Okay, sorry about the click-bait title. But in this case, it really is justified.

There is one mistake that very common for self-taught email marketers.

It has come up multiple times in the past week, so I figured I’d write about it to help you avoid the pitfall.

As an email marketer, the biggest mistake you can make is to send out emails only after events are performed.

For example,

• Someone signs up; you send an email.
• Someone activates their account; you send an email.
• Someone upgrades; you send an email.
• etc.

Can you spot the problem here?

If you’re only sending emails after someone takes the action, you’re too late!!!!

The role of an email marketer is not to congratulate someone for doing something. It’s to get them to do the thing in the first place.

So what should you do?

Email marketing is your tool to reach  contacts where they are, and move them through your funnel.

Key events shouldn’t necessarily trigger your email campaigns.

Instead, they should be the goals for your email campaigns.

So, when you’re designing your email campaigns, think... What email does someone need to see in order to achieve this goal?

For B2B SaaS, your email campaigns might look something like this:

1. Sign up for a free trial

If you have someone’s contact information and want them to sign up for a free trial, you need to convince them that your product is worth trying out.

• You can share engaging content to educate them on the problem you’re solving (See how Userpilot pre-boards leads with video blog summaries)
• You can share case studies or customer testimonials
• You can send personalized video emails sharing how you can help them
• You can provide product teasers to show the awesome-ness of your product

2. Activate

Once someone signs up, of course you should send an email. But this email should be less about thanking them for taking that action, and more about compelling them to take the next action.

What steps should they take next to succeed with your product?

• Share examples of successful outcomes
• Provide video tutorials on how to use your product
• Send a personalized email or video to schedule an onboarding session

☝️ that email gets a 45% click-through rate.

3. Upgrade

Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t send an email when someone upgrades their account. Of course you should! But, it’s 10x more important to send emails before someone upgrades, in order to get them to that step.

• Send helpful information to get them to the point in their trial where they’ll need to upgrade
• Share the benefits of your paid plan - what’s in it for them to convert?
• Make it super easy for them to upgrade

Rant over

Email marketing is not for acknowledging action, it’s for inspiring action.

Reach out to your customers where they are, show value, and nudge them through the funnel.

And speaking of nudging people through a funnel… Emails with videos get 3x higher conversions, so I strongly recommend you use Sendspark to easily make and share videos to use in your email campaigns. You can create a free Sendspark account here.

Good luck, and happy conversions!