The most efficient and direct method for businesses to communicate with their clients is email marketing. Even if social media campaigns may have impressive results, email is still a crucial part of any marketing plan.
Marketers in the B2B SaaS sectors are fully aware of the potential of email marketing. Delivering tailored, focused, and effective SaaS email marketing campaigns is made possible by omnichannel marketing automation tools, which provide B2B marketers more access to consumer data.
A significant 80% of SaaS companies consider email marketing crucial to their overall marketing strategy.
This post will take a closer look at nine high-converting SaaS email marketing examples that are flawless in every way, from their layout to their content.
What is Saas Email Marketing?
One of the most effective ways to help promote your product is through SaaS email marketing. SaaS email marketing may take many different forms. Still, it refers to all emails sent to clients who have made a purchase or to “subscribers” for various reasons.
Every email campaign can use different layouts and text styles, and each one might target a diverse audience and have distinct aims. The best part is that email is a constant; people still get and read it daily. It is also one of the most scalable and affordable marketing channels for any B2B SaaS.
Email marketing continues to be a powerful method of audience development and engagement even as other channels, such as paid advertising or social media, have gained quite some success over the past few years.
Scaling is a significant factor that SaaS companies must have in mind. People might send and receive emails daily but treat every email differently. In other words, sending regular emails to your audience doesn’t imply success.
Luckily, email marketing success is simple to monitor, and you can optimize your active campaigns to achieve better results. Email monitoring can serve as feedback to customers to understand their preferred communication.
That makes it simpler to identify what is working and what isn’t so that changes may be made as necessary. Email marketing may be a very efficient approach to increase sales, leads, and users whether you run a SaaS product or another service business.
Why do SaaS Businesses Need Email Marketing?
Long and complicated client journeys are typical for SaaS organizations. Marketers look for ways to reduce the time and effort required to move leads down the funnel to boost their income.
That’s where email marketing comes in. Powerful email campaigns can tremendously change the game for your SaaS firm and bring numerous benefits you couldn’t get from other marketing channels so quickly.
1. Boosts Website Traffic
Your website will likely convert users as more of your target demographic uses it. You may lead visitors who have previously expressed interest in your business to your website and nurture it with valuable content.
The powerful call-to-action buttons, distinguished from the rest of the email content by a distinctive, creative design to entice readers to click, can redirect readers to another page. This action can finally result in conversion if it is alluring, thrilling, and relevant to your subscribers’ requirements.
Getting the best possible results will require optimization of your website and providing a consistent consumer experience across all channels.
2. Increases Your ROI
For B2B SaaS companies, maintaining a good ROI can be complicated. However, you can guarantee that your income will keep increasing if you successfully nurture prospects during the decision stage.
Emails have a significant impact on this process. You can send timely advertising to prospects who are prepared to buy, but the information provided must be relevant to this level, and you should also consider providing some incentives.
You may invite them to a webinar where you showcase your most recent features or tell them about your risk-free trial.
3. Allows You to Become an Industry Leader
Consistent email outreach may help you differentiate yourself from the competition by promoting and informing your target audience about your business. Your email subscribers will support you as long as your material is genuine.
Create content, such as surveys, infographics, and checklists, to show clients that you’re ready to help them if you want to stay ahead of your competitors.
4. Personalizes Your Marketing Approach
Unlike social media and SEO, the value of email marketing lies in sharing personalized content with your audience by utilizing features like customized fields. For instance, you may include the recipient’s name in the email’s subject line and opening.
You can send highly targeted communications to your subscribers and prompt them to respond more quickly through marketing automation and email segmentation.
16 SaaS Email Marketing Examples Top Brands Use Today
Email is still an incredibly efficient way to communicate the value of your brand and boost customer engagement, especially for SaaS companies. According to a recent study, four of five SaaS marketers prefer giving up on social media rather than email marketing.
After all, quality email campaigns can generate millions of dollars for companies in the SaaS industry. So, the question is not if you should focus on building an email marketing strategy but how to focus on it correctly.
Let’s dive into the best examples of email marketing for SaaS companies to inspire you to create your campaigns. You can even use them as a resource when creating your email template.
As a social media marketing platform, Buffer has their way around their clients. Not only do they inform you of the status of your scheduled posts, but they go beyond that. Depending on the content you’re publishing on social media, Buffer will provide suggestions for your next posts.
In their email, Buffer also addresses what value this platform brings to your SaaS business. They remind their clients that ensuring they have multiple social media posts helps grow their community of followers.
Such an email can engage further existing customers as it continuously communicates the value of the product and how much Buffer cares about their customers. This can lead to customers strengthening their relationship with this social media tool and not abandoning it.
What makes this email successful:
- Suggestions on how to continue using the tool
- Clean email with only text
Key takeaways:
- Continuously communicate the value your product has for your customers.
- Provide additional ideas on how to make the most of your product.
Miro is an AI tool that helps automate and optimize processes. The company was organizing a webinar and communicating with the potential audience via email. This email provides a clear overview of all the information that will be communicated in the webinar. The main points are delivered in a bulleted list and bolded for a better impression.
Another thing to point out is that they’ve moved the CTA button to the top of their email. Typically, all emails have a CTA button at the bottom of the message. By doing this, Miro wanted to engage their email receivers from the first second they started reading the email.
The email was sent without any visual elements, ensuring that the information in it is straightforward and the attention is not divided. This also communicates that Miro is a leader in their industry that doesn’t have to try to hard to attract customers or, in this case, participants.
What makes this email successful:
- Bulleted list with webinar topics
- CTA at the top of the email
Key takeaways:
- With a clear, engaging message, you don’t have to worry about the design.
- Your most important points should be bolded and organized in a bulleted list.
- Add your CTA button at the top of your message.
This email from EngageBay inviting their existing customers to upgrade their accounts offers a lot to learn. Similar to the SaaS email example above, it is a text-based email. EngageBay informs their customers that they have limited time to upgrade to two subscription options.
What we like the most is that the email is written in the I-form instead of the company. This way, customers feel like they have received personalized treatment. Segmented and personalized email campaigns can generate up to 58% of total revenue, highlighting the importance of tailored content.
This increases the level of commitment as the customer is aware that a person wrote this email and that they should respond back.
Although this email doesn’t use a bulleted list or bolded words, putting the main information first ensures the email reader immediately understands what the offer is.
What makes this email successful:
- Limited-time offer for an upgrade
- Personalized approach to the customer
Key takeaways:
- Writing as a person instead of a company can increase engagement and response rate.
- Create urgency by informing the customer how much time they have to make the most of this offer.
This is an email for users who have signed up for Clearbit’s free trial. During the trial the company is communicating with potential customers, trying to show them the value of this product. This email offers guidance on where to find relevant information and how to maximize the use of Clearbit.
Clearbit also suggests to their free trial users to jump on a call with their platform experts if they need a specific type of integration. This email example is one of our favorites because it shows the clear opportunity many SaaS businesses miss out on.
If you offer a free trial, make sure you communicate with your potential customers during it. This can help you convert them into loyal customers.
What makes this email successful:
- Sharing valuable information on integrations
- Option to connect with a platform expert for special integrations
Key takeaways:
- Engage the users of your SaaS product during a free trial.
- Guide new users where to find relevant information for a better experience while exploring the product.
Folderly is a cold email platform that helps SaaS businesses engage their target audience from first impressions. Cold emails are a very challenging technique to succeed in, and Folderly addresses it at the beginning of the email.
However, they also remind their customers that cold emails allow them to make a strong first impression. After that, they highlight the value of knowing how successful your cold emails are. Knowing the open rate allows businesses to improve their email marketing strategy.
At the bottom of their email, Folderly shares a blog post on seven tips on how to ensure your emails are being read by your target audience.
What makes this email successful:
- Addressing pain points
- Sharing blog posts with valuable information
Key takeaways:
- State the pain point at the beginning of the email to create intrigue among readers.
- Explain directly how your SaaS product solves that pain point for them.
- Share valuable resources to establish yourself as an expert on the topic.
Reflect is a great tool for SaaS companies for taking meeting notes, brainstorming ideas, gathering sources like links and data, etc. All of this information can also be shared with the rest of your marketing team.
This email aims to share the most relevant information about the tool with its new users. Knowing that new users lack information, the Reflect app immediately addresses the versatility of this tool to motivate them to use it.
Reflect even shares that customers will need to make an upfront investment, showing transparency is very important for them.
What makes this email successful:
- Text-based email looks personalized
Key takeaways:
- Inform your new users of all the features your products offer.
- Address finances, as it’s one of the key determining factors when choosing a tool.
Not a lot of tools will have their CEO sending the welcome message to new users. It’s a great marketing tactic to show appreciation for each new client that comes along. In their welcome email, Podia shares a three-step process to guide the user through setting up their account.
Podia also links to their live support team to highlight that their customers have a few ways to communicate with the team. Ensuring new clients that each of their questions or concerns will be answered is very important at the beginning of the customer journey.
Also, at the end of the email, they invite their new clients to their live Q&A sessions with a registration link.
What makes this email successful:
- Step-by-step process of setting up the account
- Invitation to live Q&A session
Key takeaways:
- Use the name of your CEO or team member to create a more personalized approach.
- Guide your new users through the process of setting up their accounts with a step-by-step list.
Businesses occasionally extend free trials to give customers additional time to explore their software further and make a purchasing decision. Emails are an excellent way to communicate with trial users, without a doubt. Squarespace, a platform for website creation, provides a perfect example of a business that completely mastered the trial extension email copy.
As an email receiver, you are informed your free trial has expired in the first sentence. After this information, Squarespace shares its compassion for its audience’s busy lives and offers a 7-day trial extension.
This level of empathy demonstrates that the company cares about its clients and recognizes they are people with real lives. Beyond empathy, Squarespace offers a simple solution to extend the free trial by clicking on the ‘Upgrade Now’ button at the bottom of the email. As simple as it gets!
What makes this email successful:
- Headings invite email users to act
- Email is structured in a way to invite for an upgrade
Key takeaways:
- Show understanding of your audience’s pain points and provide a solution.
- Offer an efficient explanation of the reasons to upgrade.
- Create a straightforward copy and call to action.
A first impression is often the only opportunity some businesses get. That is why welcome emails are so crucial for any business. However, many SaaS companies miss out on that brilliant opportunity by sending dull welcome emails. Shopify provides a terrific example of what an excellent initial welcome email is.
Shopify lays the foundation for a long-lasting partnership by setting reasonable expectations and offering value immediately. In addition to thanking the consumer for selecting Shopify, the email is customized and lays out expectations for the future.
What makes this email successful:
- Celebrating a new milestone with new users
- Clear guidance on next steps to make the most of your account
Key takeaways:
- Create personalized emails (e.g., mentioning the recipient’s name) to build a relationship.
- Thank your loyal subscribers for using your services or subscribing to your newsletters.
- Outline the reasons for purchase.
Once you subscribe to Monday.com, a project management platform, you will immediately get an onboarding email. An onboarding email guides how to make the most of the product and is incredibly valuable for a smooth onboarding procedure. The main objective of an onboarding email is to reduce any friction a new user may have when they attempt to use the product for the first time.
As a SaaS business owner, consider separating your onboarding and the welcome email instead of combining them into one. The difference is that you can only send one welcome email, while onboarding emails can be sent several times for different purposes. That is just what Monday.com did, and it produced one of the finest onboarding sequences we’ve ever seen.
What makes this email successful:
- Using video instead of text-based emails
- Engaging and creative video thumbnail
Key takeaways:
- Keep your email copy short rather than lengthy.
- Provide your technical explanations in a video to help your audience understand better, especially in cases of a product update or release.
- Add hyperlinks to your mobile or web app to increase the conversion rate.
Maintaining momentum after a customer’s free trial expires is crucial, and sending a nurturing email outlining their current alternatives is vital. The nurturing email that Basecamp, a project management tool, sends to customers as their free trial period is about to expire serves as a fantastic illustration of an efficient email approach.
Creating trust with the consumers and removing any uncertainty they may have are the two main goals of such emails. These two factors significantly influence whether a potential consumer becomes a paying customer.
In Basecamp’s email, the trial’s current stage, the necessary steps, and what will happen to your work are all clearly mentioned in the opening paragraphs. This email shows a detailed description to purchase the solution and guarantees you can cancel the subscription at any time beneath the clickable button. Lastly, Basecamp provided a link if you have questions and wish to contact customer support.
What makes this email successful:
- Using a trial expiration email to invite for an upgrade
- List all benefits of a paid version of the platform
Key takeaways:
- Cultivate potential customers by offering them alternative solutions.
- Describe all relevant advantages of a subscription.
- Describe the entire subscription procedure.
An email marketing platform should provide excellent marketing emails, and Litmus is well-spent. The attention to email design, especially the animation usage, helps differentiate such emails from other marketing emails you receive in your inbox. Litmus knows that animation can quickly grab one’s attention, but only if it’s used subtly and doesn’t distract recipients from critical information.
Their lively headline, created by the swiping motion, allows their customers also to analyze their emails. By using animations this way, the company did a great job outlining the main points of its email.
What makes this email successful:
- Several valuable resources for the platform users in one email
Key takeaways:
- Spend some time on your email design because visuals matter.
- Use contrast to allow your readers to find information easily.
- Use white space to separate different portions of your email.
People enjoy acknowledging their accomplishments, and Canva knows how to make it work in an email marketing campaign. This online graphic design tool highlighted the milestone of ten completed designs to inspire users while also recognizing the user’s current accomplishment.
The prominent CTA encourages the receiver to share their accomplishments on social media, which may introduce a larger audience to Canva’s platform and encourage current users to use it and produce more designs. That is another reason why it’s an excellent SaaS email marketing example.
Celebrating milestones and rewarding users in the same way as Canva demonstrates to your clients how much you value their continued use of your software. Additionally, giving them a new objective or an incentive motivates them to keep utilizing it.
What makes this email successful:
- Celebrating users’ milestones
- Gamifying the user experience motivates them to continue using the tool
Key takeaways:
- Notice and reward your audience’s milestones and achievements.
- Include social media in your re-engagement emails to build your audience on relevant platforms.
- Set long-term goals to encourage your customers to continue using your platform.
Hosting virtual events like webinars has several advantages, including increased audience engagement level, brand exposure, and authority building. But you can only accomplish those objectives if you get people excited enough to come. Creating a friendly webinar invitation is essential if you want people to sign up for the event.
Hubspot organized the online conference Inbound 2021, and their email invitation is one of the most fantastic email examples of how to do it well. The email was personalized, the content was informal and humorous, and the valuable information was explicitly highlighted. By highlighting one of the event’s premium speakers, his experience, and the priceless insights you can gain by attending, HubSpot also capitalizes on the well-known Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).
What makes this email successful:
- Highlighting the real value of your event
- Sharing different options to access the event
Key takeaways:
- Display all the benefits for the event attendees.
- Showcase your speaker lineup to create more engagement.
- Use phrases like “exclusive” and “unique” to evoke FOMO or urgency.
Every company has customers that often remain inactive. Launch a targeted campaign to get those users to return and give it another try rather than just giving up on them. Chanty, a team collaboration solution, showed a fantastic email type that engages those subscribers.
They enable quick access to the platform via a CTA button and inform the subscriber of the advantages of utilizing Chanty.
What makes this email successful:
- Creative, engaging tone of voice
- Providing benefits of the tool in an organized way
Key takeaways:
- Don’t abandon your users and find a way to make them interested in your product.
- Segment your audience by using different approaches in your emails.
- Spend time thinking about how to communicate with your least engaged users.
You might assume that a welcome email is the first email you should send to your audience. However, it is the second email your subscribers get, and it should be as welcoming and educational as possible.
You can compose emails in your business voice using jargon, interactive elements, jokes, etc. A welcome email allows you to present yourself as a unique brand that cares about its customers and wants to build a lasting relationship with them.
Wistia, a commercial video hosting platform, is an excellent example of how to include a reminder in your welcome email. However, the main element that makes the message effective is not its aesthetic component but its catchiness.
What makes this email successful:
- Using rhymes and poetry to welcome their new clients
Key takeaways:
- Provide essential information about your service for beginners.
- Seek ways to spark curiosity instead of giving vital information about your product.
- Write creatively if an opportunity presents itself and move users with a delightful copy.
Types of SaaS Marketing Emails
Email marketing for software as a service (SaaS) companies is built on giving clients a thorough grasp of your product. It can also establish communication with your potential and existing clients. These emails need to be engaging, informative, and brief.
There are different types of emails for SaaS companies to try out. Still, your email marketing strategy should include these crucial emails that can improve customer engagement and brand loyalty:
- Account verification/confirmation emails: Once your subscribers sign up, you should continue the conversation by asking them to verify the account.
- Welcome emails: Following up after your new users interact with your product helps you to introduce the service, stimulate the next data-driven actions, or assure them they made the right choice.
- Milestone emails: Expressing gratitude to loyal customers can improve engagement, whether when a user has been using your product or something they achieved within your software.
- Trial ending reminder emails: As a free trial is about to expire, you should suggest to the user purchasing the solution by reminding them of all the valuable product features.
- Reactivation emails for disengaged users: Find a way to interest inactive subscribers by explaining reasons to come back and give your software another try.
- Product update emails: Most SaaS solutions go through an upgrade every once in a while, and sharing that with your customers is incredibly beneficial.
How to Build an Email Marketing Strategy for a SaaS Business?
A good strategy will improve all your email marketing metrics, such as: conversion rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, mailing list growth rates, churn rates, etc. Since clients can quickly join online and begin utilizing their services, SaaS businesses make great use of email marketing.
They may establish direct message touchpoints with their audience through email marketing. Additionally, it offers a direct communication channel regarding any industry, company, or product updates.
When creating an email marketing strategy, there are specific steps to ensure you maximize ROI with the type of emails mentioned above.
1. Set your email marketing goals
Setting clear goals is essential to get the most out of your email marketing campaigns. How else will you be able to determine whether your strategy is effective? Understanding which action you want from your user can help you choose the objectives you want to achieve.
When setting your objectives, you will also need to align these email aspects with your overall strategy:
- Email copy,
- Email recipient,
- Call to action,
- Key performance indicators (KPIs).
2. Get to know your subscribers
You will be better prepared to meet subscribers’ demands if you know their identities, which implies going beyond their name and email address. While focusing on your email subscribers, remember that they might or might be different from your buyer persona.
Below is the list of the questions you should be interested in asking about your email subscribers:
- Why have they subscribed to your emails?
- What is their basic demographics (i.e., location, company details, job title, etc.)
- What is the biggest pain point your product can help them solve?
3. Tailor your content according to customer journey phases
Knowing where every one of your leads is in the customer journey can help you better tailor the email text to move them forward. For instance, if your subscriber is still considering the offer, you may send them emails outlining how your product will help them without breaking the bank.
Creating effective email sequences is critical for Saas firms. The most typical email formats for subscribers at different points in the customer journey are the following:
- Awareness – welcome emails, getting started
- Consideration – reasons to buy, customer testimonials
- Purchase – trial ending reminder, thank you emails
- Retention – product tips and hacks, feedback emails
4. Automate your email marketing efforts
A substantial 77% of SaaS companies employ automated email sequences for lead nurturing, enhancing efficiency and ensuring timely communication.
Establishing a personal connection with your email list subscribers might be challenging, particularly if you have thousands of them. That is where email automation is helpful.
Using email marketing automation, you may set up drip programs, track key performance indicators (open rates, CTR), and trigger emails that help you personalize the prospect’s brand experience depending on their website activity.
5. Use a consistent brand tone for your SaaS emails
In a B2B SaaS buyer journey, prospective customers communicate via email with various members of your company (sales, engineering team, support team). To establish authority and trust, be sure to follow SaaS branding principles.
To do this, your SaaS brand must have a consistent brand voice. If you employ an informal tone in your email communication, ensure the entire team does so. That will ensure that the tone of your future emails is maintained regardless of who sends them.
Common Email Marketing Mistakes Every B2B SaaS Business Should Avoid
While email is a channel that many organizations find compelling, many email campaigns fail for various reasons, such as stale content and poor planning. Here is a list of the most typical email marketing errors made by businesses in this industry:
- Sending cold, hard-sell promotional emails to your subscribers,
- Not optimizing your emails for mobile,
- Ignoring your sender reputation and ending up in a spam folder,
- Sending general emails regardless of the customer journey phase,
- Not including clear, simple calls to action in your emails,
- Neglecting data privacy laws and recommendations in countries your business operates,
- Writing uncreative, low-engaging subject lines and email headers.
The Bottom Line
Email is the most scalable marketing tool available, making it highly beneficial to your company. You must use email marketing to its full potential to establish and expand your SaaS company. You must understand your consumer base and their problems to make the most of email marketing.
Also, you must understand the primary purpose of contacting your subscribers. Creating a killer email campaign becomes much simpler if you are aware of these factors.
