Selling a product or service entails much more than just logistics. Quality marketing and effective communication are required to pique someone’s interest in your business in the first place. Perhaps more crucial, your marketing messages must keep customers loyal.

This is where email automation comes into play. But, before we get into how email automation may help your SaaS company, let’s first talk about the standard SaaS client acquisition process. There are typically four stages:

Stage 1 (the visiting stage)

A individual, let’s call them Chris, makes their first visit to a website.

Stage 2 (the signup stage)

Chris subscribes to an email list or contacts a sales person.

Stage 3 (the activation stage)

Chris joins and/or subscribes as a non-paying member.

Stage 4 (the customer stage)

Chris pays to utilize the service—hopefully for an extended period of time with great effects.

As you can expect, this creates a tremendous possibility for development. If you get 20,000 signups or leads each month and convert 10% of them to clients, you will acquire 2,000 new paying customers per month. Increasing that conversion rate by 5% (to 15%) would result in an additional 1000 paying clients each month. This is a 50% increase.

Let us now convert the math into English. Spending time on interested leads and prospects is more cost effective than attempting to acquire new visitors. Not only are these folks more likely to convert (they’ve previously shown interest), but you can also engage them via email marketing rather than investing money on pricey advertisements and awareness initiatives.

How to Use Email Automation to Acquire Customers

Step 1: design and conduct research

The first step in our trip is to look at your current emails and how consumers utilize them to go through the sales funnel.

We tried this on the website of a tech business, and here is how they did it:

When someone registers up for an email subscription, they automatically get an email verifying their account details: name, login email, and so on. Then, a few days later, they get a boilerplate email touting the company’s goods.

So, in the instance of this IT firm, there isn’t much to pique client attention and create income. If your organization follows a similar procedure, don’t be concerned; it merely implies you have opportunity to expand.

You most likely have non-customer email subscribers on your list. You may utilize your data to discover how many people sign up for and interact with your emails, as well as how many people join up but then unsubscribe (and when they stop). Use this information to discover why individuals join up, where they sign up, and when they lose interest.

Make an outline using the information you’ve gathered. This blueprint will include a list of the types of content required to move individuals through the funnel.

Step 2: Design the email nurturing

You may start building your nurturing funnel after you know which material is of interest to your subscribers and what makes them interact.

This nurturing may be as simple or as sophisticated as you choose. As an example, consider the following:

1. Welcome email
2. Product demonstrations or platform introductions
3. Content-based email
4. Study of a case

Welcome email

Introduce your firm and offer information on where to discover resources of interest in your welcome email. You might even offer a coupon code to encourage spontaneous purchases.

The purpose of the Slack email below is clear: they want users to make a purchase. However, since Slack understands that new members may not be ready to commit, the email includes an invitation to take a product tour or offer feedback.

Product demonstrations or platform introductions

This email may help make your product less frightening. You may highlight your features by delivering a tour so that non-paying consumers know what they’re missing.

Email with content

You can use an email like this to deliver useful information and material to your readers, establishing yourself as a thought leader. You may also deliver hyper-personalized information if you segment your list.

Here’s an example of a content-based email from Emma:

Step 3: Create and design the emails

After you’ve planned your email series and collected your data, the following step is to construct and design your email campaign.

If you have a design staff, you might rely on them to develop eye-catching emails. Even if you don’t have a design staff, many ESPs (including mine) enable you to drag and drop stunning designs into position. After you’ve designed the emails, go on to the next stage.

Step 4: test and launch

What is the last stage in the process? Emails should be tested before they are sent.

This phase should involve testing any segmented or dynamic content you’ve added, as well as assessing responsiveness and multi-device usability.

You can obviously send tests to employees in your business who can search for typos and broken links, but you might also think about adding a new client to your account.

This client may then be used to generate false subscribers with various custom fields. This manner, you can ensure that the automation is operating and that the relevant emails are being delivered to the correct recipients on time.

Then take a big breath because you’re finished! Your nurture should be set up to run smoothly.

Other emails in your automatic series you may send

While we discussed a basic nurturing above, there are more emails in your series that you should consider sending.

Email action

You may email this to subscribers who have an account with you but haven’t done anything on your site yet: no downloads, no account information entered, and so on.

The Airbnb email below, for example, invites recipients to interact with the site and provide additional information about themselves.

Email survey

When a subscriber eventually makes a purchase from you, a survey is a terrific way to ask them about their experience. Survey emails do not have to be lengthy, and they may frequently be very graphic and engaging.

If a consumer gives you a low rating, you may prolong the survey to learn more about them and strive to improve their experience rather than lose their business.

Wrap up

This guide should give you the confidence to transform your emails into an automatic success plan, converting prospective clients into loyal customers.

What additional kinds of automated email marketing do you send? And how have they assisted you in growing your business? Please share your knowledge and best practices with our readers so that we may all learn together.