In this article, we will define B2B email marketing for SaaS and explain why you must have a thorough understanding of your audience to be successful. You will also become familiar with the most popular and promising SaaS marketing strategies as well as methods for automating email campaigns in this industry.
Email marketing is justly regarded as one of the most efficient methods for promoting SaaS products (Software-as-a-Service). It is simple to create, modify, scale, and monitor mailing lists, as well as assess their performance. They enable you to manage user experience at all stages of the user's interaction with the product, from lead generation to user retention and support.
How does B2B SaaS email marketing work?
B2B Email marketing for SaaS is a relatively broad concept that encompasses a variety of mailing list types. One of its most significant benefits is its adaptability, which enables you to adapt mailings to the specifics of the product, its target audience, and other parameters.
Email marketing for SaaS products can perform a number of tasks effectively, including:
- Onboarding Mailing lists are one of the most efficient methods for introducing a new user to your product. This format permits you to consistently guide a lead through the sales funnel prior to registering for the service and purchasing a subscription. According to surveys, the majority of users prefer email over phone calls or social networks when communicating with businesses.
- Informing. Despite the development of alternative channels of communication, email continues to be the most convenient method for informing users. Through mailing lists, it is convenient to inform the audience of any changes to the software or its usage guidelines. It is also a very practical format for sending reports, news, training letters, etc.
- Direct sales. Email marketing remains a highly effective direct selling tool for SaaS companies. It is especially popular among small businesses that lack or are unable to use other channels to attract users.
- Retargeting. It has been demonstrated that mailing lists are an effective method for bringing users back to a website or application. Using email marketing technologies, you can always remind a user who has not completed the registration or payment process for a SaaS product, for instance, if he has not completed the registration or payment process.
- Integration with other marketing methods. Newsletters can be used as a supplement to other Internet marketing methods. For instance, they work exceptionally well in tandem with content marketing, as users willingly subscribe to newsletters containing useful content. In addition, mailing lists are ideal for promoting various events and notifying the audience (event marketing, PR, etc.).
Recognizing your customers
When developing an effective SaaS email marketing strategy, you should focus on the intended recipient. Understanding your subscribers will enable you to send them really useful, interesting, and engaging content that will encourage them to purchase, sign up, or take other specific actions.
Next, it will be beneficial to create a detailed user journey map to determine how each lead entered your subscriber base. What qualifications did he meet before being added to the mailing list? As an illustration, the starting point can be a lead magnet, a blog or social media post, a website feedback form, etc. Creating a subscriber journey will provide you with valuable insights into their goals and intentions, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of your SaaS email marketing campaigns.
Finally, we suggest that you track audience engagement in your mailing lists on a regular basis. This is yet another effective method for gaining a deeper understanding of your subscribers' pains, desires, and interests. Using this information, you will be able to develop an email marketing strategy with the most relevant and effective content.
How to automate email marketing for SaaS
Automation of email marketing is one of the key success factors for such campaigns. With their assistance, you will be able to generate more leads and increase the efficiency of mailings without requiring additional resources or incurring additional expenses.
The following tools will assist you in automating your SaaS email marketing platform:
- Trigger mailings. This type of email is sent automatically in response to a user action. After completing registration on a website or application, for instance, the subscriber will receive a welcome email. It also includes reactivation emails that can decrease user churn.
- Drip campaigns. Sending a series of emails at regular intervals automatically is a highly sought-after email marketing strategy. On this basis, you will be able to gradually build a relationship of trust with your service's subscribers in order to nudge them toward a purchase or other desired action.
- Dynamic Autonomy. Advanced trigger mailings allow you to respond more precisely and flexibly to a variety of user actions. Concurrently, multiple categories of SaaS email marketing templates are designed for various stages of the user journey and distinct target audience segments. Then, these campaigns are executed similarly to trigger mailings. As leads progress through the sales funnel, they must be transferred from one list to another. Additionally, dynamic automation can be used to qualify and score leads, for instance, to rank them based on the consumer loyalty index (NPS).
- Personalization. The weakness of automated mailings is the absence of a personalized approach to the recipient. To eliminate it, content personalization will assist you. Numerous popular SaaS email marketing platforms provide the necessary tools such as Drip. The most common use of this method is to automatically add the subscriber's name to the outgoing letter. Sending regular e-mails to users with their product usage statistics is a more complex but effective example of personalization. This also includes mailings containing personalized recommendations based on user actions or data.
Best SaaS email marketing strategies
Email marketing for SaaS products is not significantly different from other types of marketing campaigns, but it does have its own unique characteristics. Next, we will examine the most effective strategies for such promotion in the present day:
- Subdivide the base. The proper segmentation of the audience of subscribers is one of the most important factors in the success of mailings. It makes them more pertinent and targeted, aiding in the dissemination of advertising or other information to those who are definitely interested. Numerous mailing platforms offer the capability to segment the list based on variables such as demographics, location, industry, and profession. There are also more complex segmentation criteria, such as the extent to which the user interacts with the product.
- Determine the time. Sending emails at the optimal time is another crucial factor for the success of email marketing for SaaS companies. This factor has a direct bearing on the letter opening rate and other measures of their effectiveness. Multiple factors, such as the subscriber's time zone and your geographical location, determine the optimal timing for sending email campaigns. It can be determined through A/B testing of multiple mailing options. Collect and analyze data on email deliverability, open rate, and bounce rate after sending emails at various times of the day.
- Think about onboarding. The most prevalent example of SaaS email marketing is the welcome email. They are crucial for SaaS products, as it is crucial not only to inform the user about the benefits of the service, but also to instruct him on how to use it correctly. Effective onboarding improves customer retention and software adoption rates. In comparison to standard marketing emails, effective welcome emails can increase audience engagement by 33% (and open rates by 37%).
- Restore subscribers. You will be able to identify inactive users who do not interact with your mailings by analyzing the bounce rate (for example, do not open emails, delete them or mark them as spam). After that, you can send them various types of reactivation letters, such as "we miss you" campaigns, tutorials/guides or other useful content, discounts/promo codes/special offers, congratulations letters, etc. It is recommended to select multiple reactivation techniques and then test them sequentially. Consequently, you will be able to reduce the number of inactive subscribers and convert some of them into actual customers.
- Provide a choice. Allowing subscribers to choose which types of emails they wish to receive is an additional effective SaaS email marketing strategy. For instance, you can send a survey about preferred content via email to the entire database, process the responses, and segment the audience accordingly. This will allow you to increase the accuracy of your email targeting by sending primarily informative emails to one group and marketing emails to the other. This strategy can increase subscriber engagement and boost email marketing campaigns' conversion rates.
Final thoughts
Email marketing remains one of the most widely used methods for promoting and selling SaaS products. Mailing lists are considered critical to the industry's success, serving as a guide for customers throughout the sales funnel - from initial awareness to registration and payment. Effective mailing lists should perform various tasks, such as customer onboarding, direct sales, product and company information, subscriber retention, training, and more.
Fortunately, email marketing provides numerous tools and technologies to help achieve marketing goals, such as audience segmentation, preference identification, and optimal timing for email delivery. SaaS companies also rely on key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success, including registration numbers, conversion rates at different funnel stages, customer acquisition costs (CAC), average revenue per user (ARPU), average order value (AOV), average payments per time period (APC), monthly active users (MAU), and customer lifetime value (LTV).
If you want to take your SaaS email marketing to the next level, book a strategy call with our experts.
