Email marketing still reigns as one of the most powerful channels for nurturing prospects, leads, and customers for SaaS companies. The fact that more than 70% of marketers say email is driving more engagement proves that email marketing is an effective tool when it comes to engaging SaaS customers.
Whether you are sending onboarding emails, newsletters, or promotional offers, email makes it easy to talk to your users in a direct and inexpensive manner. But, in order to make it work and to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace, it’s important to use the right email marketing platform. Since SaaS businesses are predominantly digital communicators, the platform you choose will make or break these wins.
The right email marketing platform can implement gains on growth, engagement, and retention. Offering automation tools to run campaigns, personalized content and analytics for campaign performance, these platforms can help SaaS companies to optimize their email communication, and scale with efficiency.
In this blog, we’ll look at how email marketing platforms help SaaS companies grow and retain business, what features are key for your business, and what platforms rise to the top of the market. We’ll also provide you with important insights into what you should look for in the platform that fits your specific needs.
How email marketing platforms drive SaaS growth and retention
With these systems, SaaS companies can automate, maximize, and measure email campaigns to connect with customers throughout their lifecycle—from sign-up to renewal. Below, we explore how key email marketing strategies can directly contribute to SaaS growth and retention.
Ability to execute automated onboarding and drip campaigns
Onboarding is one of the most critical stages for SaaS companies. It sets the tone for a user’s experience and can determine whether they’ll become a long-term customer or churn within the first few weeks. Poor onboarding experiences actually make up in 23% of reasons for average customer churn. Additionally, 63% of clients think onboarding is crucial in their decision to continue their SaaS subscription.
However, it’s nearly impossible to facilitate onboarding for each and every subscriber. Especially if you are a SaaS company on the edge of scaling. Users are able to receive the content they need exactly when they need it, without relying on someone doing it for them. Drip campaigns (a series of automatic emails that are sent over time) walk users through the features of the product, give useful tips and give the support that’s required.
This is beneficial for the following reasons:
- Automation allows you to onboard large numbers of users at once without additional resources.
- It ensures that all new users receive the same quality onboarding, making the process scalable and streamlined.
- Timely, targeted onboarding emails keep users engaged from the start, improving retention and reducing churn.
Retargeting and re-engagement campaigns for retention
Did you know that the average annual churn rate of SaaS companies is between 10% to 14%? While the ideal churn rate should only be between 2% to 8%. What does this mean? There’s clearly a gap here.
Customer retention is usually more profitable than customer acquisition for SaaS companies. Retargeting campaigns let you reconnect with users who may have expressed interest, but not yet converted, or who became dormant following an initial sign-up.
Email marketing tools make it possible for SaaS companies to connect with these individuals at scale—while also converting them:
- Retargeting ensures users fall within your mix, by presenting the value proposition of the product to them again.
- Re-engagement emails recover relationships with users in danger of canceling and boost customer lifetime value.
- Employing retargeting gives you the ability to reach out to individual people based on their behavior, and make sure that the message you present to them is relevant.
Providing personalized customer experiences through segmentation
Not all users are the same. Some may be long-time customers and others may be new sign-ups still exploring the product. Segmentation enables SaaS companies to separate their audience into groups under certain conditions like usage, plan, location, or activity on the app.
- Personalization helps your emails feel more relevant to each subscriber, which will boost open rates and engagement.
- By focusing on particular needs or interests ,you can direct users to the next steps of their journey, whether it’s to upgrade their plan or try other features.
- Publishing value-based content to the right people at the right time keeps subscribers engaged longer.
Key features SaaS companies need in an email marketing platform
For SaaS companies, selecting an email marketing platform is more than just sending emails—it’s about building smart, data-driven campaigns that lead to engagement and customer loyalty. The right platform will provide the necessary capabilities to enable automation, segmentation, personalization at scale, and also provide deep insights into performance. Here are the basic email marketing features an email marketing platform must have to serve SaaS companies well:
Integrates with your CRM
- When your email marketing software integrates easily with your CRM system, customer information is easily accessible.
- This powerful combo allows SaaS companies to easily manage contacts, segment audiences based on CRM data, or create laser-focused messages that leverage user behavior and interaction.
- Data doesn’t vary between platforms, thus the risk of errors is drastically minimized.
Example: Let’s say you’re running an onboarding campaign for new users to your SaaS product. With CRM integration, your email service can access user data, such as their subscription tier, last login, or current subscription status. So a new user who subscribes for a free trial can receive an email that prompts them to upgrade, while a paid subscriber gets a separate email to promote premium features or a discount if they renew early.
Advanced segmentation and personalization
- Advanced segmentation helps you create smaller audience groups by attributes such as demographics, usage behavior or customer lifecycle stage.
- In addition to this, personalization also presents a lot of chances to generate personalized email campaigns for every single subscriber.
- For SaaS businesses, it’s important to ensure the right message gets sent to the right person, at the right time, thereby driving engagement and conversion. In fact, marketers say that segmented campaigns generate a 760% increase in revenue.
Example: You are running a campaign to announce a new feature in your SaaS product. With segmentation strategies, you’ll be able to send the same email with different versions to users according to the way they actually use your product. ‘Power’-users who are already very happy with the product will probably get a longer email with ‘next-level’ tricks and tips, whereas ‘new’-users will get a shorter email that is all about the basic features. This kind of personalization leads to higher levels of engagement and satisfaction on the part of consumers.
🔖 Related Reading: Tools for segmenting the customer base
Behavior-triggered emails for better engagement
- Behavior-triggered emails are automated messages sent based on a user’s behavior (or lack of behavior) in your SaaS product
- These emails work well, because they’re succinct, relevant, and tailored to specific user behaviors (whether that’s a welcome email after registration, a follow up about an abandoned cart, or a re-engagement email after a period of inactivity).
Example: A customer subscribes to a free trial and then doesn’t complete their onboarding. An email alert can be sent out to the user automatically reminding them to finish the setup. Or if a long-time user has not logged in recently, a re-engagement email could go out with tips on how to get more out of the product or a special offer that would entice the user to log in again.
Robust analytics and reporting for informed decision-making
- Analytics and reports empower you with the knowledge of how your email campaigns perform. This is also really important specifically for SaaS companies to know how effective your emails are at engaging users, converting those users, and working as part of your marketing and sales goals in general.
- By having the information on email opens, clicks, bounces, or recipients’ engagement rates at your disposal, you can learn from the data you collect and make educated decisions on your next email marketing campaigns.
Example: You’ve released a series of onboarding emails for new users and you have decent open rates, but your clickthrough rate leaves something to be desired. After taking a deep dive into the analytics, you realize people are not clicking on the CTA link present in your emails. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to tweak your content, tweak your CTA, or try a new send time to get better results the next time you run a campaign.
Best email marketing platforms for SaaS
Different platforms offer various features, integrations, and pricing models tailored to unique business needs. Below, we review some of the best email marketing tools popular among SaaS businesses.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a robust marketing automation platform with strong tools for email marketing integrated tightly with its CRM platform. It’s great for organizations, especially SaaS companies, that want a singular marketing, sales and service platform. It boasts deep CRM integration that enables users to segment more accurately and communicate more personally based on user behavior so that you can more effectively cultivate leads and retain customers.
Pros:
- Seamless CRM integration for streamlined data management
- Robust automation and workflow capabilities
- Detailed reporting and analytics dashboard
- Extensive template library and drag-and-drop editor
Cons:
- Pricing can be expensive for small startups or early-stage SaaS
- Learning curve for advanced features and setup
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign combines email marketing, automation, and CRM functionalities with a focus on customer experience. It excels for SaaS businesses that want advanced automation and personalized outreach without the complexity of enterprise platforms. It’s especially strong for companies focused on lifecycle marketing and re-engagement.
Pros:
- Advanced segmentation options
- Built-in CRM for managing sales along with emails
- User-friendly interface with customizable workflows
Cons:
- Steep learning curve
- Costs can rise quickly as you scale
Encharge
Encharge is an email marketing and automation tool designed specifically for SaaS and subscription businesses. It focuses on user lifecycle campaigns with deep integrations into product usage data.
Pros:
- Monitors real-time behavior to trigger the right email workflows
- Visual flow builder for user journeys
- Lead scoring is built in
- Built-in templates for different stages of the customer journey
Cons:
- No SMS feature yet
- No free plan available
Messaged
Messaged is a newer marketing automation tool with a focus on simple user experience and effective automation built for SaaS startups. It offers straightforward campaign creation and personalization to scale your marketing efforts.
Pros:
- Clean, easy-to-use interface
- Pre-built email templates for SaaS onboarding flows
- Templates for upgrade/cross-sell flows for different user tiers
- Includes flows for sending NPS surveys and other feedback loops
Cons:
- Smaller integration ecosystem
- Too basic for complicated multi-product journeys
Omnisend
Omnisend is backed by an omnichannel marketing automation solution. It was designed with eCommerce in mind but it appears that it can be easily adapted to SaaS businesses who’d like to stack multiple channels with their email, and have a more holistic approach to user engagement.
Pros:
- Omnichannel campaigns including email, SMS marketing, and web push
- Easy drag-and-drop email automation builder
- Pre-built templates and workflows
- Great reporting and analytics
- Dynamic discount codes
Cons:
- Some features are more geared towards eCommerce
- Can be pricier for smaller SaaS teams
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an email-marketing platform that helps businesses with their marketing automation, email marketing, and advertising needs. It provides stack-level automation, segmentation, and analytics that SaaS companies that have just begun to do email marketing need.
Pros:
- User-friendly interface with a broad template library
- Strong automation and basic audience segmentation
- Supports over 500 integrations
- Offers a free plan suitable for small businesses
Cons:
- Pricing can increase sharply with list size
- Lack of design customization
Set a solid deliverability foundation for your email marketing platform with Warmy.io
Picking the right email marketing platform is a crucial part of the process for SaaS companies, but the tool by itself is not a guarantee of success. The true secret to successful email marketing is great deliverability—getting your emails to where they are supposed to go and to avoid the dreaded spam folders. No matter how advanced your marketing tools are, they’re useless if your email services aren’t delivered and opened.Your email provider never likes sharing with you if their service isn’t doing a good job.
This is where Warmy.io comes in. Warmy.io provides specialized email warm-up and deliverability solutions designed to build and maintain a positive sender reputation, helping your SaaS emails land where they belong: the inbox. Integrating Warmy.io’s tools alongside your email marketing platform creates a powerful foundation for long-term email success.
AI-powered warm-up to establish sender reputation
Warmy.io uses advanced artificial intelligence to analyze your domain’s history, sending behavior, and mailbox provider requirements. Based on this data, it creates a personalized warm-up schedule that gradually increases your email volume while optimizing for engagement and deliverability. This smart, data-driven approach ensures you build a trustworthy sender reputation safely and efficiently.
It’s true that warm-up for SaaS companies take time, but with Warmy.io, you’re sure that this time spent is not wasted.
🔖 Related Reading: How Long Does It Take to Warm Up an Email Domain for SaaS Companies?
The new WarmUp Preferences feature is a big help for SaaS companies because it allows senders to customize the distribution per provider. It also allows senders to choose between B2B or B2C engagement patterns.
Template checker to evade spam filters
Content plays a huge role in deliverability. Warmy.io’s Template Checker scans your email messages before you send them, identifying potential spam triggers such as excessive links, suspicious phrases, or formatting issues.
This tool helps you craft emails that comply with best practices and stand a better chance of reaching the inbox. Its Chrome Extension makes this entire process even smoother and easier.
Advanced seed lists for quality warmup
Unlike automated systems that use fake accounts, Warmy.io employs advanced seed lists made up of real, active mailboxes. These genuine mailboxes engage with your emails by opening, replying, and forwarding them, generating authentic signals that email providers like Gmail and Outlook use to evaluate your sender reputation. If there are emails that land in spam, these are removed and marked as important to let the ESPs know you are credible.
Domain Health Hub and free email deliverability test
Warmy.io’s Domain Health Hub provides a comprehensive dashboard that tracks key deliverability metrics such as domain reputation, blacklist status, and inbox placement rates. With real-time monitoring and historical trends, SaaS marketers can proactively address issues and optimize their email strategy for better results.
To help you understand where your emails are landing, Warmy.io offers a free deliverability test that analyzes inbox placement, spam folder rates, and email authentication status. This test provides actionable insights that you can use to improve your campaigns and ensure your messages are seen by your target audience.
Take the next step toward SaaS email marketing excellence with Warmy
As we’ve seen, the best platforms offer powerful automation, seamless CRM integration, advanced segmentation, and detailed analytics—all tailored to meet the unique needs of SaaS businesses. But even the best platform can only take you so far without a solid deliverability foundation.
To truly maximize your email marketing ROI, you need tools that ensure your emails consistently land in your users’ inboxes, avoiding spam filters and maintaining a positive sender reputation. Integrating Warmy.io’s deliverability and warm-up solutions alongside your chosen email platform is the key to sustainable success.
Ready to elevate your SaaS email marketing? Start by selecting the right platform that fits your business goals and team needs. Then, pair it with Warmy.io to guarantee your emails get seen and drive meaningful engagement. Start your journey with Warmy today.
