Ways To Build a Powerful SaaS Email Marketing Funnel

Mastering the software-as-a-service (SaaS) email marketing funnel powers long-term business growth. It builds strong brand awareness, converts suitable leads to customers, and nurtures them consistently for repeated conversions.

This strategy is so effective that it is non-negotiable for an expert SaaS marketing agency. How does it work? This article covers the basics:

• Differences between email marketing and the sales funnel
• Three building blocks of a successful email marketing plan
• Different sales funnel stages and how to use email marketing for each

Avoid SaaS silent killers by learning to push targeted leads deeper into the funnel with emails. Read this article below. Let’s go! 

Want to know how we help SaaS businesses stand out from the crowd? Watch this video to learn how DAP makes it happen!

Email Marketing vs. Sales Funnel

Email marketing and sales funnels differ.

Despite these differences, they work together to help you reach your business goals. For example, email marketing drives traffic to the sales funnel when they land on squeeze pages or sign up for trials. Email campaigns move subscribers through the funnel. Then, insights from sales funnel interactions inform future email campaigns. 

Email marketing builds relationships over time; sales funnels directly convert prospects. 

3 Foundations of a Good Email Marketing Funnel

A SaaS marketing agency customizes the email marketing funnel according to many factors. These include the customer buying journey, industry, content, and business goals. The best plans rely on these three essential elements: 

     1. List Building and Segmentation

Segmentation means dividing the email subscriber list into groups sharing specific attributes. Doing this lets you send more highly targeted and relevant content, which translates to better deliverability, open rates, and click rates. The more focused you get, the greater the engagement. Messages resonate appropriately with every recipient.

Customer segmentation also promotes mindful interactions, increasing user satisfaction and the brand experience. Further, it:

• Encourages targeted upsells and cross-sells.
• Drives renewed engagement through remarketing campaigns.
• Informs customer support prioritization.
• Improves customer retention.

A common segmentation method is grouping users by characteristics such as persona or subscription plan. It directly addresses each customer’s unique interactions with the SaaS product.

A more effective option is breaking them down into these three major groups:

• Persona segmentation. Speak differently to each audience. Get more technical for development users or more strategic for executives. Further target based on job function or role.
• Behavioral segmentation. Review usage data. Offer more advanced training and new feature announcements for the high-usage group. Reengage, support, and strengthen communication for about to churn.
• Account-based segmentation. Prioritize key enterprise accounts for more strategic, customized communication. Account characteristics, such as industry, technology stack, and deal size, guide the messaging.

     2. Compelling Content

The most robust funnel and finely tuned user groups can only achieve revenue and retention targets with compelling content. Strategic, engaging, and valuable emails form the backbone of impactful subscriber journeys. 

How does this happen? Begin with understanding the audience. What motivates them to subscribe and buy? What challenges or problems do they want to solve?

Thorough market research is an excellent strategy to learn more. Conduct qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys. Ask about their role, objectives, challenges, and typical processes for solution evaluation. 

Build buyer personas that map content to the customer journey. Continue gathering subscriber data and feedback across email, web, and sales interactions to refine your personas over time. 

Here are some other helpful email content tips: 

• Prioritize educational content that builds subscribers’ expertise versus overly promotional messaging.
• Apply dynamic content for personalization.
• Write crisply. Break down complex topics.
• Include intriguing questions or thought-provoking statistics in subject lines to boost open rates.
• Share insider perspectives from product experts, engineers, and industry leaders to build authenticity.
• Test and optimize content performance by audience segment.

Understanding your customer’s issues allows you to solve their problems for them. Subscriber data is the key to understanding. 

     3. Personalization and Automation

Personalization makes every subscriber feel valued by directly addressing their unique needs. In the process, it helps build trust that quickly converts to sales and revenue. In email marketing, personalized subject lines alone significantly boost open rates. User-driven, dynamic content enhances relevance. 

However, manual personalization is unscalable. This is where marketing automation matters. Innovations such as artificial intelligence, shape modern marketing in the following ways:

• Customize life-cycle messaging, triggered workflows, and intelligent nurture streams.
• Educate new signups with an automated welcome sequence. 
• Trigger re-engagement based on usage to minimize churn risks.
• Automatically set expiring trials. 
• Eliminate the need for complex coding.
• Shuttle data across cross-functional teams, even in real time.
• Focus tactics on event, behavioral, and attribute-based triggers according to a subscriber’s “micro-moment.” 
• Test, iterate, and scale the best techniques.

Personalization and automation accelerate highly targeted subscriber journeys down prescribed funnel pathways.

A Fundamental Guide to SaaS Email Marketing Funnel

Email marketing funnels are a visual metaphor for a buyer’s customer journey. Like a physical funnel, the email marketing funnel starts with many leads. Then, it narrows down to a smaller group of engaged users and customers. Each stage filters out prospects until it leaves highly qualified, sales-ready leads.

A funnel is crucial in SaaS marketing strategies to effectively target resources and tailor messaging to guide prospects through the buying process.

The email marketing funnel has five stages:

     1. Awareness Stage

The awareness stage opens the marketing funnel. It has three primary objectives that relate to demand-generation or inbound marketing activities:

• Generate brand awareness
• Identify contacts open to exploring a solution
• Initiate first-discovery conversations

The most common early-stage prospects are those searching for solutions to address a fundamental business need. However, they need to explore and understand all their options. Others are aware of your services but require more research and education.

The best email content types at this stage include the following: 

• Overview of primary capabilities and differentiators
• Explanatory articles, guides, and videos about the problem your product solves
• Third-party reports and analyst content validating the technology
• Compelling statistics
• Free downloads, such as whitepapers, templates, or e-books 

The awareness stage is the best time to enhance brand awareness, increase engagement, and heighten interest. It also shows the leads that you have the solutions. When done right, it pushes them deeper into the consideration stage, seeking information about your solutions. 

For example, use the segmented lists and personas to determine the ideal email content. Suppose you are an analytics company. The ideal copy for data analysts is an email series on advanced visualizations for exploratory analysis. Meanwhile, C-suite leaders receive case studies detailing analytics returns across the customer lifecycle.

     2. Consideration Stage

The consideration stage is also the leading nurturing phase. The conversion intent is clear, so it is safer to talk in-depth about your product or service. You can expound on product value and differentiation. Emails also guide leads toward trying the product through demos or free trials. 

Those who reach this phase have more informed leads. They know the problem and the solution. Now, they compare multiple options, including your SaaS product. They also look for specific features, use cases, and benefits. Additionally, business leaders like quantifying returns, pricing, and deployment models.

A SaaS marketing agency usually uses the following content types for this stage:

• Detailed product information sheets and capability guides
• Side-by-side comparison reports
• Analyst reviews and competitive evaluation
• Total cost of ownership calculators 
• Return estimators
• Customer proof points validating use cases  

As best practice, provide transparency by disclosing product limitations and risks to establish trust. Tailor content to the prospect’s industry, company size, and primary needs. Make content more easily scannable as it becomes more technical. Leverage bullets and media assets, especially videos. Make your link to free trials and demos prominent. 

Optimize the email workflow. For example, a prospect downloads a buyer’s guide for a product category. They then receive an automated five-part video series deep-diving into crucial capabilities. The email sequence closes with a trial offer tied to a return calculator tool.

     3. Conversion Stage

The conversion stage transforms leads into customers, so the goal is to strengthen trust and credibility. You also need to establish the brand as the only reliable and authoritative solution. 

Another objective is to drive leads to take the final steps toward a revenue-generating action. These include upgrading their plans, subscribing, or downloading the platform.

The conversion stage differs between B2B and B2C markets. Enterprise buyers often have a longer sales cycle because of multiple stakeholders. They are also usually business leaders looking for efficiency, returns, and long-term partnerships. B2C prospects are more diverse. They also seek personal benefits, convenience, and lifestyle enhancements.

These differences affect types of email content: 

Besides targeted content, craft a strong value proposition and compelling calls-to-action (CTAs). Define a unique selling point (that is not the price). Speak about it with conviction, but back it up with data analytics. 

Include action-oriented, specific CTAs. Use “Download the guide,” “Get your free trial now,” or “Sign up today to receive a 50% discount” instead of “Click here.” Build a sense of urgency with a “limited-time offer.”

Follow user experience design principles when designing your CTA buttons. Make them visually stand out from the rest of the email content. For instance, design a red CTA against a white background. It makes the text visible, while the color evokes excitement and urgency. 

     4. Retention Stage

The retention stage is about keeping customers engaged with the brand and improving their satisfaction to encourage repeat purchases. It is also an excellent time to gather feedback and use the data to improve the marketing funnel. 

Three types of email content work best at this phase:

• Personalized recommendations and updates. These emails enhance the brand’s relevance and customer engagement. It tells them that you understand their needs. You can also suggest more advanced features based on the user’s app behavior. 
• Exclusive offers and rewards. This content type improves the customers’ sense of belonging in the business community. Examples include a birthday discount or bonus points in a loyalty program.
• Educational and support content. These emails build trust and display your expertise. It also helps customers get more value from the brand with how-to guides, tips, tutorials, webinars, or industry insights.

The table below shows an email sequence for these content types:

     5. Advocacy Stage

The advocacy stage happens when satisfied, loyal customers become brand advocates. They boost customer lifetime value by patronizing the product. They also decrease customer acquisition costs by actively promoting the brand on different channels. 

Three types of content are effective in this phase:

• Tiered loyalty program
• Referral marketing
• User-generated content (UGC)

Tiering a loyalty program moves customers up based on their engagement or purchases. Each level offers increasingly attractive benefits, rewards, or exclusive access to things like advanced features and priority support. By encouraging customer interaction, this method gamifies the journey. It also creates a sense of exclusivity and prestige for higher-tier members.

How do you integrate this content into your email marketing funnel? A SaaS marketing agency might do it this way:

Subject: Unlock Exclusive Rewards as a Platinum Member!

Content:

• Thank the customer for their loyalty and inform them about their current tier status.
• Highlight the exclusive benefits and rewards available at their current or next tier.
• Share stories or testimonials from platinum members to showcase the value of reaching higher levels.
• Include a clear CTA, telling them how to unlock more benefits.

Meanwhile, an affiliate program incentivizes loyal customers through fixed or percentage-based commissions. Top performers might also receive additional rewards and exclusive opportunities. For example, they might convert their points to actual dollars and use them to subscribe. 

Here is an example of how to include it in your email sequence:

Subject: Earn Rewards by Sharing Your Love for Our Brand!

Content:

• Invite the customer to join your affiliate program. Emphasize the benefits of participating, such as earning commissions.
• Provide a brief tutorial or link to a guide on referring others and tracking their success.
• Include inspiring stories or quotes from successful affiliates. Talk about their average monthly earnings.
• Add a CTA button for signing up or accessing their dashboard if they are already members.

UGC is a growing marketing technique that entices customers to share their experiences as content across social media channels. It can be active, which means they post voluntarily, or passive, where you encourage them to share and promote. For example, Apple has the #shotoniphone hashtag. The company then reposts the best photos or videos on their official accounts.  

UGC works because people feel rewarded and motivated to engage with the brand. It also fosters community building as users relate to one another’s experiences. Most of all, this content type is authentic social proof. 

Invite customers to share content using this email example:

Subject: Your Experience Inspires! Share Your Story with Us

Content:

• Express gratitude for their continued support. Invite them to share their experiences with your product or service.
• Provide ideas or prompts. These include unboxing videos, before-and-after photos, or creative product uses, such as hacks.
• Offer incentives for sharing content. Feature them on your website or social media.
• Include user-generated content from other customers to inspire them and show real-life examples of brand advocacy.
• Add a CTA with your branded hashtag, or let them submit content directly.

Optimize the Email Marketing Funnel with Data

Consumers change, and the email marketing funnel must change with them to match evolving market trends and needs. The best approach is to use data for optimization. The key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics depend on the stage:

Email analytics, integrated CRM reports, and marketing automation dashboards are the best sources of such information. 

A savvy SaaS marketing agency can tweak the email marketing plan with insights, including these best practices:

• Swapping underperforming content with fresh offers  
• Fine-tuning personalization triggers and workflows
• Testing subject lines and CTAs
• Ensuring mobile responsiveness  

Summing Up

SaaS survival relies heavily on long-term subscriptions and repeat purchases. Effective email marketing supports this, consistently engaging and nurturing the audience until they are ready to convert. 

This article provides an overview of the funnel stages and their best email marketing approaches. These include tracking metrics and KPIs to optimize every element when needed. It also delves into the three vital success pillars. 

Work with a reputable SaaS marketing agency for more advanced techniques. Digital Authority Partners (DAP) is an award-winning team with tools and expertise to help you. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.