Writing your email onboarding series is an art in itself. Not only do you need to know everything there is to know about your product and your users, you also need to know the right timing for communicating with your users. In this episode, email specialist Stephanie Knapp from Get Your SaaS Onboard shares her best practices based on 16 full email series breakdowns consisting of over 153 emails.
In episode 61, you’ll learn:
- Insights and best practices from onboarding emails across top SaaS companies (Shopify, Monday, MailChimp, FreshBooks, Gusto, etc)
- Why onboarding emails are important, how to approach them, and how to strategize the series for the biggest impact
- What makes great onboarding email subject lines, copy, and design
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Tweet Some Quotes from This Episode
One thing you need to do with your welcome email is to let your trial users know why do you do what you do and how do you achive it. – @thestephknapp from @GrowthToday podcast. Get the full podcast episode 👇 Click To Tweet It's easy to get caught up with metrics and strategies. Marketers need to root their marketing in focusing on the human and person behind the metrics. - @thestephknapp from @GrowthToday podcast. Get the full episode 👇 Click To Tweet When it comes to onboarding emails, until you receive a ton of feedback that's it too much, then you might be leaving opportunities on the table. – @thestephknapp from the @GrowthToday podcast. Get the full episode 👇 Click To TweetMy Takeaways from This Episode
- Don’t leave your trial users hanging. One of the biggest mistakes that Stephanie found with onboarding emails is that the only send two emails to say welcome and good bye. People are forgetful. People are busy. So they sometimes need a gentle reminder of the value of your app.
- Don’t be too pushy with sales. Steph suggests a 70/30 split with value-focused emails and sales-focused emails in your onboarding sequence. This is something that she saw with onboarding sequence from Shopify, Freshbooks and Wistia. Lead with value and the sale would be so much easier.
- Be human with your marketing. This is Steph’s one piece of advice to marketers and founders. At the end of the day, you’re reaching out to real humans. It’s easy to hide behind that fact when we love dashboards and metrics and conversion rates.
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About Steph Knapp
Steph Knapp is a SaaS copywriter, email strategist, and content marketer. Her interest in onboarding emails came from an intersection between working on email strategy projects for a marketing agency, as well as content marketing for a customer-success-focused SaaS. Steph was always tasked with finding examples for email strategy projects and, frustratingly, could only ever find one-off emails. So she started collecting entire email sequences, specifically for SaaS free trials at https://www.getyoursaasonboard.com/.
Show Notes
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3:50
How did Steph start writing for SaaS companies
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6:20
What is the biggest mistakes marketers make when it comes to onboarding series
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8:50
Which SaaS company’s onboarding emails are the best?
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12:20
What are the biggest traps with onboarding emails?
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14:10
How many emails should SaaS companies be sending for a 14-day trial?
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15:50
What is Steph’s step-by-step process for crafting an onboarding email sequence
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18:30
What were some interesting insights that Steph found after looking at 153+ subject lines of onboarding emails?
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28:20
Should onboarding emails come from the brand name (ex: Shopify) or someone personal (ex: Sam from Shopify)?
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31:15
What are do’s and dont’s of welcome emails
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33:45
What’s the balance between selling and giving tips during the onboarding
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38:50
Steph’s one piece of advice for marketers
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40:24
Steph’s call-to-action
Links
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