Maximizing User Engagement: Effective Email Marketing Strategies for SaaS Platforms

By Gabriele Meliūnaitė Updated on February 6, 2024

1. Setting Clear Goals for An Effective SaaS Email Marketing Strategy

The first step towards planning your SaaS email marketing campaign is to set clear-cut, achievable goals. You can’t reach for the stars right away; there have to be specified goals for each facet of your campaign. Let’s talk more about setting goals for your SaaS email campaigns in the following sections. 

Defining objectives for lead generation, user engagement, and conversions on SaaS businesses

It’s easy to get attracted to the high ROI (Return On Investment) that email marketing brings. The ROI for emails is at $36 for every $1 spent, but the path to getting there is not a straight road. When doing email marketing for SaaS products and services, the three-fold step immediately comes to mind. You have to generate leads, engage your users, and convert as many as you can.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should know where your niche lies beforehand. In a promotional channel that is as personal as email marketing, you want to focus on your niche customer base, rather than rolling the dice with a random audience.

Establishing measurable goals for tracking campaign success

Again, the key is to come up with achievable goals that will take you to the next step. For example, you can say you want to increase your traffic from email campaigns by 10% in the next three months, rather than wanting to improve your conversion rates right away. This way, you’re establishing measurable goals that you can easily monitor throughout a particular email marketing campaign.

Moreover, there are different email marketing tools that can help you monitor and optimize your campaign performance. Mailchimp and HubSpot come to mind, and there are also other email marketing tools that offer free versions of their solutions.

2. Creating Educational Content For A SaaS Business

One of the most effective and engaging types of content for e-mails and newsletters is educational content. Since the SaaS niche has a lot of technical terms and jargon that not everyone is familiarized with, educational e-mails will make your audiences and current or potential paying customers to feel that your business cares about the customer.

It also passes a message of transparency between the company and its audience, turning them into an authority in their niche.

Some of the best techniques to use for educational content are trivia quizzes, ‘did you know’ questions, videos and content divided in bullet points. You can also show practical examples on how the use of the concept you are trying to educate your audience aligns with the product you are trying to sell.

So, how else can you create engaging educational content which can be sent throughout email marketing campaigns?

Case studies and success stories

Share real-life examples of how your solutions has helped other SaaS businesses overcome challenges or achieve specific goals. Highlighting tangible results can effectively demonstrate the value of your product to potential clients.

Expert interviews or Q&A sessions

Invite industry experts or thought leaders for interviews or Q&A sessions related to topics relevant to your SaaS niche. This not only adds credibility to your content but also offers valuable insights to your audience.

How-to guides and tutorials

Create step-by-step guides or video tutorials that walk users through common tasks or features of your SaaS business and products. Practical demonstrations can help users better understand how to leverage your solution effectively.

Industry insights and trends

Keep your audience informed about the latest trends, developments, and best practices within your SaaS niche. Sharing industry insights demonstrates your company’s expertise and positions you as a trusted resource for valuable information, turning them eventually into paying customers.

Interactive content formats

Experiment with interactive content formats such as interactive infographics, calculators, or interactive whitepapers. These engaging formats can capture users’ attention and encourage active participation, enhancing the overall learning experience.

Webinars and workshops

Host live webinars or virtual workshops on topics of interest to your target audience. This allows for direct interaction with participants, enabling you to address their specific questions and concerns in real-time.

User-generated content campaigns

Encourage your customers to share their experiences, tips, and insights related to using your SaaS product. User-generated content adds authenticity and fosters a sense of community among your audience.

3. Building a High-Quality Email List for SaaS

As we said before, increasing conversion rate is the priority of doing email marketing for SaaS. Website traffic, even organic ones, won’t mean much if you’re not converting actual customers. Growing your newsletter subscribers is not the endpoint; you should focus on actually having a positive impact on the customer journey.

Exploring ethical and effective list building strategies

Efficiency is the name of the game in building a high-quality email list. As much as possible, you would want more ROI with the work and expenses that you’re putting in. If you’re using email automation software, you’re not only paying for the software itself as you also need to pay your engineering and marketing teams.

You want to be as cost-effective as possible, but don’t give in to unethical email marketing practices. The allure of unethical practices is only short-term and will only do more harm to your brand visibility. Purchasing email lists without consent and diving into clickbait strategies are examples of unethical email marketing tactics that you need to avoid at all costs. 

Utilizing lead magnets, opt-in forms, and subscription incentives

When doing SaaS email marketing, you don’t just use words and promises to entice potential subscribers. They need some kind of proof, just like the ‘free taste’ strategy that food companies and restaurants sometimes employ. 

In SaaS email marketing, this free taste strategy comes in the form of lead magnets. The purpose of lead magnets is to encourage people to provide you with their contact information, essentially getting them into your email list, to potentially turn them into paying customers.

Examples of these lead magnets include:

• Free trials and product samples
• Free webinar or eBook
• Free audit or assessment
• Exclusive access to new products and features

Your users can know more about your lead magnets through opt-in forms, which are the website pop-ups or buttons where they would enter their email addresses or other contact information. Having said all these, here are two things that you need to make sure of: a highly-visible opt-in form and customer-centric subscription incentives.   

Ensuring compliance with email marketing regulations

As is the case in all marketing channels, email marketing is also bound by certain rules and regulations, most of which have minor variations depending on your geographic location. Legal compliance is often overlooked in email marketing, so be careful not to make this same mistake.

Three of the most prominent email marketing regulations include the following:

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (United States)

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act, is a United States federal law that sets the rules for commercial email messages. Enacted on December 16, 2003, the law establishes requirements for commercial email senders, gives recipients the right to opt-out of receiving commercial emails, and outlines penalties for violations.

Canada’s Anti-Spam Regulation (Canada)

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation aims to protect Canadian consumers and businesses from the negative impacts of spam and deceptive online practices, promote trust and confidence in electronic commerce, and ensure a level playing field for legitimate businesses engaging in electronic marketing.

Enacted in 2014, CASL establishes rules for the sending of commercial electronic messages (CEMs), including emails, text messages, and social media messages.

General Data Protection Regulation (Europe)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive data protection law that was enacted by the European Union (EU) in 2018.

It replaced the Data Protection Directive of 1995 and significantly strengthened data protection and privacy rights for individuals within the European Economic Area (EEA), which includes the EU member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.

While they vary in bits and pieces, these email marketing regulations have the similar main purpose of protecting people’s information and rights.

4. Crafting Compelling SaaS Email Content

When doing SaaS email marketing, you’ll be lucky to have a 10% response rate. In the world of cold emails, you must accept that you won’t get a response from a large chunk of your audience. However, even a minor improvement in response rate is a big step forward, and you can achieve that growth by crafting compelling SaaS email content.

Creating personalized and relevant content for SaaS audience

Currently, email marketing is not just a random process anymore. Through the availability of subscriber data, you have useful information to leverage when it comes to personalizing your emails. While email marketing templates are very helpful for the most part, SaaS email personalization still needs your human touch.

For example, segmenting your emails based on audience geographic is something that email templates can’t do. You may already have a niche SaaS audience but remember that they still have different interests based on their age, gender, and buyer persona. We’ll talk more about audience segmentation as we dive deeper into SaaS email marketing.

So, personalizing your emails isn’t about including the name of your subscriber. It’s also about creating content that is timely and relevant for them.

Designing attention-grabbing subject lines and preview text 

Consider your email’s subject line as your two-second audition into a subscriber’s attention. No matter how good your entire letter is, it won’t matter if your audience won’t open it. And they will only open it if you have an attention-grabbing subject line.

Don’t be intimidated by this challenge; you don’t have to be overly creative to design an attention-grabbing subject line. The key is to give them what they want right away. Are you offering a free subscription period as a perk? Include that in the subject line. Or are you giving them early access to a new product? Include that too.

Tailoring content to different stages of the customer journey

According to HubSpot, 80% of successful cold email sales happen after the 5th email. You can’t hit the jackpot on the first try when doing email marketing for SaaS products and services. There should be a concerted effort to re-engage with your audience, which you can do by analyzing customer journeys.

Customer journey mapping is such a big aspect of SaaS email marketing. Concisely, you use subscriber data, as well as market trends, to map out a series of relevant emails for your audience. This way, they know that you’re serious about using your product to help their cause, something that could improve your campaign’s click-through rates.

5. Design and Layout for SaaS Email Campaigns

While you can always do everything from scratch, you also have the option to use SaaS email marketing templates. These templates have already proven their worth in the game, and you just must optimize them based on the goals you set. 

Optimizing email templates for mobile responsiveness

If you don’t consider mobile responsiveness as a crucial factor in your SaaS email marketing campaign, you’ll lose out on tons of opportunities. Here’s a glaring stat to back up this claim: according to a study from Content Marketing Institute 81% of people now prefer to open and read their emails via mobile devices.

So, it is understood that you need your email campaign to be mobile-responsive. Having a set of mobile-specific HTML and CSS coding could help make your email layout mobile-friendly, especially if you have multimedia elements. 

One thing to take note of is that not all mobile devices will show your layout the same way. Different operating systems like Apple and Android may vary on this, so that’s something that you should also consider.

Incorporating visuals, branding, and clear CTAs

When done the right way, incorporating visuals and multimedia elements will help you hit two birds with just one stone: grab your readers’ attention and boost brand awareness. As much as possible, your email visuals should align with your branding, as this will help people connect to your brand.

In email marketing, these visuals are creative, attention-grabbing boxes that present your CTA (Call to Action). You can be as playful as you want with your graphics, but don’t cross the line of having too many screen elements. We’ll discuss more of this below. 

Balancing text and images for optimal readability

Text should still dominate the emails you sent out. People still want to see words to better understand your context, plus there’s always the chance that multimedia elements might not load properly on their devices.

In SaaS email marketing, there should be a proper balance between your text and images. For optimal readability, many suggest the 60% text and 40% image rule. 

Moreover, don’t put images that don’t connect with your message. Readers will just get confused by it, so you might be losing out on a potential engagement and conversion.

6. Segmentation and Personalization Strategies 

A while ago, we touched a bit on the segmentation topic, which is an effective way to personalize your emails. Opting for email templates is definitely a time-saving resource, but these templates can’t do everything for you. You should also take the time to study your audience, so you could add a personalized touch to the emails you send out.

Segmenting email lists based on user behavior and preferences

There are many ways to segment your email lists based on user behavior and preferences. The easiest way is through demographic data, which includes age and gender. For SaaS email marketing, the important demographics to consider could be the nature of their work and position, along with income level.

Along with demographics, here are other ways to segment your email lists:

• Conducting in-app or in-website surveys
• Looking at customers’ previous purchases
• Studying user behavior on your website

Once you have the data in your hands, the next step is to personalize your emails according to each segment. This way, you’re driving a customer-centric campaign, instead of just hoping that your emails will hit a certain target.

Personalizing subject lines, content, and offers for higher engagement

Do you want a higher click-through rate for your campaign? Include your reward or offer in the subject line. Do you need more engagement and website traffic coming from your emails? Personalize your content according to each audience segment. 

Personalizing subject lines, content, and offers will help increase your click-through and engagement rates. Here are several ways that you can give your emails a personalized touch:

• Mentioning the recipient’s name
• Asking a relevant question to drive curiosity
• Adding positive customer reviews and testimonials
• Writing a solution for your customers’ pain points

SaaS email marketing is a two-way street; you need more engagement from your audience, and they need to know how you could help their cause. This should be your guiding principle moving forward.

Dynamic content and merge tags for individualized experiences

By now, you’re thinking that email marketing personalization requires lots of man hours to complete. But you don’t have to do everything manually, like when adding a customer’s name to a personalized email. Merge tags exist to do that for you.

With the help of merge tags, adding dynamic and personalized content just got easier. If you’re using email marketing software, they have merge tag options where you can automate personalization points like customer name and unique discount or referral codes. You can add these merge tags on every part of your email, including the subject line, preview, and the main body.

7. A/B Testing and Optimization in SaaS Email Marketing

The term A/B test is commonplace in the world of marketing, and SaaS email marketing is not an exception. You can’t rely on just one approach and expect that it will work right away. You’ll hit the jackpot if it does, but every email marketing campaign needs to go through stages of trial and error. 

Experimenting with different subject lines, content, and CTAs

For the most part, A/B testing in email marketing involves subject lines, content, and CTAs. The subject line is very pivotal, as this is your first and impression to the readers. You might want to try different wordings and length for your subject lines, and monitor which ones are producing a higher click-through rate.

CTAs are also viable instruments for A/B testing, especially if you use multimedia elements as your opt-in form. When doing these testing phases, you’ll be surprised to see how minor variations can lead to major improvements. Simple changes in word order, additions of emojis, and text length might lead to higher click-through rates and engagements.

Analyzing A/B test results to refine future campaigns

The next step after launching your A/B tests is to track the results. There must be a consistent emphasis on campaign monitoring, especially if you visualize similar promotional content in the future. Tracking your A/B testing results offers tons of benefits, including the following:

• Gain data-driven insights of your subscribers’ interests and behavior
• Lessen CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) by focusing your content on products that have higher engagements
• Helps point your product development process in the right direction

Of course, you must give each campaign variation ample time to mature before doing a full analysis. 

Implementing continuous optimization for improved performance 

With the ever-changing nature of consumer interests and tendencies, optimizing your SaaS email marketing campaigns is also a continuous process. Even if you have found more success in a particular test, you can’t say for sure that it will still be successful several months later. 

Along with monitoring your email subscribers’ behavior, there’s also the need to align your strategy to the current movements in the market. There’s no shame in getting brilliant ideas from your competitors if you bring something more unique to the table.

8. Automation and Drip Campaigns for SaaS

When considering your customer journey, an email drip campaign could do wonders. Drip campaign is a modern email marketing strategy that sends automated, timely emails to your subscribers. Read more below to find out how drip campaigns could help you achieve your SaaS email marketing goals.

Implementing automated workflows for lead nurturing and onboarding

When you successfully generate leads, obviously the work doesn’t stop there. You must nurture these leads and communicate with your potential customers in a timely and relevant way. You can offer free trials, access to exclusive posts, or informative solutions to their pain points. 

This is where drip campaign enters the picture, as it can integrate automated workflows to help you streamline lead nurturing and onboarding. These workflows could include actions that will guide your email subscriber into an actual purchase or product subscription.

Drip campaigns for targeted user engagement and re-engagement

Another benefit of having drip campaigns is to increase your engagement rate. In a SaaS business model, it’s more efficient to encourage existing customers to purchase or subscribe again, as compared to the acquisition costs of onboarding a new customer. 

Drip campaigns could help you automate messages for customer re-engagement. If one of your previous customers hasn’t subscribed or purchased for some time, a simple nudge could get them back on track. Through a drip campaign, you can provide these customers with information on new product features or special holiday discounts and deals.

Behavior-based triggers for timely and relevant email delivery

Your drip campaign is based on behavioral triggers that make your automated messages more personalized and relevant. Also termed as “behavioral segmentation”, these triggers are based on the actions that your customers take, most particularly on your website.

So, when doing SaaS email marketing, you must take note of these particular user actions:

• Form submissions
• Product clicks
• Purchase history
• Survey answers
• Conversations with customer support

Monitoring these behavior-based triggers will help personalize your messages, which would then make your drip campaign more effective.

9. Analyzing Email Campaign Performance

As we’ve mentioned before, it’s exceedingly rare for your email campaign to work at an optimum level on the first try. Successful campaigns go through growing pains to address weak links, which you can identify by analyzing your email campaign performance.

Tracking key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions

As much as you identify key metrics when promoting your product, the same action takes place in analyzing your SaaS email marketing campaign. You can’t optimize everything in the first phase; you need to address initial pain points that will take your campaign to the next step. For example, you should prioritize optimizing the rate at which subscribers open your messages, then move on to focusing on your content.

Having said that, here are several key metrics that SaaS companies typically monitor in their email marketing campaign:

• Delivery rate 
• Open rate 
• Click-through rate 
• Bounce rate 
• Forward rate 
• Unsubscribe rate 
• Subscriber behavior
• Conversion rate

Measuring ROI and attributing email marketing impact to revenue

It takes a portion of your resources to launch a successful SaaS email marketing campaign. Of course, you’d want to justify this marketing spend and you can do that by measuring your ROI. However, measuring your email marketing ROI is not as straightforward as it seems. 

With multiple marketing channels in the digital space, you need to pinpoint your measuring tools in the right direction. Fortunately, there are tools that offer revenue analysis as one of their solutions. Tracking solutions like Google Analytics allow ESP (Email Service Provider) integrations so you can monitor your ROI.

Using data insights to make informed decisions and adjustments

Now that you have tracked your marketing spend and other key metrics, the next step is to make your adjustments. Measuring and analyzing your SaaS email marketing campaign’s performance would be useless if you’re not willing to adjust and adapt. 

This is why A/B testing is so crucial in email marketing. It gives you a chance to test different variations simultaneously, allowing you to analyze performances in the same context. 

10. Adapting to Future Trends in SaaS Email Marketing

As is the case in other digital marketing channels, SaaS email marketing will also go through various optimizations thanks to technological trends. AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) will be at the center of these trends, as you’ll find out in the sections below.

Exploring AI-driven email personalization and predictive analytics

The value of AI in SaaS email marketing is that it can recognize patterns. This capability allows AI to automate your email personalization process based on customer data and behavior. Moreover, doing A/B testing with AI could streamline your analysis and produce more accurate results. Its ability to do predictive analytics could help you plan a more efficient strategy for future email marketing campaigns.

Embracing interactive email elements for enhanced engagement

Interaction is still at the topmost focus of email marketing, especially currently where many people receive thousands of emails in each period. The future of email marketing lies in interactive elements, which is more than just incorporating multimedia elements to your messages.

As guided by your segmentation data, crafting an interactive email involves actionable strategies. Offering small rewards when your subscribers participate in mini games or quizzes could help increase your engagement rate. 

Staying updated with evolving email marketing regulations

Abiding by email marketing regulations becomes a “trend” because you must keep an eye on any changes. Information confidentiality is at the heart of these regulations, the main reason GDPR took effect in 2018. Building an email list based on unethical practices will only do you more harm in the long run, so it doesn’t hurt to have a steady growth centered on regulated practices.

Best E-Mail Marketing Tools For SaaS

Omnisend

Omnisend’s objective is to support businesses by providing a straightforward automation tool for SMS marketing and eCommerce marketing. It is a very useful tool for any SaaS business who wants an effective e-mail tool for sending campaigns.

The company seamlessly integrates with a wide range of eCommerce platforms and uniquely incorporates loyalty, review, and helpdesk platforms to initiate marketing campaigns that respond to customer behavior.

Mailmodo

Mailmodo represents a modern, comprehensive email service provider designed to revolutionize the email marketing strategies for SaaS businesses. At the heart of Mailmodo’s offering lies its unique selling proposition: interactive AMP emails that elevate recipient engagement by providing an application-like experience.

It also provides a user-friendly drag-and-drop template builder, empowering users to craft personalized email templates effortlessly, without the need for coding expertise.

Furthermore, Mailmodo facilitates automated email campaigns, enables targeted email distribution, offers robust performance measurement tools, and enhances email deliverability, ensuring your messages reach their intended audience effectively.

HubSpot

For SaaS businesses seeking robust marketing solutions, HubSpot emerges as a standout recommendation. Positioned as a comprehensive marketing automation tool, HubSpot caters specifically to B2B service companies, offering an array of features designed to optimize marketing efforts.

Central to HubSpot’s appeal is its integrated CRM system, providing a dedicated platform for managing customer relationships and streamlining communication. Moreover, HubSpot equips users with sophisticated landing page-building tools, empowering businesses to create captivating and conversion-focused landing pages effortlessly.

What sets HubSpot apart is its Omnichannel marketing automation capabilities, allowing businesses to orchestrate cohesive and personalized marketing campaigns across multiple channels. Leveraging Behavioral triggers, HubSpot enables targeted outreach based on user actions and preferences, enhancing engagement and driving conversions.

MailerLite

For SaaS businesses seeking budget-friendly yet powerful email marketing solutions, MailerLite emerges as a top contender.

Renowned for its affordability, MailerLite offers a comprehensive suite of marketing features essential for crafting impactful marketing funnels and achieving substantial returns on investment. Particularly suited for beginners and small-scale projects, MailerLite provides a user-friendly interface coupled with robust functionality.

MailerLite’s combination of affordability, feature-rich functionality, and user-friendly design makes it an ideal choice for SaaS businesses looking to optimize their email marketing efforts without breaking the bank.

MailChimp

MailChimp stands out as a leading choice for email marketing and automation solutions. Leveraging advanced AI-powered data analysis of vast email datasets, MailChimp offers personalized recommendations tailored to each recipient, enhancing campaign effectiveness.

With MailChimp, businesses can seamlessly integrate content automation, customer targeting and segmentation, and a wide array of third-party software integrations. This comprehensive suite of features empowers SaaS businesses to execute smooth and effective email marketing campaigns, driving engagement and fostering customer relationships.

If you want to find a more extensive list of SaaS email marketing strategy tools here.

Conclusion

Doing email marketing for SaaS products will take you through different phases that will test your creativity and patience. Crafting a customer-centric campaign takes months of studying trends within your niche audience and the market itself. Moreover, you also have to consider the technological trends that surround SaaS email marketing.

But then again, the only way to optimize a campaign is by going through various trial-and-error phases. Once you have polished and streamlined every bit and piece, you’ll see your email marketing campaign take off in no time.