December 13, 2016

164: Email Marketing for SaaS Startups

In this episode, Steli and Hiten discuss the strategies and knowledge needed to utilize email marketing in the most effective way possible for your business campaign. Listen and learn as Steli and Hiten discuss the advantages of email marketing, the content and frequency of a strong, marketing email, and how to test your headlines to turn those “opens” into conversions.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:44 – In Episode 14, Startup Chat talked about the “cold email”

01:00 – Today’s episode is focused on email marketing

02:18 – “Email is a wonderful marketing channel”

02:27 – You can control every aspect of your email marketing

02:55 – Email marketing should be tested by yourself

03:23 – Email marketing is not for the “teenager” market

03:49 – Most SaaS businesses are not sending enough emails

04:30 – Email is considered similar to pop-ups

05:18 – Reasons why customers give you their emails

05:47 – Tactics you can use with your customers’ emails

06:37 – One of the biggest mistake you can commit is to have an email list and do nothing with it

07:40 – One of the most effective popups is the “exit intent popup” that appears when someone tries to leave your web page

08:10 – An “exit intent popup” is not intrusive and does not annoy people

08:20 – People who have been in your email list for a long time will have less engagement, thus the need for new emails

09:57 – Start increasing your volume and send them 2 or 3 times a week

10:30 – Send the email the same time you post on your social media channels

11:10 – Send an email update once a week

11:49 – Customers need to know that you’re improving your product

12:04 – Customers want to know that you are looking after them

12:38 – When people cancel a product, they would usually compare your product to others

14:35 – “The rule of thumb is that you’re looking for 100 conversions per variation”

14:45 – If you have 1000 people in your email list and a 20% open rate, there are 200 people opening your email

15:30 – Do A/B testing with different subject lines and check which ones work best

16:25 – If you have 5000 email subscribers and have a 10% open rate, this equates to 500 people opening your email—you can A/B test 3 to 4 subject lines with that number of people

16:50 – Make sure the subject lines are distinct and you’re only changing one or two lines per variation

17:23 – When your open rate is high, make sure to start A/B testing to get a much higher open rate

17:55 – Bit.ly/CultureGood

18:58 – Email is an ongoing conversation

19:13 – Make sure you are building a relationship with your clients

20:35 – If you dehumanized your email, people will not engage with it

21:33 – “Write like a human being to a human being”

3 Key Points:

Email is one of the BEST tools that you’re just NOT utilizing enough. 2.

The rule of thumb is that you’re looking for 100 conversions per variation.

Build a relationship with your customers through email—consider it an ongoing conversation.

Resources Mentioned:

Startup Chat: Episode 14 – Cold Email

Bit.ly/CultureGood – Shows a good example of email marketing

Steli Efti: Hey, everyone. This is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.

Steli Efti: In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about email marketing. So how to think about utilizing email, sending emails, what type of emails to send as part of your overall marketing strategy. We did an episode prior on email. It was more kind of cold emails more from a sales perspective. That was episode 14. Wow, I didn’t realize it was that early. But if you want to check out the cold email episode Hiten and I recorded, just Google Startup Chat, Episode 14. You’ll find it. But today,

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By Steli Efti & Hiten Shah: Serial Entrepreneurs, Sales & Marketing Experts, Startup Investors & Advisors, CEOs running multi million dollar SaaS Startups

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