How Can Email Marketing Fuel Your Overall Inbound Strategy?

Did you know that there are currently more than 4 billion active email users every day? In fact, that number is projected to soar up to 4.6 billion by 2025.

This just goes to show that email marketing isn’t going anywhere, especially for SaaS markets.

As a SaaS business, you can use email marketing as a way to reach new customers and nurture the ones you already have.

But how does it work? How can you make sure your email marketing strategy is effective?

Keep reading to find out how email marketing can fuel your overall inbound strategy.

What Is Email Marketing?

Before we talk about how email marketing and inbound marketing work together, let’s first get on the same page about what they mean.

Email marketing is the process of sending marketing messages to potential and current customers through email.

This can include anything from promotional emails to educational email newsletters and even just simple updates about your business.

The goal of email marketing is usually to build relationships with customers, promote new products or services, drive website traffic, and increase email marketing conversion.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a type of digital marketing that focuses on attracting customers to your business through helpful and interesting content. This could be in the form of a blog post or a strong social media presence.

This is in contrast to outbound marketing, which involves proactively contacting people with ads, cold calls, and cold emails.

While this type of marketing may prove beneficial to some markets, it’s generally intrusive, which may annoy some potential customers.

In fact, it’s even sometimes called “interruption marketing” because that’s what it does to people.

Inbound marketing, on the other hand, uses content to draw people in and then nurture them into leads and customers.

The key word here is “attract”.

Inbound marketing focuses on providing valuable content and other marketing assets that your target audience would find useful.

This type of marketing strategy is generally more effective because it builds trust and relationships with potential customers from the very beginning.

Inbound Journey For SaaS Email Marketing

The inbound journey is the process that potential customers go through when they first become aware of your business. This goes all the way until they’re converted into customers and the whole duration that they stay subscribed to your SaaS product. We can also say that email marketing is a nurturing strategy that blends in seamlessly with the buyers journey.

This journey typically includes four stages: attract, engage, convert, and delight.

As a SaaS business, you can use email marketing at each stage of this journey to nurture potential leads and turn them into paying customers.

Let’s take a closer look at how email marketing can be used at each stage of the inbound journey.

Attract Stage

The Attract stage is all about getting your target audience’s attention. To do this with email marketing, you need to create the right email content that will interest your target audience and make them want to learn more about your business or your SaaS product.

This can be anything from a helpful blog post to an interesting case study.
These content pieces don’t even have to mention anything about your SaaS product yet. The main focus is to provide valuable information to them.

The goal is to get people to sign up for your email list so you can continue to nurture them through the journey.

Engage Stage

The Engage stage is all about building relationships with potential customers.

At this stage, you want to start sending emails that are more personal and tailored to each subscriber’s interests.

You can do this by segmenting your email list and sending content that is relevant to each group. Promotional emails also does a great job of engaging with your customers or subscribers.

You can also send automated emails triggered by certain actions, like signing up for your email list or visiting your website.

Convert Stage

The Convert stage is all about turning potential customers into paying customers.

To do this with email marketing, you need to send emails that promote your product or service.

This can be anything from a simple sales email to a more complex nurture campaign designed to educate potential customers about your product.

Delight Stage

The Delight stage is all about keeping your customers happy and engaged.

To do this with email marketing, you can send things like customer surveys, helpful how-to guides, or even just personal notes from you and your team.

You can also use email marketing to upsell or cross-sell other products and services to current customers.

How Email Marketing Fuels Your Overall Inbound Strategy

There are a lot of ways that email marketing fuels your overall inbound strategy. Let’s take a look at some of them.

1) Email Marketing Is Permission-Based

One of the most important things to remember about email marketing is that it’s permission-based. This means that people have given you explicit permission to contact them via email.

This is in contrast to cold emailing, which is when you contact someone without their permission. This is generally considered to be spammy and is not an effective way to market your business.

Because email marketing is permission-based, it’s a much more effective way to reach potential customers. They’re already interested in what you have to say because they’ve given you permission to contact them.

But getting your target audience’s permission is not an easy task. You need to give them a good reason to receive your emails.

Here are some ways you can do that:

Provide Valuable Content: This can be anything from helpful blog posts to interesting case studies. Ideally, your content would be so useful to them that they would want more of it.

Offer Lead Magnets And Content Upgrades: A lead magnet is an incentive that you offer potential customers in exchange for their email addresses.

This can be anything from a free ebook to a discount on your product.
A content upgrade is when you offer additional valuable content to people who are already interested in what you have to say.

For example, if you have a blog post about how to improve your website’s conversion rate, you could offer a downloadable checklist of practical things to do as a content upgrade.

This would give people even more value and make them more likely to sign up for your email list.

Use Pop-Ups Strategically: Pop-ups can be annoying, but they’re also one of the most effective ways to get people to sign up for your email list.

Use them sparingly and make sure they’re relevant to the page someone is on.

For example, you can use a pop-up to introduce your lead magnet or content upgrade. This way, the pop-ups can be valuable rather than annoying to your target audience.

2) Email Marketing Is Highly Targeted

Another great thing about email marketing is that it’s highly targeted. This means that you can send very specific messages to very specific groups of people.

This is possible because of the segmentation we talked about earlier. Segmenting your email list allows you to send more targeted emails, which results in higher engagement and conversions.

Here are some examples of how you can use segmentation to target your email marketing:

Send Different Emails To First-Time And Long-Time Customers: If someone is a first-time customer, they might need more education about your product than someone who’s already been your customer for a few years now.

You can segment your email list so that first-time customers receive different emails than long-time customers. This way, you can send more targeted messages that are more likely to convert.

Send Relevant Emails Based On Your Subscriber’s Industry: If you’re operating in a business-to-business (B2B) market, you can also segment your list by industry. This way, you can send emails that are relevant to the specific industry someone is in.

For example, if you sell software to manufacturing businesses, you can segment your list so that you can talk specifically about how your product can help them manage their manufacturing operations.

This helps ensure that people are only getting information that’s relevant to them, which increases the likelihood they’ll actually read and engage with your marketing email.

3) Email Marketing Nurtures High-Quality Leads Generated From Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is all about generating high-quality leads that are likely to convert into customers.

But what comes next?

Once you’ve generated these leads, how do you turn them into customers?
This is where email marketing comes in.

You can use email marketing to nurture your high-quality leads and turn them into customers. You still need to research your target audience and create an ideal buyer persona to generate success in the long-term when it comes to email marketing conversion.

Here’s how it works:

You generate a lead from inbound marketing (e.g., someone fills out a form on your website).

You add the lead to your email list and send them targeted emails over time.

These emails help build trust and authority with the lead, making them more likely to buy from you when they’re ready.

The key here is to not try to sell too early.

Instead, focus on providing value and building relationships with your leads. Then, when they’re ready to buy, they’ll already have a positive relationship with your business.

4) Email Marketing Is Useful For Customer Retention

When it comes to the SaaS business model, growth is not just about acquiring new customers. It’s also about retaining the customers that you already have.

And email marketing can be a great tool for customer retention.

There are a few ways you can use email marketing to keep your customers engaged and reduce churn:

Send Engagement Emails: You can send emails that encourage your customers to use your product more.

For example, you can share tips on how to get the most out of your SaaS solution or offer exclusive content for people who are active users. The goal here is to keep people engaged with your product so that they’re less likely to cancel their subscriptions.

Send “Win-Back” Emails: If someone does cancel their subscription, you can try to win them back with a targeted email marketing campaign.

These emails should focus on the value your product provides and how the customer will benefit from using it.

You can also offer a discount or other incentive to get them to come back. The key here is to reach out to people who have canceled and try to understand why they’re no longer using your product. Then, you can address those issues in your win-back email campaign.

Send Valuable Email Newsletters: Even if someone is using your product, you still need to keep them engaged. One way to do this is to send monthly or quarterly email newsletters.

This newsletter should include valuable content that’s relevant to your customers.

For example, you can share blog posts, case studies, or new features that are coming out soon.

The goal is to keep people informed about your product and how it can help them in their business.

It’s also important to have a good score on email deliverability to make sure that your emails are landing in your subscribers’ inbox instead of going directly into their spam folder.

5) Email Marketing Is Easy To Automate

One of the great things about email marketing is that it’s easy to automate.

There are a number of different software platforms that allow you to automate your email marketing campaign. This means you can set up your campaign and then let it run on autopilot.

But what kinds of email marketing automation can you do?

Let’s talk about a few of them:

Trigger-Based Email Automation: You can set up your email marketing service or software to send emails based on certain triggers.

For example, you can set it up so that people who just signed up for your emails receive a series of welcome messages.

Or, you can set it up so that people who haven’t interacted with your emails in a while receive a “re-engagement” email.

This kind of automation can help ensure that people are getting the right information at the right time.

Drip Email Campaign: Drip email campaigns are a series of emails that are sent out over time. They’re often used to nurture leads and build relationships.

For example, you could set up a drip campaign that sends out a welcome email followed by a series of emails that provide more information about your product.

You can also use drip campaigns to send out educational content or even share updates about your company.

The key here is to make each email build up on the previous one and make sure that they are sent at the right schedules.

Final Thoughts About Email Marketing And Inbound Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool that can help you with your inbound marketing strategy.

The beauty of it is that an inbound email marketing strategy can generate high-quality leads. These are people who have a high likelihood of buying your SaaS product.

Content marketing and social media marketing are just a few of the powerful inbound tools that can attract a huge audience and earn their trust.

But even the highest quality of leads still need lead nurturing before you can close a deal with them.

That’s where email marketing comes in.

Email marketing can help you nurture your leads and build relationships with them. It can also be used to keep your customers engaged and reduce churn.

No wonder it’s one of the most effective SaaS marketing channels out there, right?

Looking to learn more tips and tricks to help you grow your SaaS business? Visit our blog here.