SaaS newsletters are a powerful tool for connecting with your audience, nurturing leads, and increasing your conversions. The downside is that they’re hard to get right. To make it easier, we’ve created a guide which covers:
- SaaS newsletter goals.
- What to include in them.
- Seven examples of industry-leading newsletters.
By the end, you’ll be ready to craft your own newsletter that helps you achieve your specific business goals.
SaaS Newsletter Goals
The goals of a SaaS newsletter are long-term, and it’s unlikely that you’ll see immediate results. They may also differ slightly between businesses. Generally, the goals of your newsletter will be:
- To keep your brand top-of-mind for prospects.
- To promote your brand as a thought leader within your niche.
- To nurture leads over time and turn them into paying customers.
- To promote upcoming events, discounts, and special offers.
- To educate your readers and make them more aware of common pain points and how your product helps them solve them.
Worried you won’t be able to achieve your SaaS marketing goals by yourself? Then you need InboxArmy. We’ll carry out a full audit of your campaigns and provide a winning email marketing strategy that helps you craft the newsletters your audience can’t wait to receive.
What To Include In Your SaaS Newsletter?
The type of content you could put in your newsletter includes:
- Excerpts of a blog or a full blog post from your site.
- Video content.
- Curated industry news.
- Short how-to guides and product tips.
- Challenges and contests.
- Reports, guides, and eBooks.
- Customer success stories.
- Press releases and news articles about your software.
- Repurposed social media posts.
Whatever you use, the key is to always ensure you provide valuable content with actionable insights that address the common pain points of your target audience. In fact, 74% of B2B marketers say that valuable content is the biggest factor in marketing success.
7 SaaS Newsletter Examples
Your newsletter is an essential part of your overall email marketing strategy. Whether you run a SaaS business or you’re an expert within the SaaS niche looking to share your knowledge with your audience, you need to get your newsletter right.
So, how can you be sure you’re absolutely nailing your newsletter?
Here is a list of seven examples of high-quality newsletters to show you how it’s done. Some of them are newsletters sent out by SaaS companies to their subscribers, and others are educational newsletters from authoritative voices within the SaaS niche.
1. Klaviyo
This weekly newsletter from Klaviyo is a great example of educational content that addresses common pain points among the brand’s target audience. Specifically, it’s about segmentation, which means splitting your audience into smaller groups so that you can create highly targeted email marketing campaigns.
This newsletter aims to encourage readers to use Klaviyo’s segmentation tool to solve this particular pain point. With this in mind, Klaviyo includes a call-to-action (CTA) button right at the start of the email—”Build segment”.
Below this, Klaviyo details some of the segments you can create using its tool:
This is a good way of demonstrating the value proposition of its segmentation tool to potential customers, as it focuses on the benefits of using the platform.
At the end of the newsletter, Klaviyo includes another CTA encouraging readers to sign up for a training session.
This is a really smart move. It addresses one of the most common pain points for prospects within the SaaS niche which often causes friction within the buyer’s journey. Namely, the steep learning curve associated with using a complex tool.
By nudging users to join a training session, Klaviyo removes this concern and smooths the path toward conversion.
2. Serpstat
Customer success stories are among the most effective ways to convince prospects to choose your brand. They highlight typical pain points and show potential customers how one of your clients has used your product to overcome them. This newsletter from Serpstat is an excellent example of this approach.
The newsletter focuses on a digital marketing agency that massively increased its revenue while using Serpstat:
It tells readers exactly how Serpstat helped the company achieve its goals:
It finishes with a clear CTA encouraging prospects to sign up for a free trial or skip the trial and sign up for the paid version of the tool:
This newsletter successfully highlights the specific benefits of using Serpstat and how it can be applied in real-world scenarios.
When your leads see proof that your product works for similar businesses, they’re more likely to trust that it can do the same for them.
3. Swipe Files
Swipe Files is a newsletter primarily aimed at SaaS marketers with around 24,000 subscribers. It’s known for providing industry insights, news, and expert tips on how to build a successful SaaS content marketing strategy.
Swipe Files’ welcome email is unique:
The tone of voice is informal, quirky, and conversational. Although it tells readers the message is automated, it still manages to feel personal thanks to the way it’s written. Additionally, drawing attention to the automated nature of the email establishes user trust by demonstrating transparency.
The newsletter clearly tells readers what they should and shouldn’t expect from future emails. Plus, at the end, it asks readers to reply with information about themselves. This helps establish a connection between the brand and the reader and makes them feel part of a community. All of this goes a long way to improve user engagement with the newsletter.
4. Growth Unhinged
This weekly newsletter from Growth Unhinged delivers the latest industry news within the SaaS startup niche, as well as helpful tips on how to grow your business. I chose it because it’s a very good example of how to break down complex info with visually appealing graphics.
I really like the way these images are annotated to highlight specific points. Presenting the examples in this way makes it easier for users to follow through on the advice the author is giving them.
This is an effective way to engage your audience and highlight the value they’ll get out of your future newsletters. I’d highly recommend using graphics in this way in your own newsletters (when it makes sense to).
5. Mangools
This welcome newsletter from SaaS company Mangools is more conventional than the Swipe Files one. It’s still really effective, and showcases how the approaches to SaaS newsletters can differ between brands.
You’ll notice that the language is similarly informal and conversational, but Mangools also entices readers with the prospect of a possible gift in the future. This is a good tactic to create a sense of FOMO among their audience and to encourage them to open future emails.
It tells readers how often they can expect to receive newsletters moving forward. It’s always good to set user expectations right away. You don’t want them to feel bombarded with emails or, conversely, like they barely ever hear from you.
The newsletter ends with a clear CTA and a personally branded sign-off. Plus, there are several social media buttons so readers can follow Mangools on various channels. This is a simple yet effective way to encourage users to convert and increase engagement with the brand’s social media channels.
6. MKT1 Newsletter
One of the best ways to provide value to readers is by conducting original research on a topic they’re interested in. This newsletter from MKT1 is a perfect example of that very thing. MKT1 has identified one of the biggest current pain points for SaaS marketers—tackling and incorporating AI.
They’ve conducted a survey of marketers to establish how AI is being adopted within this field. Then, they created eye-catching infographics to display the results:
Original research like this can help establish your brand as a thought leader within your niche, meaning readers start to view your newsletter as a trusted and authoritative resource.
As a result, more users are likely to subscribe to your newsletter as they want to receive new data and perspectives that might not be readily available elsewhere.
7. ClickFunnels
Finally, I’m going to show you an example of a clever piece of marketing from ClickFunnels.
This newsletter tells the story of Jaime Cross and how she generated a huge amount of revenue in a short space of time by hosting a webinar.
It discusses how the previous marketing tactics she’d used hadn’t worked and how this seemingly simple action finally got her the results she wanted.
It then states that she achieved this by following tips outlined in “Expert Secrets” (a book written by ClickFunnels’ co-founder Russel Brunson) and provides a link to the book. It also provides a link to ClickFunnels’ “Sales Funnel Launchpad”.
This is a great demonstration of how to naturally promote products within your SaaS newsletter. It starts by outlining the marketing pain points Jaime had to overcome, shows how she overcame them, and then tells the reader that she overcame them using ClickFunnels’ products.
In short, it’s a perfect example of how to build your brand’s credibility and encourage users to convert.
Final Thoughts
SaaS email newsletters can help you achieve many goals, such as establishing your brand as a thought leader, nurturing leads and convincing them to convert, and promoting upcoming webinars and other events.
Remember, the most important thing is that your newsletter content is relevant and valuable to your audience. You should focus on their pain points and demonstrate how you can help to solve them.
The seven examples I gave above should give you plenty of ideas and inspiration that you can use to create an incredibly successful SaaS newsletter.
FAQs
How many CTAs should I include in my SaaS email newsletter?
The optimal number of CTAs to put in your newsletter depends on several factors such as your specific goals, the newsletter’s length, and the complexity of your content. Generally, you need a minimum of one CTA per newsletter. There is no maximum number, but keep in mind that the more CTAs you put into an email, the harder it becomes to truly understand success. It’s something for you to test.
Should I personalize the subject lines of my newsletters?
Yes, it’s always a good idea to personalize the subject lines of your newsletters by including the recipient’s name. Recipients are far more likely to open personalized emails than generic ones.
Are there any legal requirements for sending SaaS email newsletters?
There are a number of legal requirements you need to consider when sending SaaS (or any other types of) newsletters. For example, you need to gain consent before you send someone a newsletter and you must include an unsubscribe link within each email.
Plus, depending on the location of your recipients, you may need to comply with regulations like CAN-SPAM, CASL, CCPA, CDPR, and PECR.
You can also check out our other articles on email newsletter examples for different niches to get more inspiration: newsletter examples for B2B brands, newsletter ideas for nonprofit organizations.
