Is Your SaaS Brand Missing Out on Email Marketing?

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You have just launched your product. You know it will be a game changer in the market—it’s innovative, scalable, and solves a real problem.?

But the challenge has just begun.?

Amidst the noise of your competition, how do you make your target audience listen and take notice of you? Paid Ads? Social media? Sales outreach??

With a wide variety of marketing channels available, it can be challenging to determine which to use and prioritize.

Many SaaS companies swear by email marketing and have creatively and successfully used it to drive conversions, increase community engagement, get survey responses, increase webinar sign-ups, and much more.

But is email marketing really worth the hype in delivering results?

Spoiler alert: It is.?

For instance, check out how?The Product Folks increased engagement from their members by 15% through email newsletters.

However, email marketing may not be an across-the-board solution.?

In this edition, we’ll explore the pros and cons of email marketing and explore why it deserves a spot in your SaaS growth strategy.

Why email marketing

Here’s why email marketing can be a crucial addition to your SaaS marketing strategy:

• It’s your direct line of communication with your audience

Your email list consists of people who have voluntarily signed up to hear from?you. This opens a more direct line of communication with them right inside their inbox rather than just shouting into the social media void and hoping it reaches your audience through the ever-changing algorithms.

• It works around the clock on auto-pilot

You can set up automated emails (like onboarding emails) that go out when certain actions happen (when someone signs up). This saves you time to focus on other marketing initiatives while your emails do the heavy lifting.?

• It scales as you grow

Got 500 subscribers? Rapidly increasing to 5000? No problem. With email marketing, you can nurture this increasing number of leads and customers without additional bandwidth and with the same efficiency.??

• It's highly targeted with minimal work

If you are able to collect data and pass it to your ESP properly, you will be able to?segment your lists and personalize your emails to target specific audiences based on their location, behavior, preferences, etc.

• It’s budget-friendly

If you are starting out, email marketing is one of the most affordable channels out there. The most popular email software providers (ESPs) provide free or freemium options if you’ve just got a small list of subscribers.

• It can be made interactive (aka not boring)

If plain text or HTML emails are what you think email marketing is, then you need to know that it’s come a long way from that. You can now add fun interactive elements like games, forms, carousels, etc, to your marketing emails. They enable your subscribers to take action within their inbox, reducing friction and enhancing user experience, thus getting more conversions.?

Need some receipts? Check out how foundit got 1.7M+ users to update their profiles with interactive emails. This enabled them to ensure their users were matched with jobs that suited the users’ skills & experience.

Challenges in email marketing

While email marketing offers great benefits, it comes with its challenges:?

• It requires some initial effort to build a list.?

Growing a quality list of subscribers from scratch can take time and effort, as you would need a website, lead magnets, and distribution efforts to get the initial traction and leads.?

• Encountering deliverability issues and fixing them.

Hitting the send button doesn’t automatically mean your email will reach the inbox. You’ll need to set up and maintain several factors, like authentication, sender reputation, etc., to ensure your?email deliverability is good.

• Low open rates

With emails flooding users’ inboxes daily, making sure they open yours requires effort. You’ll have to optimize your subject lines, segment your lists, personalize the content, etc., to get good?open rates.?

• Takes time to create templates

Designing and creating emails from scratch can be time-consuming. In our ‘State of Email 2025’ survey, 46.4% of respondents said creating one takes 1 to 5 hours from start to finish. But, you can speed it up using the pre-made templates that many ESPs offer or even AI.

The final verdict

Is email marketing worth it despite these challenges??

Absolutely.

With a solid email marketing strategy, overcoming these challenges can be a breeze. If you want help getting started, check out?Mailmodo’s email marketing course.

Now that you know the ‘Why' – let’s start with the ‘How’.?

What emails should you send first??

10 points if you guessed ‘Welcome emails’.?

Getting started -

#1: ‘Welcome’ emails

Welcome emails are the first email marketing touchpoint that your audience sees. They are a great way to build trust and set expectations for your audience while encouraging them to engage with your brand.?

And trust me, making a killer first impression is not as hard as it looks. Just make sure to follow these 3 steps:

• Decide on the number of emails in your welcome sequence.?

While you can just send one saying,? “Hi! Welcome!” that’s not quite enough to build a relationship or introduce your brand. Ideally, you can send up to 3-4 emails in your welcome sequence.??

Firstly, you can introduce your brand and all the basic offerings. Then, in subsequent emails, you can encourage your audience to share their opinions/struggles, thus opening up the conversation to properly establish a relationship with your audience.

• Write & design the emails.?

Well, this one is obvious, but make sure that each email in your sequence delivers value to the user and showcases your unique brand style. Ensure you don’t pack the emails and leave some empty space so they can comfortably read through the emails.

You will need to set up a trigger to ensure that the welcome email reaches your user a few moments after they sign up. Usually, you can just link your sign-up form submission to your ESP,? and it will pick up the contacts and start sending.?

Setting up triggers can be a tough nut to crack. But no worries — I will be discussing them in the next edition.?

Meanwhile, to make things easier, check out Mailmodo’s prebuilt automation for?welcome sequences. Just go to the link and click ‘Create this in Mailmodo,’ and you'll be set to begin your email marketing journey.??

P.S. My colleague, Sabahet, is working on ‘Welcome 201’, a 10-part series that breaks down welcome and onboarding sequences for SaaS into easy-to-understand carousels. It’s really cool-?go check it out for yourself!

That’s all, folks! I’ll see you next month with more tips and ideas. If there is something we can do better for you, please let me know with your comments below.