Email Marketing 101: Essential Strategies for Startup Founders
The webinar, hosted by Founder Institute content manager Emilia and presented by email conversion strategist Samar Owais (founder of Emails Done Right), walks startup founders through a comprehensive email marketing framework. After a brief poll on attendees' current email practices, Samar outlines three core questions to structure any SaaS email program: why the email is sent, what happens when the user converts, and what happens when they don’t. She maps these questions onto the full spectrum of email types—welcome, onboarding, transactional, behavior‑triggered, proactive support, re‑engagement, retention, and upgrade sequences—showing how each aligns with specific user‑journey moments (new subscriber, free‑trial sign‑up, paid conversion, churn risk, etc.). Samar then shares her “copywriting rule of one”: write to one person, convey one idea, and include one type of call‑to‑action per email. She details tactics for improving open rates (humanized from‑name, clear subject lines, complementary preview text), personalizing copy beyond first‑name, and formatting for speed reading. The session also covers gamifying emails to increase clicks, best‑practice A/B testing (test one variable at a time, need sufficient sample size), and practical tool recommendations (HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Userlist). In the Q&A, founders ask about preferred email platforms, lead‑magnet selection, optimal sending frequency, and A/B testing implementation. Throughout, Samar emphasizes a user‑first mindset, consistent content, segmentation, and the industry‑cited $42 ROI per $1 spent on email.
Chapters
Hello everyone, welcome to our Founder Institute Monday event. Today we're gonna talk about email marketing and how you can benefit by it as founders and progress with your email strategy. We have invited a very special expert today, but before we bring her on stage, let me introduce myself. My name is Emilia and I'm a content manager in Founder Institute. I'm based at the moment in Spain. It would be lovely to hear where are you now. You can put this information in the chat on the right-hand side. As you can see on the Airmeet menu, the features we have are the chat. There is also Q&A session that I invite you to use. For questions for our speaker. It will be very easy for us to vote and to find your questions there. And also we have down here the emojis you can press to express your support for our speaker and if any particular topic is interesting to you. So to move on, Our guest today is Samar Owais, Samar Owais, sorry, and she's a founder of Emails Done Right. And to help her to know you better, we have created a poll with a very simple question for you, and I'm gonna bring it on stage right now. So today we want to ask you, are you currently sending any marketing emails? Yes, no, or I'm planning to? Please vote so that, uh, Samarkand can see your replies and we'll know what to explain to you. And what help and assistance would you need. A little bit more about the agenda today. Samar will join us very soon. She will present for about 20 to 30 minutes, and after that we will have a Q&A session. So please don't hesitate, post your questions in the Q&A session— in the Q&A section. And after the Q&A, we will have, as usual, networking So I'm gonna hide this poll at the moment. Almost 40% of you said that they are sending marketing emails, 17-18% no, and almost half are planning to. I'm gonna hide this one page, but you can still vote. So let's invite Samar to the stage and she can introduce herself and tell us more about herself. Hi, Samar.
Hi, Emilia. How are you doing today?
Very well, thank you.
How are you? Feeling good.
The floor is all yours.
All right, thank you so much. Before, let me just share my screen first so that we are— we all know what we're going to talk about today. Let me know when you can see the screen, Amelia.
Yes, very well.
Perfect. Okay. Hey everybody, welcome to Email Marketing 101, which is we're going to talk about conversion strategies for startup founders today. I am an email conversion strategist and copywriter for SaaS and e-commerce brands. My work is divided across two niches. I have worked with companies like HubSpot, Pinterest, Drip, Workamajig, and a bunch more. In SaaS, I specialize in user onboarding and retention, and I consult, I advise startups on improving their user experience through email. Now, today's topic is something that I hold very, very close to my heart because email is the bread and butter of everything that we do, and it's a very important marketing channel for startups. So there are 3 things we're going to cover today. The first one is how to figure out which SaaS emails to send and when. Now, if you ask a startup founder or a marketing team and you ask them, hey, do you know what emails you need to send? They will know it by— they will know it like the back of their hand. Oh, we need to send these, these, these emails. But when you ask them when and who do you send it to, that's where the confusion starts. And this is where— this is what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to simplify the process for you so that you will know immediately who the email needs to go out to, when it needs to go out to, and to whom does it need to go out to, right? The second thing we're going to cover is the 3-question rule of sending SaaS emails. Now, if you start listing all the emails out that you need to send, it's going to get very chaotic very fast. And so my process for making sense and connecting all the dots when it comes to email marketing is using 3 questions. And the answer always simplifies everything for me, right? And the third thing is probably something that we all need help with, which is creating emails that convert. Now, this is one of the most quoted stats in the industry, that email generates $42 for every $1 spent. You know, it's been reported in Litmus, it's been reported by HubSpot, and pretty much every other email marketing publication out there. And the number changes, right? A few years ago, it started from maybe $36, went all the way up to $44, and now it's somewhere between these two figures. But we all get excited when we see this number, right? We all think, oh, if we spend like every subscriber, is potentially worth $42. There's so much money in email. I wanna start doing it. But when we start sending those emails, there's something that happens that drives us up the wall. And this is the reaction that I had, that countless SaaS founders and marketing teams have had when they start sending emails and then nothing happens, right? Forget the $42 promise. They don't even convert well enough to justify investing in email that much. I don't know how many cricket fans we have in the audience today, but this is a very famous meme from a cricket match, and this guy was just so disappointed at somebody dropping a catch or something, I think. But it's a classic, and this is pretty much how I felt the first time I was— when I was getting interested in email, I came across that stat and I was like, oh yes, I want to get into email. Marketing, I want to market my business through email, all of that. And when I started sending emails, nothing was happening. All right, so there are 3 reasons why email is so important to a startup, right? The first thing is that email helps you connect with your audience, which is the entire purpose of sending an email to somebody. If you are not connecting to your audience, you are not converting them into users. And if you're not converting them into users, your app is a they stand, right? The second reason is that email builds brand awareness and customer loyalty, and two things that are so important. When you do them right, your customers will see you through a pandemic. This is how important brand awareness and customer loyalty is, and emails are such a great way of creating that. And the third reason is where our emails actually go touching, which is emails turn to convert subscribers into users and customers. So imagine sending an email to a list of people who have maybe subscribed to your blog or your newsletter, right? But they haven't signed up for a free trial or they haven't booked a demo and you realize that you need to convert more people and all you have to do, and you have this big segment of people who have opted in to hearing from you and you send them an email encouraging them to sign up. And they do, and you get that result that you were after. This is why email is so important. It's a list of people waiting to hear from us. All we have to do is send them messages that are relevant to them, and we will talk about that in a little bit more, right? So the key to figuring out that first thing that we talked about, which was which emails to send when, and the key to that is sending the right message to the right person at the right time. If you are sending onboarding emails to somebody who's just upgraded to the annual plan or moved on to the next tier, that's an onboarding email going to the wrong person, right? Or if you are sending upgrade to paid to somebody who hasn't even signed up for their free trial, that's the wrong message going to the wrong person. Super important for us to send the right message to the right person at the right time, which also means that not every email you send needs to go out to everybody. Even your content emails, they should only be going out to people who have opted in for them or who are not in any other automation at the moment, things like that. So super important to figure out what is that right message, who is the right person, and what is the right time. Now there's a way to figure this out, right? But first we need to figure out what that right message is. And that typically depends on where our user or subscriber is in their email journey or their customer journey, right? And so that right message could be anything about from sales emails where you're sending offers, promos, um, to behavior-triggered emails or content emails. They could be customer support emails, which are some of my favorite kind of emails in the SaaS world. Or they could be retention-focused emails that you are sending out to people who have stopped engaging with your app. Other emails could be transactional emails, reactivation emails for people who have stopped using your app for a while and you want to encourage them to start using it again. And then there are new feature releases, right? All of these messages need to go out at different touchpoints in your user's customer journey. Okay, the next thing we need to figure out who the right person is, right? And this is where we're at, we ask ourselves, Are they a user or a subscriber? Are they a long-term user or subscriber? Did they sign up for a free trial? What were they active during the free trial? Are they a paying customer or users? What features have they used? What features have they not used? When was the last time they even logged in, right? Are they eligible for an upgrade? Which payment plan are they on? Especially important if you are sending out an email asking people to choose a payment plan or upgrade to another payment plan. And the final question that I feel not enough startups are thinking about is, have they become a power user? And this part comes in after our onboarding emails have gone out, and we need to start noticing who are our power users, who are using our apps every single day, and what can we do to help them out even more so that they use our app more and more. All right, and the last thing is at the right time. Now, the pre— it connects to the previous question, right? If you're asking yourself, have they signed up for the free trial? And if the answer is yes, what emails are you going to send them? They signed up for, you know, the free trial to onboarding flow, right? If they've subscribed to a newsletter, that's when you need to send them your welcome flow. If their free trial is about to expire, that's when you're going to send them reminder emails. Have they used or not used a feature? That's when you're going to send them a behavior-triggered emails. Have they upgraded to paid? What emails are you going to send them then, right? Have they booked a demo? What emails are you going to send them? And so through all of these, what emails am I going to send them is the underlying theme of it all, right? Whether they've renewed a subscription, whether they've canceled a subscription, whether they've contacted customer support or not, whether they've activated their account or not, you keep, you need to keep asking yourself, what emails are we going to send them next? So these are the 3 things that we need to focus on when we are trying to figure out what emails to send to whom and when. Okay, because if you don't, it's gonna get very chaotic, very fast, and it's going to fall apart like that cupcake is right now, right? And so if we don't bring order to chaos, you're going to have an email marketing program that nobody will be able to make sense of, and that will reflect on your conversions. Okay. Now, the reason we need the 3-question rule for sending SaaS emails is because it helps us map out our user's email journey. And what the user's email journey helps us do is figure out where they are in their customer journey. right? And where are they intersecting with, um, your buyer's journey or your user's email journey so that you can send them the relevant messages that they need at the time? Okay, so the first question is, why are we sending this email? I have— I've already started asking that question as I was walking you through the first part of the presentation, right? What is that big conversion you're after? So let's say you decide that you want to send a welcome email sequence for anybody who is signing up for your newsletter, right? If you— especially, this is especially relevant for SaaS startups that have a content marketing program. If you have a content marketing program, you are probably putting content out there. You should be having a newsletter. You should be building your email list. And so let's say you decide, oh, I want to create a welcome sequence for people who are signing up for my newsletter. The big question you need to answer here is what is that big conversion we are after? Why are we sending this email or email sequence? And if it's a welcome sequence, your answer is going to be, oh, because I want more people to sign up for our free trial, or we want more people to book a demo. And so all of us have, you have a purpose, right? And when you have a purpose, it's easy to map out the emails that you need to send out because you know what the purpose is going to be. Before each email. The second question you need to ask is what happens when a user converts, right? So if you're sending a welcome email and the, you, and the purpose is that they need to sign up for the free trial, what happens when they do sign up for a free trial, right? What emails are they going to get next? Does anybody have the answer for that? I will wait 10 to 15 seconds to see if anybody can guess um, in the chat and then move forward. Yep, onboarding emails is right. And if the purpose was setting up a demo, then yes, booking a demo would have been right. Sorry. And so when they convert, what emails are we going to send to send them. The answer for if it's a free trial is onboarding emails. And when it comes to onboarding emails, we now have a purpose. We now know what to do. We now know what our big conversion is going to be for those onboarding emails, right? The third question you need to ask is, and this is super important that not enough startups think about, is what happens when they don't convert? Because here's the thing, so much of our work in the email world is focused on converting. Conversions that we don't focus enough on the non-conversions, on the people who are not doing what we want them to do, which by the way is going to be the majority of your audience. They're going to be the majority of your subscribers or your website traffic or your landing page traffic, wherever you are getting people to sign up for your emails, it starts diluting from there, right? So we need to also create a plan or a strategy for when, what emails are we going to send them when they don't, convert. And this is where— these are all strategic touchpoints, by the way. This is where you and your marketing team or your email marketing team is going to have to make decisions. What are we going to do? What emails are we going to send them? What is our purpose going to be for that email that we're going to send them? What is that big conversion that we are after, right? Okay, so let's say you ask yourself, what emails should you send if a free trial doesn't convert into paid? Or a user stops using the app after a few months, right, or a user cancels their subscription, or you have these checkpoints where you're starting to realize, oh, this person hasn't— maybe, you know, slowed down their app usage, it's— they're about to churn. What emails are you going to send them next? What emails are you going to send them if somebody has signed up but hasn't yet activated their account? And all of these will lead you to answers, right? If a free trial doesn't convert into paid, what is your strategy going to be? Typically a lot of SaaS startups will either send a follow-up email sequence asking, hey, we're always trying to improve our service and our app, we'd love to know why you didn't become a paid user, right? Other startups will offer a 7-day extension, on their free trial. These are all strategies that you employ, and this is what I mean by strategic decisions. This is where you have to make these decisions and then translate those decisions into email, right? What emails should you send if a user stops using the app but they haven't churned yet, they haven't canceled their account yet? So you're going to want to send them re-engagement emails. What happens when somebody cancels their subscription? right? Are we going to make them an offer or are we going to ignore them and think like, ah, you know, churn is part of business, it's okay, everybody at some point churns, right? But if you're focusing on people who are not converting or who have stopped using our app and we wanna bring them back, then a reactivation email sequence makes the most sense, right? And again, this is where we sit down and decide what is our strategy going to be? What offer are we going to make them? How are we going to encourage them to come back? Um, and how are we going to reactivate this user? Similarly, for a user that is about to churn but hasn't yet, what is our strategy going to be? What emails are we going to send them? How are we going to convince them to start using our app again? That becomes a retention-focused email sequence. And finally, if a user hasn't activated their account, what emails are we going to send them, right? It's not going to be a reactivation sequence per se, but it could be anywhere between 1 to 3 to 5 emails encouraging them to to activate their account so that they can start using the app and get that benefit that they were after in the first place when they signed up for the free trial, right? And these are just some examples of touchpoints or user journey points that will come up in when you are mapping out your email's user journey or email journey and realize, oh, these are all the places that we need to send emails and what is our strategy for it going to be. Okay, so there are also other emails that you should be thinking about, which are transactional emails. So many SaaS startups use cookie-cutter transactional emails that come with whatever payment processor they're using, right? A lot of them, if you're lucky, they'll brand their emails, but the copy remains the same. This is one of those, um, not often utilized ways of like creating brand awareness and creating like providing a good email experience or user experience to your customers by making sure that the copy is in your app's tone and voice, and that the transactional emails actually look like they're from your app, right? And those emails could be payment confirmation, renewal emails, account activation, et cetera, right? The other emails we should be thinking about is behavior-triggered emails. Have they used a specific feature or it, They have not, have they integrated a third-party app? Behavior-triggered emails are sent based on the action or inaction of a user, right? The third are my favorite kind of emails called proactive customer support emails. These are emails that you can set up, and I recommend that they are text-based from the founder, and they go out to different segments every 2 to 3 months where you're asking, hey, just checking in to see how your experience is going. With our app is. Is there anything I can help you with? I'm all— Reply to email is going to a specific person, right? To your customer service team, or even just to your personal inbox. Um, I'm not sure what's going on. Can you guys see the screen? All right, okay, because to me I can still just see my face. All right. And the last part of the emails that you should be thinking about is retention-focused emails, which is canceled users, inactive users, failed payments, etc., right? These are all, um, these are all situations that are pretty much similar across— no matter what kind of SaaS app you have, you are going to want to create emails to go out when somebody cancels their account when they become inactive or their payment fails, right? These are situations that will come up no matter what kind of app you have. So it's always good to have these emails in place before these things happen. All right, now I want to walk you through mapping out your user's email journey using the 3 questions that I've just highlighted, right? Right? So let's, and when we start doing this, we take it from the very top, which is where is your, the most traffic on your website coming from? Is it the homepage? Is it a landing page? Whichever page that is, that you are getting people to sign up for a free trial or your newsletter, that's the page you want to focus on and start with, right? And so let's say there are two things that can happen on that page. One is you have a newsletter and you are encouraging people encouraging people to subscribe to their newsletter, right? When they do that, question number 1, why, what, why are we sending this email? Because they've just subscribed. Question number 2, what happens when a user converts, which is the subscription to the newsletter? We're gonna send them an email and that email is the welcome or the nurture sequence, right? And what is that purpose of that email? The purpose is to convince them to big time sign up for the free trial, right? Similarly, if somebody signs up for the free trial, what emails are we going to send them next, right? With the answer is free-to-paid onboarding emails. All right, that's great. What emails are they going to get next, right? So, and this is where, um, I say onboarding for paid users because so many startups and SaaS apps will just drop their users like hot potatoes the minute they become paid users, and they forget about the onboarding sequence. But what we often forget is that a free-to-paid onboarding sequence is hyper-focused on getting that conversion. It's hyper-focused on getting your user to sign up for the paid version of your app, right? It doesn't mean that they've seen all the great things that your app can do. It doesn't mean that they've tried all the features that you have. And so the onboarding for paid users, that's where that comes in, where you want to continue onboarding them beyond the point where they just signed up. We don't want to leave them to their own devices. We don't want them to like try and figure things out on their own and then get frustrated and stop using our app. We want to guide them, hold their hands gently, and like show them all the ways that we— our app is amazing and solving very real problems for them, right? And so the point of an onboarding for paid users is to make our users power users. Once they do, that's when we start thinking about our annual, um, revenue, right? Annual recurring revenue. And we can do that in two ways. If you have tier-based pricing, we create email sequences in a way that encourages them to sign up for the next tier, or create an onboarding for paid users that makes them use the app so much that they're hitting that upper level of the tier and automatically need to upgrade to the other tier, right? Or if you don't have tier-based pricing, then we want to move them to the annual plan. Again, strategic Final question: what happens when they don't convert? I believe I might have cut out again, so I'm gonna say that again. What happens when they don't convert, right? What emails are we going to send them next? So let's say somebody signs up to your newsletter, you send them a welcome sequence, and the purpose of that welcome sequence sequence is to encourage them to sign up for a free-to-paid onboarding sequence. They don't sign up for the free trial, right? What emails are you going to send them then? And this is where you decide, okay, how am I going to handle this? And the answer is usually, if you have got a content marketing program, you're sending regular emails, right? So those could be content emails, new feature releases, offers, etc. Because here's the thing with people who don't convert, now might not be the right time, but it doesn't mean that 3 months down the line it still won't be, right? The answer might change in a while, and if you continue staying on top of mind by sending regular emails that are filled with value that show them all the ways that they can— your app can solve their problems, then you are going to stay on top of mind, and when they need your app, you will— they will sign up for it, right? Similarly, For the free-to-paid onboarding sequence, when it, when a user doesn't upgrade or when a user lets their free trial lapse and they do not become a paying user, what emails are we going to send them, right? And we've talked about this. We are going to send them a follow-up sequence. And so you continue asking yourself these questions and you continue building out your email journey map until you get to the end. And then you decide, okay, which of these email sequences are the most high impact for us? And we're going to work on them first. First, and then you turn it into a phase-wise thing where you're slowly building out your entire email journey. All right. Now the last part, how to create emails that convert. I am going to ask, is there— All right, hang on, you guys. I think everybody should be able to see the slides now. Daniel, can you please confirm? Perfect, thank you so much. All right, so now we come to the fun part, the part that you can take home today and work work on the last email that you have sent out or the current email that you're working and planning on sending out, right? Because this is the part that makes, that will make the fastest impact on your existing email marketing plan or strategy that you have in place right now, right? How to create emails that convert. Before this, we were planning, we were strategizing, and now we're moving on to the part where we actually create the emails. All right. Now I am known by my email copywriting rule of one. All of my emails have these three elements in them, which is write to one person, which means, I mean, you could have hundreds of thousands of subscribers on your email list, or you could have tens of thousands of users, but the person reading the email on the other end of the screen is just one, right? So you could be a B2B SaaS, or you could be a B2C SaaS, The person reading your email is just one, and you need to write your email to that one person, right? The second thing is share one idea per email. We have seen so many emails where we're asking people to read 2 to 3 different types of podcast, blog posts, or try 2 features, or, you know, sign up for their socials. "Sign up for the free trial." And all of this is like jumbled together in one email. And what it does is the more, it just confuses the reader, right? And this brings us to the last thing, have one type of call to action. Now notice how I don't say have one call to action because no, your emails should absolutely have strategically placed CTA buttons or links where the user is most likely to click, right? And what I mean by one type of call to action is that all of those CTAs should lead to the same place, right? And so if you are— if this is the only thing you retain for today's workshop, my job would have been done, right? Remember the email copywriting rule of one: write to one person, Share one idea per email. So the next time you are sitting down to hop right in an email for your startup, ask yourself, what is that one message that I want to convey here? And it could have a conversion element or it could not. If it has, then sharing one idea per email becomes even more important, right? And finally, have one type of call to action. Okay, this is an email. By Orange, I believe, and this is part of their onboarding email, I think, and it has just one job: get their users to install the Lucky Orange code, right? And it's short, it's sweet, it asks them, it has one, one CTA, which is, you know, whether it's one CTA or one type of CTA, that rule applies here. So they're saying, we're so excited to see you use Lucky Orange's tool, the next step is to add our tracking code to your site, which takes less than 5 minutes. Do you see how they're simplifying the process and dealing and also managing the overwhelm that their user might be facing, right? Even if you're not a developer, super important parentheses here, then they give you this, they tell you how to do it, and then they give you a button. Now, when you click over to that button, it is going to take you directly to the page on your app where you can do it. They've made it super simple for the user to take action. All right, now we move on to how to get our emails opened. Now, humanizing the from name, right? So many times, let's say you get receive emails from Dropbox, right? Or you receive emails from Canva. But what I mean when I say humanizing is that from somebody at company, right? So Summer from Emails Done Right or John from Canva. And what it does is it's a very subtle way of personalizing your emails, right? It makes your user feel like, okay, a person is emailing from this company. Second thing you need to do is make your subject line the star attraction. Now I always say when it comes to subject lines, you need to be, you need to choose for clarity over cleverness because our users are busy people like us and they don't have the mental bandwidth or the time to jump through hoops, mental hoops, right? Where we're figuring out, okay, what is that email about? They'll be thinking, okay, I don't know what this email is about, I'm not gonna open it. So make sure that your subject line clearly communicates what the email is about. And finally, giving your preview text a supporting role. Now, what I mean by that is that don't repeat the same information that you have put in your subject line, make sure that it adds to it. So let's say you're talking about a new feature release and you're saying, hey, new feature release XYZ, and then a little bit about what that feature release means for the user, right? So we're gonna look at a few examples, right? So remember Jacob from Butter. Butter is a video conferencing app and they'd make conferences and team meetings very fun according to them. Anyway, so this was their first onboarding email that I received. It says, welcome to Butter. And from the get-go, I know this guy at Butter from Jacob, I can always, you know, it's humanizing the brand. And then they have the preview text as well, run more engaging sessions. Now of course we have these tiny little hiccups where the preview text starts with the word Butter and it's unneeded here, but welcome to Butter, run more engaging sessions, get better outcomes. If I've just signed up for Butter It tells me enough to want to open the email, right? Second one is Cheska from Butter. This is when I did not become a paying user. They started sending me the reactivation emails, right? Or the follow-up. This is Cheska from Butter, need a hand? And they didn't, because this was a personalized email, they didn't bother with a preview text, which is fine in this situation. The third email is from Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat, right? E-signing just got easier. Create complete forms yourself or collect e-signatures from others fast with Acrobat. I like that email. It was very relevant to when I received it because I was trying to sign a document and I couldn't, and I had to— I signed up for their free trial. Okay, again, Tricia from PandaDoc, same thing. Summer, try the PandaDoc mobile app. Track your documents on the go through your mobile device. Right? As a copywriter, I want to say I would change that last two words, mobile device, in the preview text to cell phone, because how many of us are calling our cell phones mobile device these days, right? But it does the job. It tells me what the email is about. And if I am dealing with a lot of documents, then I would definitely want PandaDoc on my phone. Tina at Vidyard, find out who's watching your videos. They didn't have a preview text here, but this subject line is so intriguing. The email was about metrics and how you can figure out who's been watching your emails and what the analytics are like, but that subject line was really good. And then Dropbox, this was surprisingly— okay, I've got a question for you guys. Can you figure out what the email is about by Dropbox? The subject line is "Ready for a refresh?" and the preview text is Make the next 12 months count. Oh no, absolutely not. This was their New Year's email, right? This was their New Year's email, and I saw it in June because I have a separate folder in my inbox where all these emails go that I'm monitoring for swipes, email swipes. And so when I saw this, I was like, what is this app about? And when I opened it, it was about making the most of the new year, um, and there was no offer in it per se, I don't think. But yeah, ready for a refresh? Make the next 12 months count. It was a New Year's email. So which is why I say it is so important to make sure that your subject lines are clear or clever and your preview text give more context. The question you need to be asking yourself when you are writing your subject line and your preview text is, if my user does not open my email, will they know what the email is about? Will the message have gotten across to them? If it's relevant to them, they'll open it. If it's not, will they still know? If the answer is yes, you are set. If the answer is no, you need to rework it. On your emails. All right, so this is a newsletter tip by one of my favorite email marketers out there called Kate Bourguin, or Caitlin Bourguin. Um, your from line matters more than your subject line. Train readers to expect awesomeness every time they open, rather than writing clickbaity subject lines that teach them to ignore you. Now she's talking about the from name, like Jacob from Butter and Jessica from Butter, those. But as an email marketer, I'm gonna say they all work together. It's a tag team, right? So the from name, the subject line, the preview text. But yes, from names is— when we are sending regular emails, something interesting, really interesting happens. We start training our subscribers and our users to expect emails from us. And if we have an email marketing plan, if we have a strategic plan, if we have a content plan for our emails, then our users are going to start recognizing, okay, on Mondays they send out a new blog post, on Thursdays they publish a podcast, on Sundays they're sending us an overall review of their week. And so even if the topic isn't relevant to us, even if the subject line is week, if we know, if you like their blog posts and we like reading their blog and it's Monday and it says, let's say Jacob from Butter, we know that Jacob just sent us a new blog post already, right? And we are going to open it even if the blog post, even if the subject line is weak or not feels like it's not relevant to us, which is why we say from name, subject line, preview text is so important. All right, next you want, once you've got your emails open, it's time to get them read. And you do that by personalizing your email copy. And what I mean by personalizing your email copy is not using first name, um, in your emails. I mean, they're great, they have their own place, but personalizing your email copy by writing to one person, right? Um, making sure that you're sending the right message at the right time to the right person. These are the rules of personalization that I follow. And the first name personalization is just the most common, right? I typically, I do not want to rely on first name personalization simply because people are funny or in a silly mood. I had somebody sign up as hot butter toast in my newsletter. And now every time I use the first name personalization, I'm thinking about the person. That person might've thought it was funny 2 years ago when they signed up, right? But if I keep sending them name emails by the first name personalization, it's gonna get very old very fast for them. And so there is definitely a place for first name personalization, but just don't overuse it, right? The second thing you want to do is hook your subscribers with your opening line. That is the entire purpose of the first line of your email, or any type of copy, is get the reader to read the second line and then the third line and the fourth line and so on. And so make sure, like a lot of times when we're writing email copy, it takes us a while to get to the point, right? So when you're writing that first draft, don't self-edit too much, start writing. And when you hit your stride and you are in that editing phase, you realize, oh, the third paragraph is where I really start talking about what I wanted to talk about. And so you can cut off the first third, of your email and start from where you really get to the meat of the matter, right? And so that's— so hook your subscribers with your opening line. And your opening lines don't have to be, uh, some amazingly great or incredible feat of copywriting. It could be something as simple as, hey, quick question, or has this ever happened to you, right? Something that will make the reader want to read the second line. Okay, the third thing you want to do is make your email copy conversational and easy to read. I always say when you write email, make sure your copy feels like you're sending it to a friend, or you're— or the person reading that email feels like this email could have been from a friend. Not your best friend. Our best friends and our siblings are people we talk very differently with, but a good friend, right? Somebody we care about our reputation often. In front of, right? And by easy to read, I mean make sure that your formatting is optimized for online reading. So no long paragraphs, um, no— if you use bullet points, make plenty of use of white space, and make sure that you vary the length of your paragraph. So if you've had a 3-line paragraph, then have 1 line and then a 2-line and a 3-line. So vary the length so that reading becomes almost like a rhythm. All right, this is an email I got from TinyPNG. They don't have an email marketing program that I know of, but once a year I get this email from them. Hi Summer, this is a reminder that your TinyPNG Pro subscription will automatically renew on XYZ date, right? On your account page, you can change your headings, automatic renewal and payment details. And if you have any questions or comments, do not hesitate to mail or tweet us. Have a magnificent day. Team TinyPNG on behalf of George the Panda. Okay, so this email is personalized because it's hyper-focused on me simply because it's a transactional email. Two, it hooks with the opening line. This is a reminder of your renewal, right? Because I chose an automatic renewal, they weren't ignoring me. They sent a reminder email a week before. What this does is anybody whose card has expired, anybody who's maybe not planning on renewing, can go ahead and make changes and make their own decisions, right? And the third thing is the copy is conversational and easy to read. It's a super short email. I was done with it in less than 30 seconds, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. There was only one CTA for me, but the, where they hyperlink mail or tweet is where they're offering me customer support. And it's what I call de-optimized conversion or call to actions, right? Where they're there when a user needs them, but they're not the main focus. Okay. So this is an email that has 2 things out of 3, right? This was an email sent by Flodesk. I think they're an email marketing software. And what this does is it's— and I chose it because it's very relevant for us. Your subject line cheat sheet is here. This is a content email that they sent out. It is not personalized, probably because it was going out to everybody, um, or the people who were subscribed to the newsletter. But it hooks with the opening line, right? It says your subject line cheat sheet is here. And those people who are working in the email world or who are creating emails for their company or brand, that they struggle with this. And so they're gonna bookmark this, they're gonna save this, they're gonna read this entire email and probably send it to the rest of their team as well, right? And this copy is conversational and easy to read. Even though there are 7 points, you can read them so fast and so easily and still retain the information. So it's okay. You don't have to hit 3 out of 3 all the time. Hitting 2 out of 3 is a good enough goal. And if you're hitting 2 out of 3, don't stress too much. Hit send on that email. All right. If you've, once you've got your email open and you've got your email read, the third thing you want done is to get your emails clicked. And you get that by A, gamifying your emails. And we'll talk about what that can be. In a little bit. Two is moving the conversation forward with call to actions, right? So if they've read your email, the next logical step is clicking on your call to action. That's what I mean by moving the conversation forward. And the third thing is formatting your emails for speed reading and fast action. We've talked about this a little bit, but we're gonna get into that more. Now what I mean by gamifying your emails is that turn it into a bit of a game. right? So apparel brands or apps can do something like, hey, take a look at how this will sound or go with this, right? So this works really well for e-commerce brands, and I don't know why that is the example that's coming up in my head right now. Well, let's say apparel brands can send emails to their female subscribers saying, hey, which shirt do you like best? And then give them two options. Now our brain is hardwired to make a choice when presented with choices, right? And so a lot of them are going to click even just to see, oh, what's going to happen. And then again, it becomes a strategic decision. What are we going to show on the landing page when somebody clicks through? Are we going to show them an entire outfit? Are we just going to show them the shirt? What is our sales sequence, sales strategy going to be, right? So gamifying your emails makes emails fun for your subscribers. It makes them want to click. It compels them to click. Here's a SaaS example, SaaS email example of somebody who's gamified their email, right? So this email is from Outpost, I think, right? And they have a feature that brings, that magnifies or brings an edge to dull sound, right? They are a sound-improving software. And so they've gamified this email by saying, hey, you can check out our thermal feature in action. And you can use it, see how it works on guitars, you can see how it works on drums, you can see how it works on vocals and bass, right? And so they've gamified it. Anybody who's interested in all 4 of those will definitely, on any of those, will click through to see how it sounds, what's the before and after like, right? And so, or anybody who's like working on some kind of music and they need this theme, this feature, they are absolutely going to click on the CTA button, right? It's formatted for speed reading. There's a header, the email copy is just 3 lines long, and then there's a CTA, right? And it moves the conversation forward by getting them to click. And so you can see that even though there are, let's say, 5 different types of calls to action, they're all leading people to the same place. It's going to land them to a place where they can do it, that they can try out this feature and do the same for their music. Okay, this is an email example of a company that got 2 out of 3 right. Streamlined communications in searchable, organized group channels, send direct messages, etc., etc. It is not a gamified email, but it is optimized for speed reading and it moves the conversation forward. Anybody who has just created a Slack group will want to invite people over. And so they had a GIF here that was showing them how to do it from the app, but clicking this link also took them to the app where they could do this action and invite people over, right? So again, like I said, you don't need to hit 3 out of 3 every single time. Hitting 2 out of 3 is good enough and can get the job done. It will get you the conversions. You need. All right, to recap, send the right message to the right person at the right time. Create a stellar customer email experience by asking yourself 3 questions. Why are we sending this email? What happens when a user converts? And what happens when they don't convert? And create your strategy and email plan accordingly for each of these, right? And then finally, get your emails open, read, and clicked by following the rule of one, write to one person, share one key idea per email, and use one type of call to action. This brings us to the end. And I'm going to end this by saying to get that $42 return on investment, you need to create emails that put your customer first. If you notice throughout this entire presentation, I am focusing on your users. Rather than the SaaS company itself, right? And when we do that, our users feel seen and supported, and they are more likely to do what we want them to do, and our conversion rates will show that to us. Okay, thank you very much for being a wonderful audience. Uh, you guys can download slides at summerwest.com/founderinstitute. Institute, and you will, you can download the slides if you need them. I think they're highly useful for you to forward to your entire teams or your copywriter or marketer, whoever is handling emails for you. Okay. Time to get, go to some Q&As.
Tamar, thank you so much for this very comprehensive detailed presentation. With plenty of examples. It was very on point, and still our founders have many questions. Yes, you can press the emojis to show your love to Samar. And question number 1, the most asked question, is— I'm gonna put it on stage right now. What are your preferred email management platforms for founders? Everybody's asking for tools as well as for automations, including AI.
Yeah, okay, so for SaaS companies, I'm gonna say it more than your email management platforms, and I'm gonna give you recommendations in just a bit, but it's important to look at tech stack, if you've already started using a certain type of ESP, you need to ask yourself, do I have the time and the resources to move to a new one if somebody says another one is better, right? A lot of times it's a, it's a much better use of our time to make the most of the email marketing software we are already using. So, but HubSpot is super popular. And if you are with a, with an incubator or a VC fund, they have a HubSpot Partners Program, which gives you 90% off on the first year. So it becomes a very affordable option for SaaS companies. And I know this because I've written onboarding emails for HubSpot for the Partner Program, and that's a wonderful program. So HubSpot is a great option. The other option is ActiveCampaign. The third option is a new player in the field. I think they've been around for 2 to 3 years, is Userlist. I've seen their app, it's very nice, and they do email marketing in a way where it— they keep the user's journey in mind when they're doing emails. So check those 3 out: HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Userlist, and see if you're looking to change. Ask yourself, is it a much better use of my time and resources to make the most of the email marketing software I am using right now Or is it time to change? And when it is time to change, please check out the 3 that I've mentioned.
Thank you, thank you for these examples. I hope you're all taking notes. If not, you're gonna receive the recording, don't worry. And another interesting question from Jennifer: How do you know what type of lead magnet to share as a startup so you can get subscriptions? There are other lead from other businesses that provide the same services, help stand out. Samara is having a little connection problem, but she's gonna get back, I believe, any moment. Samara, are you there? Can you hear us? Maybe she needs a moment. She's probably refreshing her system. You can put in the chat your comments.
Hang on, am I back?
If you have something to share.
Okay, uh, sorry, I got disconnected. We are having power issues apparently. Um, Amelia, can you hear me now?
Yes, perfectly.
Okay, so I'm gonna answer that question fast. The type of lead magnet you need depends on the type of action you want them to take after going through your lead magnet. The rules of emails pretty much apply to lead magnets as well. Make sure you are giving them some— a big— a win fast, and you're asking for an easy call to action, right? So you're asking for an easy action. So it could be a checklist, it could be, um, something that makes contacting you the next best step. Now there are so many different types of lead magnets. I am not a content expert, so I cannot advise you which type would be better. But when it comes to other businesses who provide the same service, the first thing that sets you apart is putting out good content out there and doing it consistently. I, I cannot tell you how many times I have told, uh, marketing teams that I'm training that the bar is on the floor when it comes to email marketing. We just by doing things consistently, we can reap the benefits. So many of us look for like quick wins. I want to look for like momentum building things. So make sure that you have a strategy, you follow that strategy, and that your call to action leads to a specific action. I hope that answers your question.
Yes, it does. I can confirm that consistency is the most important. And there is one other question that I'm also very curious about. How do you send emails without being annoying about it to the users and subscribers? And how often? Many people have asked similar questions.
Yes, this question has been asked to me by every single person, um, that I've— every, every SaaS company I've worked with, every SaaS company I've advised, every SaaS company I've consulted, even HubSpot told me when I was working on their email project with them, it's like, we don't want to annoy our partners. And I was like, they're signing up to hear from you. They're literally telling you that, yes, I want to hear and hear from you, send me relevant information. And so unless you're sending 3 emails a day or emailing them every single day and your emails are low quality, That's the only time you will annoy your people, right? At a minimum, send one email per week and make sure that you're segmenting your users. Remember, sending the right message to the right person at the right time means one email is not going out to everybody. So a content email is only going out to, let's say, your newsletter subscribers. An onboarding email is only going out to people who've signed up for your free trial, right? Demo-related emails are only going out to people who have shown interested in contacting you or booking a demo with you. So when you are creating that email, you need to ask yourself, why am I sending this email? Who am I sending it to? And what is that call to act? What action do I want them to take? That will tell you. And when you do this, you could be sending 5 emails a week, 10 emails a week, but they'll be going out to different people and it wouldn't be annoying.
Yes, exactly. From my experience, we always think it's too much when it's actually not that bad. And yeah, people don't see all of them. And we have time for only one more from Pablo. How are you using A/B/B testing on your project?
Okay, so when it comes to A/B testing, there are so many factors that need to— you need to consider that a lot of times A/B testing doesn't even make sense, right? We need to have a large data set to A/B test because when we A/B test, our data or our users get divided in half, right? And so a lot of email marketing companies will maybe wait 4 hours, 8 hours, oh, and send your email to like a small segment and see which is the winner and then send the winning segment to the remaining, right? I am testing for an email for subject line, for call to action, and for the way information is presented if it's a feature-related email. So that Slack email example that I showed you there, I received two versions of it. One was sending people to the help document. The other was sending, was sending us to the app to add team members, right? You can guess which one got the most, more conversions, right? Nobody has the time to go to a help document unless it's very complicated and super relevant and super important to setting up your app, right? So, but the one thing with A/B testing is test one thing at a time. And that means you cannot test 2 to 3 things in a single email. You have to decide what is the one most what's the most important thing I want to test for and test for that. And then once you've got results, if you're testing out, let's say an onboarding email or something, once you've got the results, then you can implement that for like people, more people coming in.
And that sums up our Q&A session. Thanks once again, Samar. For everyone, please follow Samar, follow our— our channels, Foundry Institute channels, our upcoming events. We have 2-3 every week, join them. And now I invite you to join our networking session. You can join tables and spend the next hour connecting to each other. Samara might join if she has time. If not, you will find her on her channels, and you can connect with her on LinkedIn. So thanks again and see you soon, our students. Bye for now. Bye.
Bye. Thank you for having me.
