Dear Reader,
Judging by the fact that you clicked this link, there is a chance that you may be interested in refining your email marketing for B2B SaaS buyers.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a means of delivering applications as services over the internet, allowing clients to access software online rather than managing a given task themselves. These products are very useful for some businesses that may not have the time or budget to develop their own software. The SaaS provider can then run applications on their own server without the client having to worry about security or performance. Since these products are software available online, the market and the competition are both global. Therefore, it is important to refine your email marketing to secure as many buyers as possible.
With these high-tier marketing strategies, you can convert more SaaS buyers.
1. Set Goals
The best way to ensure that you’re converting SaaS buyers is by setting clear, achievable goals. Just having the goal of “getting more buyers” is not enough, you need to break the process down into smaller steps. By only measuring the number of buyers, you are not getting a full picture of whether or not your approach is working, and this information gives you no direction toward improving your productivity. Instead, set smaller goals related to specific metrics, such as newsletter subscription rate, frequency of people signing up for free trials, and email response rate. Different actions may improve the chances of your prospects buying, so identify which ones have the highest success rate and make those your priority. You want to set your goals to put prospective buyers on the right path to purchase. From there, you can cater your emails to these goals, encouraging your prospects to take action with a CTA (Call to Action).
2. Focus on Rates
The best way to execute your goals is by analyzing rates and metrics. You can identify trends among your email recipients and figure out which formulas work best. If one email format is performing better, you know you need to send more emails like that.
Another way to track rates and trends is known as the key performance indicator (KPI). KPIs are metrics that sales managers, reps, and marketers can use to measure specific activities and gauge how effective their sales strategies are. The top 5 KPIs are quantity, size, velocity, quality, and close rate. Looking at these different metrics, you can categorize your prospects as well as the activities your team is performing to pull them in.
Related: The Top Sales KPIs You Should Measure To Improve Close Rates
3. Discuss their Pain Points
After setting goals and analyzing the metrics, you may be wondering what to include in your emails to create more conversions. A surefire way to grab your prospect’s attention is by highlighting your prospect’s problem and what you can do to fix it. Pain points are burdens that you seek to alleviate with your product. Most prospects will ignore emails altogether if they think the email is not relevant to them. Every prospect is going to have different issues in their current setup, but by knowing the common pain points in your industry, you can make it appear in your emails that your product helps eliminate these issues. You can customize your emails to show prospects exactly what they want to see, making them far more likely to take action during each stage of the buyer process.
4. Personalize Your Emails
In order to understand your prospect’s pain points, you may need to do a bit more research about them. Some problems are common across the industry, but in order to really cater to the prospects on your email lists, it helps to know them better. Knowing why your prospects subscribed to your email lists in the first place can help you. Perhaps they arrived through your landing page or a piece of promotional material about a specific product. Using this information, you can ensure that your emails to them are related to the topic that brought them here.
Additionally, by utilizing your metrics from earlier, you can track which emails get more positive feedback from this specific prospect and give them more of that content too.
Another layer of personalizing content is making sure that your email material is relevant to the prospect’s position in the buyer’s journey. You do not want to jump straight into trying to sell, it must be a gradual process that convinces the prospect to consider your product. If you move too fast, they may put you on their “do not contact” list. Instead, focus on a sequence of emails that address each stage of the buyer’s journey.
5. Subscriber Input
When in doubt about how to cater your emails to the prospect, you can always ask for their input. Let your subscribers decide what kind of material they wish to receive. All this information can be neatly categorized under an “update my preferences” button. There, your subscribers can select which content they want, which makes your job easier and prevents them from receiving unnecessary information. If your prospects are able to self-regulate their emails, they are more likely to engage with the few emails that they do get. This way, everyone wins. You get information about your prospects’ pain points and their interests while they get relevant content.
6. Automate When You Can
Personalizing your emails is important, but do not let the personalization process bog you down too much. Most prospects you email will not convert into customers, so taking time to customize each and every email would be a waste of time. This is where automation comes into play. You can automate certain emails to trigger when a user takes certain actions, or set up a sequence of emails that will be sent out over a period of time. You can establish rules and contingencies which, upon occurring, trigger your system to send a relevant email. For example, you can use your automation software to send an email when a user signs up, when a free trial ends, or when they click a certain link on your website or other promotional material. You can even set up a string of emails for each stage of the buyer’s process. This way, even if you are personalizing your emails, you can do them all at once and have your program do the work of sending emails out over time. This strategy may not directly help you gain SaaS buyers, but it will at least ensure that you are saving time while still nurturing all of your leads. Nurturing your leads, even the ones that seem inactive can make a big difference in the long run. Sometimes prospective buyers just need time to decide if your product is right for them, so automating an email after X months asking if they are still interested in your product can restart the conversation, or at least give you a concrete no. This way, you either gain a buyer or can finally move on from that one contact. For more reference, read the full article How to Make your Emails Impossible to Ignore.
7. Less is More
After all, is said and done, sometimes less is more. No one likes receiving dozens of emails. So make sure that the emails you do send are informative and relevant.
Also, make sure your overall email campaign is a reasonable length. Every company is different, but once you find the ideal number of emails for winning prospects, try to stick with it. Additionally, if a prospect is not responding to those emails, perform an interest check. As mentioned before, a concrete no can be beneficial. This will improve your email sender score. If you are sending too many emails that are never opened or that bounce, there is a chance that your business may be flagged as spam, an email marketer’s worst nightmare. Any prospect with a spam filter on their email will not be receiving your material, even if it is relevant to them. So always include an option to unsubscribe or opt-out of your emails, otherwise, people will take it upon themselves to flag you as spam.
If less is more, then you need to make your “less” count. Optimize the emails you do send, and take advantage of your metrics to identify what days and times your emails perform the best. Past engagement can tell you a lot about how to time your emails as well as how frequently to send them.
Related: 4 Solid B2B Email Campaign Ideas to Market Cloud Solutions
Signing Off… The Takeaway
There are many ways to optimize your email marketing for SaaS buyers, but remember to establish goals, utilize your engagement data, and have a good balance between personalization and automation. By making these changes, you will see a world of difference in your email campaigns.
Good luck securing those leads… and happy emailing!
Sincerely,
