Part 1 of the post is here.
THE EMAIL SEQUENCES YOU’LL NEED
SaaS businesses have the following mechanics and customer experience milestones:
Sign-up: an initial account creation
Activation (onboarding): after product discovery there is or there is not an Aha moment when the user perceives the value of the product
Conversion (upgrade): when a user swipes their credit card and purchases a product
Retention (re-purchase): when they renew the subscription (monthly or annual)
Referral: when a user recommends your product to other prospects
The job of an email marketer is to speed up the transition from one milestone to the next. Different sequences require different tones, targetings, and goals.
| The goal | The tone | Key emails | Important |
Sign-up | To convince of the unique value of the product | Laid back | Welcome email | |
Activation | To establish product value and make sure users achieve their desired outcome with your product | Informational and straight to the point | Onboarding emails | You need to capitalize on the excitement of the sign-up momentum. If users delay in getting started, chances are they won’t get around to using the product. P.S. Think about the plan for users who don't activate. |
Conversion | To drive conversions by confirming product value and capitalizing the momentum if they did activate | A bit pushy, salesy | Upgrade email | Think about approaching those users who decide to stay on a free plan or give up on their trial |
Retention | To continue reminding people of the tremendous value they are getting from your product | May vary | Feature expansion, transactional emails, or summary emails. A sequence can last forever | Expansion is a part of the retention phase. Think about trying to move customers from monthly subscriptions to annual or/and to a more advanced and expensive plan. This will improve both, your cash flow and reduce the churn rate. |
Referral | | Casual and appreciative | Run NPS surveys. Ask your promoters for referrals or/and reviews. This email can be sent out in parallel with other sequences. | |
WELCOME AND ONBOARDING SEQUENCES
Though they need to work hand-in-hand its recommended to differentiate two types of communication:
Product bumpers: onboarding tours, checklists, tooltips, in-app messages or progress bars - which help users adopt product usage in the application itself, and
Conversational bumpers: email and sales outreaches - which prompt users to come back to the product
1. The email address confirmation email
Rarely worth the friction they introduce. Users are signing up to use your product. They are starting to discover your product functionalities. Asking them to leave your product, open their inbox, and click a link to come back to your product adds little value for them.
2. The welcome email
The general idea is to reinforce your users’ decision to try your product and drive momentum by setting the expectations for what’s coming next. This can be done through:
A personal reach out opening a door for support “Hey, I’m Elena, thanks for signing up, don't hesitate if you have any questions”
Driving a user to try a single most important functionality (which should lead to the main Aha moment)
Proving an overview of the product’s benefits
Showcasing a certain product use case
With welcome emails you want to make sure that they set the right tone and drive the right behavior, sending users on their way to activation.
Every welcome email should have a specific goal, for instance, “Download the app”, “Connect your account” or “Import your data” - don't waste this opportunity!
Send your welcome email as soon as a user signs up (after 90 min it will go cold).
3. The onboarding email
Onboarding emails are about:
Moving users closer to their desired outcome
Creating the habit of using your product
Helping users experience product value so that they, eventually, become product subscribers
Reducing the friction of using your product
Onboarding emails have to bridge the gap between your users’ desired outcomes and the value they will get from using your product. This is often done by demonstrating the product value through:
Use cases
Product benefits
Case studies or customer stories
Since the first few emails will get the most opens, and users won't typically open all your emails, it's a good idea to front-load your series with your best arguments - the value drives with the most potential to get your product used (and your emails opened). To accelerate sales and increase conversions you have to be aggressive with your emails in the first days of your user cycle.
A few things to consider as you set up your welcome and onboarding sequence:
One email, one CTA
Try to link as far as possible inside your product
Get to know your users before starting to get too funny with your messaging
Open rates will decrease, it's normal. The important thing is that your sequence sustains a base level of performance.
Fact: Users, especially in B2B, value proximity. Sales-assisted onboarding - when salespeople contact freemium leads - converts almost 3.5 times more than self-served onboarding.
A typical pattern for email onboarding is to send a welcome email at the time of sign-up, follow it up the next day with an onboarding email, then send emails every other day.
Start from the top and start testing. Once your welcome emails start driving product engagement, add your first onboarding email. Once your first onboarding email also increases engagement, add the next email and keep going.
The first 30-40 days of your user cycle are crucial. But you definitely want to follow up for the first 90 days after the sign-up, well after the trial ends. As long as your onboarding emails add to the overall performance and usefulness of your series, you can keep adding and pushing for activations.
BEHAVIORAL EMAILS
Incomplete onboarding on Day 1. If a user has signed up, but hasn't completed their onboarding, they get an email. No user type selected? Email sent. User type selected but Google Analytics is not set up? Different email gets sent and so on.
UPGRADE, UPSELL AND EXPANSION REVENUE SEQUENCES
Signals that indicate users are getting value from the product (hence more likely to upgrade):
Quick activation
Frequent use
High NPS scores
Recent product use
Frequent visits to pricing or payment pages
High engagement in emails and communications
Feature request
Consistent use
Positive word of mouth
Use of premium features during the trial
A few things to consider with an upgrade and upsell emails:
Product first: if your product sucks and you’re unable to get conversions, upgrade emails won't magically drive sales.
Contextual is better: if users spend a lot of time in your app and the product context can help drive conversions, in-product upsells will work best. Your users will be closer to the finish line.
Show the value: You can use CTAs that communicate the main benefits of your app, testimonies from customers showcasing the product’s value, or contrast the outcomes of upgrading vs not upgrading. Think through different scenarios.
Don't devalue your product: Discounts and offers can be used as justification to send upsell emails. Over time, however, discounts will hurt your retention and ability to monetize your product. For this reason, you need to be strategic with discounts - use them sparingly to get users over the finish line.
Right time, right discounts: 10-20% tends to be the minimum to get users to act. Use 30% for special sales, and 40-50% only for customers who have already bought like churners or for the rare and exclusive promos. In general, users who need a discount to upgrade are often the wrong customers to start with.
RETENTION SEQUENCES
A lot of SaaS businesses focus on acquisition and monetization. One grows the user base, while the other grows the coffers.
With more revenue, you can spend more on ads, branding, and acquisition. You can also grow your team.
But the metric that kills SaaS businesses more often than any other is retention - your ability to get re-purchases and consistently grow your customer lifetime value. With better retention you get more revenue per user, build predictability, and you can spend more on acquisition knowing that you are building on solid unit economics.
In SaaS, cancellation or churn negates growth. Email can be a major driver of retention (not to mention that product itself should deliver and communicate value).
The easiest and the most direct way to improve retention is to increase the percentage of annual subscribers. More annual subscribers - more cash up-front, and a higher customer lifetime value.
Perception of value tends to decrease over time. Don't wait until the end of the year to re-engage your yearly subscribers - you must constantly remind customers of the value your product provides.
REFERRAL SEQUENCES
A good NPS sequence can help you capture and leverage user feedback, get reviews and drive fresh acquisition at the top of the funnel.
In all likelihood, your referral sequence will be sent in parallel with and on top of your retention sequence.
To get started with your sequence, look at the key stages and try to target the biggest drops in churn.
As a follow-up question, you can ask:
Detractors (score range from 0 to 6) - What is the primary reason for your score?
Passives (7 to 8) - What can we do to improve?
Promoters (9 to 10) - Which feature/benefit do you value/use the most?
Detractors and Passives can also be good candidates for interviews to help you learn how to improve the product.
The beauty of referrals is that they can have a compounding effect by bringing in new users not naturally connected to your user base.
REACTIVATION SEQUENCES
Disengaged users may not have a need, maybe you’ve failed to efficiently communicate product value, maybe they have found another solution, or maybe they just forgot about your product.
Once other major sequences (onboarding, upgrade, retention and referral) have been covered, and 30% or more of your users have become disengaged, it makes sense to start thinking about reactivation sequences.
Users weren't necessarily a good fit for your product just because they signed up. The users you want to win back are those that showed actual interest in using your product or at least should have.
These might be:
Users who activated
Users who used your product throughout the trial period
Users who were once engaged and active
Users who demonstrably got value out of your product
Past paying customers
Users who fit your ideal customer profile
To re-activate users try the following:
The catch-up email
Tell your users about fixes and product developments since they stopped using the product. If you are in B2B, consider offering a demo to show the improvements.
Consider targeting these users on different channels, for instance, a retargeting campaign on Facebook, where you can upload an email list to target a precise segment of users.
Introducing new value
Maybe you have created an e-book that can help address one of your user’s challenges? Maybe there is a private community that they can join? Think beyond your product.
Make it relevant. Keep the messaging simple. The key is to get users back into the product.
Trial extension emails
When users have shown the desire to get value out of your product you can offer an extended or a premium trial.
It's a good idea to make this a limited-time offer and to get users to confirm their interest by taking a specific action.
Break up emails
If all else failed, you can consider sending one last email, your last-ditch attempt to bring back users from the dead.
The general idea is to create a shock reaction that makes users both open an email and take action. “Your account will be terminated within # days”, “If you want to avoid the deletion of your account, simply login into..”
As emails start to perform, create a sequence trying to win back users every 20-30 days. Make sure you remove users from your sequence once you win them back. Once you have run the full campaign across your entire disengaged user base, consider automating it after a certain number of days of inactivity.
If you need any help with setting up or optimizing your email marketing feel free to reach out to me to discuss.
Comentarios