35 SaaS Email Ideas to Boost Retention (+ Examples)

Email is a wonderfully diverse tool to incorporate into your marketing ecosystem. But sometimes, you run out of ideas. Or you aren’t sure where to even start.

That stops now! Keeping users engaged and participating in active dialogue helps you focus on customer success and ultimately reduces churn. Let’s explore some new ways to use email and look at a few examples.

SaaS Email Marketing Examples and Ideas

Even though we’re just focusing on engagement and retention emails in this post, I’ve broken them down into categories.

Learn

As your user’s needs and goals evolve, so must you. Learning about where users are now and where they’d like to go helps you prioritize your efforts across the entire org.

1. Create a “choose your own adventure” email course to learn user priorities

2. Send an annual industry survey to learn from them + share the results

3. Invite users to an annual check-in call

4. Ask customers to leave a review or NPS rating

5. Ask users to click on their favorite feature from a list

6. A/B test using different use cases or USPs when introducing a new feature

7. Ask for user answers to business/industry questions and share results with the community

8. Invite users to be the first to test a new feature

Teach

I think one of the most useful (but sometimes overlooked) ways to increase retention is by focusing on becoming a resource to customers. Your product is obviously important, but providing free value and becoming a thought leader goes a long way in maintaining the relationship.

1. Provide a free guide

2. Send an interesting industry stat or trend

3. Record an interview with an industry leader

4. Invite to a webinar

5. Share work or productivity tips

6. Summarize most interesting learnings or discussion from conferences

7. Reintroduce an existing (even underused) feature

8. Show off an interesting way to use different features together to accomplish a task

9. Remind users about your other social channels or communities

10. Answer commonly asked questions

11. Present new business strategies

12. Promote outside resources

13. Offer to send a suggestion to their top problem

14. Provide resources for particular niches or roles

Inspire

Everyone needs a little boost sometimes. Inject your customer’s journey with a little inspiration and positivity to help keep them from burning out.

1. Share user stats or congratulate progress

2. Highlight customer wins

3. Give stats on productivity of entire customer base

4. Create a competition among the community

5. Show examples or results from using a feature

Grow

What’s even better than retention? Upselling. It won’t be the answer for every user, but you can use email (among other customer success tactics) to draw attention to bigger plans.

1. Promote referral program

2. Have a flash upgrade sale

3. Talk about use case for feature or level only available in higher plan

4. Connect a higher-plan feature to achieving a coveted business goal

Storytime

1. Introduce customers to your team

2. Share the thought process behind your business decisions

3. Celebrate with them when you hit a business goal

4. Tell a funny company story

Want to know when to send SaaS emails and what to say?

I’ve got 30+ free email templates in the SaaS Essential Email Series Templates here.