8 Types of SaaS Email Examples That You Should Have Sent Yesterday

Let’s face it, selling SaaS requires many efforts. Before your prospect hits ‘Confirm the payment’ button, you’ll go through blood, sweat, and tears. And if your efforts aren’t thoroughly planned and deliberate, the prospect will hit this sacred button on your competitor’s website. That is why we are here to split with you these great SaaS email examples.

Let’s take a Look at Some  SaaS Email Marketing Examples

Considering the above, there is no surprise that SaaS businesses are doing their best to attract customers, including SaaS email marketing. The problem is consumers are overwhelmed by the horrifying number of emails they get every day. Here’s what the data says on this: an average user sends and receives about 120 emails per day. And this figure tends to grow rapidly. As a result, the chances of your emails to be read decrease continuously.

Moreover, creating a successful email marketing strategy can be challenging as it requires careful planning and meticulous execution. But email marketing is definitely worth all efforts. When done right, the results are tremendous. According to a recent VB Insight study, email marketing has an average ROI of $38 for each dollar spent. And using the right email marketing tool, like HubSpot for example, is just as important.

You may say, ‘Okay, okay, a return of $38 for each spent dollar sounds good and all that. I’m in! What’s next?’ This guide lists eight must-have types of emails you should send out to ramp up your SaaS business—with some useful tips to adopt. Let’s dive right in!

Operational SaaS Email Examples

Every SaaS meets the need of automating an infinite range of emails around processes such as:

• Online registration
• Password confirmation and change
• Account verification
• Payment confirmation
• Reminder email for an upcoming renewal
• Announcements of downtime or scheduled maintenance

All these emails are operational ones. These emails are sent based on triggers, or user activity, so they vary depending on the product you offer. In fact, they are a part of your product design and shouldn’t be an afterthought. Here’s what the data says on their importance for SaaS businesses: 64 percent of consumers think that operational emails are the most valuable ones they get. If that’s not enough, the stats also indicate that operational emails get six times more opens and clicks than any others.

Let’s take a look at one of the verification SaaS email examples sent by DigitalMaas, an online marketing platform.

DigitalMaas verification email

Takeaways you can steal from this example:

1. Keep emails short and sweet. Don’t forget to load them with useful information like a short video tutorial.
2. Make your branded template design look user-friendly yet professional.
3. Offer one ultra simple goal to achieve like clicking the button with a bold call-to-action. Your emails should be as straightforward as possible.

Welcome emails

Welcome emails are the first your users receive after they’ve signed up for your free trial or subscribed to get a demo version. Since this is the very first interaction with your SaaS product in the inbox, make welcome emails useful and worth their attention. Eventually, users are highly likely to open and click welcome emails compared to other ones, according to a study from Experian. Speaking of numbers, welcome emails receive an unusually high open rate of 50 percent.

Sure, welcome emails are crucial. The fact that you should send them is a no-brainer. They help acquire that important feeling of trust that nurtures stronger relationship with your brand. Some studies even show that welcome emails not only boost engagement but predict long-term subscriber behavior and revenue potential.

Here’s the kicker — are you making positive first impression? Let’s break down into the main components that make up effective welcome emails:

1. Welcome emails should make your branding clear and set the company’s tone.
2. This type of emails should educate your prospects about the products or services you deliver, as well as inform how frequently you’ll send emails.
3. Welcome emails can tell your brand’s story or offer a free trial of the product.

Here’s how Plutio, a project management tool, approaches its welcome emails:

Plutio welcome email

Takeaways you can steal from this example:

1. Personalize your welcome email.
2. Try to convert prospects into loyal community members
3. Talk about the benefits of using your product.
4. Make it simple for the user to contact you or unsubscribe.

Educational Emails

Sending educational emails is a powerful way to influence users and overcome early churn. Your ultimate goal here is to provide an irresistible reason to take actions in your product. Educational emails usually come in the form of how-to tutorials and usage tips. They can be simple or in-depth—depending on the complexity of your products.

Educational emails can be especially advantageous—both for businesses and customers—when it’s unclear for prospects how your product can solve their issues. Being taught how to make quick useful changes in their lives, the users will associate these positives with your brand.

Speaking of sending educational tips, make sure to keep them targeted. What does it mean? When a user completes a specific action in your product (or not successfully completes), send them an automatic email. For instance, the user creates a task on your project management software for the first time but assigns nobody to it. Automate an email saying “Hey, your colleagues can’t wait to shoot the task! Need some tips on assigning users to it?” Show the user a brief GIF on the topic or point them to an article in your help center. Using these simple techniques, you can add much more value to your service and significantly reduce the customer churn.

Here’s an educational email, Autopilot, a CRM platform sends on the second day of their free trial:

Autopilot educational email

 Takeaways you can steal from this example:

• Send educational emails in response to users’ behavior to take the next step.
• Communicate the specific action the user needs to take clearly and why it’s important.
• Include a call to action leading back into the product.

Customer success stories

Customer success stories are usually generated by interviewing your customers. Subscribers identify themselves with those who already make benefit from your product and who share their pain points and business experience. Eventually, these stories build trust and brand loyalty among your prospects.

Your current customers can share their favorite features and how to succeed with the help of your product. To illustrate the power of customer success stories, let’s take a look at Udemy. This online learning marketplace saw an increase of 35 percent in content engagement when they started sharing customer stories on their blog. Apply the same concept to your email campaigns, and subscribers will be looking forward to your future messages.

Here’s another example of customer success stories used in email marketing. EmbedSocial, a platform that includes various social media tools, sends smooth yet eye-catching emails promoting their successful customers:

EmbedSocial customer success story

Takeaways you can steal from this example:

• Keep the main message short, noticeable and specific.
• Describe a relevant business which success will be interesting for your prospect.
• Try to intrigue your prospect, not sharing the whole story at once. Instead, head them to your website article that describes a step-by-step guide on how to reach this shining result with the help of your SaaS product.

Activation emails

You may notice that some of your users will not be as engaged as others. Why does it happen? First, they may not really need your product (and that’s completely normal). Second, you haven’t updated your product for a while. Third, you may communicate your product value vaguely. Whatever the reason, it’s crucial to encourage inactive users to re-engage with your brand. The chances are some of the users who have abandoned your product will come back.

What’s a bottom line? If you fail to convert prospects into paying customers or, at least, into active users, don’t stop reaching out to them. Not every user leaves because your product is a miss. They could come back in the near future, but you’ll never know unless you start a conversation. The stakes are high: it’s 50 percent easier to sell to existing customers than to new ones.

The key is testing out activation emails. Being a Slack alternative, here at Chanty we’ve experienced the low level of converting our newbie users into active ones. Therefore, we began to experiment with sending activation emails after a user had abandoned our messenger. These users get the following email on the third day of their inactivity:

Chanty activation email

Takeaways you can steal from this example:

• Explain the benefits of your products or services.
• Include a call to action leading back into the product.
• Appeal to users’ emotions, express your regret for their indifference sincerely.

Newsletter emails

Regular communication between you and your users nurture long-lasting relationships and nudge customers forward in their customer journey. It’s noteworthy that newsletters are not sales pitches which are more effective only in causing nausea, not conversions. Newsletters should do users a real service—keeping them in the loop on product updates, educating and even entertaining them.

Email newsletters are one of the most effective SaaS email campaigns techniques, and for a good reason: they help your company build brand loyalty and recognition as well distribute share-worthy content that potentially grows your audience. Some of the most popular newsletter emails sent out by companies like Zapier:

Zapier feature updates

Zapier monthly newsletter featuring blog articles

Takeaways you can steal from these examples:

• Stick to your brand’s standards for design, voice, and tone creating newsletter emails.
• Follow mobile-optimized practices when designing your newsletter templates: make sure buttons are large enough to tap, limit image sizes to avoid lagging load times, etc.
• Segment your customer base thoroughly since personalized emails deliver 6X higher transaction rates.

Unsubscribe emails

When we’re talking about must-have emails for your SaaS email campaigns, there are opportunities everywhere—even when a user is about to go away clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ button. Instead of cursing this email address, use an unsubscribe email to take the last chance for returning a user.

There are many marketing-savvy brands that are sending unsubscribe emails, and BetaList is one of them:

BetaList unsubscribe email

Takeaways you can steal from this example:

• Express your sincere regret about unsubscribing.
• Directly ask if you are sending too many emails and offer to decrease communications to once a week or month.
• Make it a point to understand why subscribers have left—just ask about that.

Upgrade emails

SaaS upgrade emails were designed to serve existing customers at a deeper level. You raise the level of service—they pay more. Fair enough. Upgrading your users accomplishes three crucial goals:

1) Nurture relationships

2) Raises the value the users receive

3) Increases customer lifetime value (CLV)

Speaking of freemium SaaS businesses, it’s a good practice (but certainly not the only way) to give users a trial with premium features and then switch them over to the free plan if they don’t upgrade. Offer the certain features that make up your competitive advantage— whether it’s an access to video calls or an advanced search feature.

Grammarly upgrade email

Takeaways you can steal from this example:

• Add a touch of personalization mentioning how much time a customer uses your product and how beneficial your collaboration is.
• Include precise plan pricing details. Moreover, offer a small yet sweet discount.
• Specify features that people will gain when upgrading.

Last thoughts

Once you’ve tested out a bunch of above-mentioned SaaS email examples, you’ll probably notice that prospects respond to some emails more than to others. Don’t be surprised if they’re ignoring your upgrade emails or not looking forward to your newsletter ones. At the end of the day, email marketing is about building a long-lasting relationship that requires constant tweaking and tuning of your strategy.

There are must-have types of SaaS email examples that are waiting to make benefit for your business in many ways:

• Operational emails carefully organize users’ flow within your product.
• Welcome emails make the first impression and set the tone for future communications.
• Educational emails convince your prospects that the product does solve their pain points.
• Customer success stories build trust and brand loyalty featuring the real customers.
• Activation emails re-engage and win back inactive users.
• Newsletter emails nurture long-lasting relationships and eventually walk customers through the sales funnel.
• Unsubscribe emails give you a chance to decrease churn.
• Upgrade emails increase your bottom line and the value the users receive.

What about you? Think we’ve missed any noteworthy type of SaaS email examples? Tell us about the emails your business can’t survive without. Feel free to drop a line in comments.

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Julia Samoilenko is a Marketing Manager at Chanty – a simple AI powered business messenger and a single notification center. This powerful and free Slack alternative is aimed to increase team productivity and improve communication at work. Having a 5-year experience in digital marketing field, Julia is responsible for Chanty’s online social media presence and public relations. Follow Julia on Twitter @juliasam111.