Have you ever wondered which marketing strategy could cost you pennies and provide returns in thousands of dollars?
Any clue?
That underdog is cold email marketing. In fact, it is one of the cost-effective ways to lead a successful SaaS lead generation campaign. 4 out of 5 online marketers say they can give up social media but not email marketing.
So, here is the complete detail on how cold emailing works and its effectiveness in the SaaS business.
If you are going to approach cold email marketing, know that you'll be voluntarily sending emails to prospects who don't even know your brand. The aim is to establish a relationship with these new recipients.
Cold emailing is a highly targeted outbound marketing strategy that helps you reach target audiences interested in your product or service.
But does cold emailing work in SAAS marketing? Let's explore its importance in the software business:
Hence, it is clear that you can get more SaaS customers with cold email, but ensure to be aware of misconceptions around it. They may harm your marketing approaches. Let's discuss a few of them here:
To be honest, it does boost your email response rate, but not always. Why? It's because most businesses copy the exact cold email template. Thus, they appear mediocre instead of giving a unique impression to potential customers. Customization and uniqueness is the key in this case.
Long email messages consisting of every single detail are a big NO! Additionally, most people open their emails via mobile phones, which makes being brief in emails even more important. So keep it concise, precise, and action-oriented.
Not segmenting your email list and sending similar messages to everyone is outright spamming your recipients. Instead, offer them something valuable by creating highly targeted messages.
Though it can be costly compared to generic emails, the payoff is always great. The profits overshadow the expense of personalized cold emailing. Plus, you don't have to personalize every message, do it only for high-value accounts.
Now that you have learned about myths, let's take a quick look at the key benefits of a successful cold emailing campaign:
Around 89% of businesses agree that emails are their primary lead-generation source. Thus, if you aren't using tactics and strategies to get more SaaS customers with cold email, you should begin with it as soon as possible.
Let's take an example of Lemon.io, a freelancing platform that filters trusted developers for businesses. The company was not known by its target audience, so it leveraged cold emailing best practices such as:
"Your new Upwork profile"
"I set your fee to $82/hour"
The company made them wonder why this particular sender has set their Upwork profiles without them knowing.
" You need qualified hires, but how can you tell if the candidate is telling the truth."
18% of prospects responded to the first email, and 27% responded to 6th email.
A. Bait emails- For SaaS products without significant differentiation
In this type of email, you present your SaaS product to prospects alongside a valuable piece of content or information. When you bait a response from your prospects in exchange for offering them something for free, ensure the free content should be better than the cold emails they usually receive. They should feel like your content is something they can pay for. Ensure to implement the following in the email structure:
Examples of effective bait email content include SERP marketing data and PPC collection of your prospects' competitors, recent industry statistics or research, fact sheets, etc. Make sure to test the bait emails’ performance regularly.
B. Fact-based emails- For SaaS products with a differentiated solution
If your SaaS product has the edge over your competitors, then fact-based cold emails work best. You will have to mention what major areas you lead against your competitors in the market and how your product differs. These types of emails don't require much research to present an offer in front of the prospects; however, ensure to make them personalized. Follow the below-given structure for fact-based emails:Ensure your cold emails are not too pushy. Instead, provide a no-string attached introduction, and offer a meeting or a discovery call.
When creating your targeted email list, start by specifying what data you want and dividing the search criteria as:
Buyer personas: Do the research as detailed as possible. You can use these elements to create your buyers' personas:
Pedigree Information: It includes all the details you want for your cold emailing campaign. It will enable you to build a personalized email list. Use the below-given elements while collecting pedigree information:
Before sending an attachment in your cold email, try to put yourself in your prospects' place and ask yourself the following questions:
In most cases, prospects don't consider opening mail attachments due to the risk of malware. So, if you have important information to share with your prospects, include it within the email's body or use a hyperlink.
Additionally, if sharing particular information with prospects is unnecessary, don't add it in the mail. Remember not to share all of your services and products immediately. Instead, begin with understanding the prospect's interest, followed by a discovery call. Learn how you can help them and which of your SaaS service or products will fit best. Next, tailor sharing of the expertise and info accordingly.
While performing SaaS cold email marketing, avoid being too formal when approaching your prospects. For example, don't use Dear Madam/Sir or sign off with Sincerely. Don't use abbreviations or colloquialisms specific to your industry. Present your offer in simple language that's easy to understand. A study found that messages with a 3rd-grade reading level are 36% more likely to receive a response than messages written at a higher grade level.
Most business emails contain something like "Happy to hop on the phone if that sounds good" or "If you find it interesting, let me know!." The problem with this ending in a cold pitch is that recipients are usually too busy to think of a proper response. Thus, you must add an offer with a relevant Yes or No question at the end of your email to make it easy to respond to your prospects.
You can ask something like:
Additionally, ensure to add the question on every email you send your prospect, not just the first one. It will keep the conversation going.
If you send a cold pitch to 1000 prospects, finding a subject line suitable for each lead is difficult. However, a little research on the past brands your potential customers have worked with can be helpful. Go to your potential prospects page to extract the relevant data. Here's an example of such a subject line:
Do you need an [benefit of your product]? Found you through [name of the past brand].
Further, you can continue with the introduction:
We found your website and noticed you have worked with (Past Brand), and we just had to reach out.
This way, you can easily point out that you are not affiliated with the brand while making the recipients read halfway through the mail. Thus, you successfully hooked them up for a while, and there's a high chance they will continue to read and consider your offer.
Crafting a compelling subject line and email copy
Subject line:
Email copy:
Personalizing your emails with recipient information and relevant insights
Cold email and general email marketing come with certain rules and regulations that every SaaS business must follow. So, ensure to meet the email laws and best practices as follows:
1. Your email marketing must fulfill the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act. These include:
2. Keep your email list hygienic and honor opt-out requests.
Setting KPIs And Tracking Your Email Open And Response Rates
Email open rates are basically the number of recipients who opened your email in a given time. It is expressed in terms of percentage. At the same time, the response rate refers to the number of recipients who took some action after opening your email. You can measure these by using a comparative metric. For example, you can compare this week's email open rate to the last week.
Analyzing And Refining Your Email Strategy Based On Campaign Performance
There are numerous methods to measure your cold email's performance, but these are the most important ones aside from open and click-through rates:By using email tracking tools you can track real-time notifications when recipients click or open your emails. These information can boost your email lead nurturing campaign.
These automated campaigns send scheduled email pitches to potential leads depending on their interaction with the emails. These highly customizable campaigns consider variables like analytics, data, and user behavior research. As a result, you can make your lead-nurturing emails personalized, targeted, and engaging, encouraging valuable prospects to take the next steps through the sales funnel.
Cold email marketing is a great way of outbound marketing for SaaS lead generation to get in direct contact with potential prospects, allowing you to forge real relationships from the beginning, which can go a long way toward ensuring future conversions. When used as part of your SAAS marketing strategy (such as being integrated with strategic advertising through social media), cold emailing can help you stand out in an increasingly competitive environment.
If it's not part of your SAAS sales strategy already, it's a good idea to integrate this useful sales tactic into your overall plan. Each time you want to send a cold email, think about what you can add to make it more effective, and you'll be on your way to increased profitability and growth.