS Businesses, Email is Essential.
To foster engagement with your SaaS company, there are countless methods you might employ. Email isn’t the newest, the trendiest, or the flashiest option, yet time and again it proves itself to be among the most effective.
As you look for ways to build a strong, engaged community surrounding your SaaS offerings, make sure you invest in the right email strategy, the right email software, and the right email content. Together, these components can help you turn that subscriber list into a real money-maker for your SaaS business.
Author Bio: Amanda E. Clark is a contributing writer to LLC University. She has appeared as a subject matter expert on panels about content and social media marketing, as well as small business ownership.
