How SaaS Companies Can Write Email Copy That Converts

There’s nothing worse than seeing your email marketing campaign result in poor conversion rates, especially when you invested a great amount of time and resources to get it running. This can leave you in a confused state, making you wonder why your emails don’t convert.

Maybe your offers aren’t enticing enough. Maybe your subject line isn’t compelling. Or it could be that there’s no solid strategy driving how you create emails. Whatever the reason may be, your dream goal is to get out of this situation and figure out how to write an email copy that converts.

You don’t have to worry about this issue anymore. The good news is that there’s a way you boost your email marketing conversions. We’ve written this article to show you the secrets to apply so that you can improve conversions and turn prospects into engaged customers.

Let’s start by explaining what an email conversion is.

Table of contents

1. What is an email conversion?
2. How to write email copy that converts
3. Wrap up
   

What is an email conversion?

An email conversion can mean many things—it simply means taking the desired action. Erin King, Sr. Email Marketing Manager at Litmus defines an email conversion “as when a subscriber takes the path you point them toward in your message. For example, if your email promotes an event, a click through to the registration page is progress, but a completed registration is a conversion.”

While the definition of email conversion may be slightly different, one thing is clear— it leads one to take a certain action. There are two types of conversions you can target in your emails—macro-conversions and micro-conversions.

An example of a macro-conversion is a major action like signing up for a trial or upgrading the account. A micro-conversion includes downloading a lead magnet, taking part in a survey, asking for feedback, and so on.

How to write email copy that converts

1. Understand your SaaS customer buying journey to avoid misalignment

Here’s what a typical SaaS buyer journey looks like:

These three stages of the buyer’s journey can be broken down further into five stages of awareness:

• Unaware of your product and the problem it solves
• Problem aware — and researching information about it.
• Solution aware— proof points: customer testimonials, reviews, etc.
• Product aware — signing up for a free trial or demo
• Most aware— those who already know your product and are already customers.

You must understand where your audience is on this spectrum to avoid misalignment in your messaging. Map out your buyer's journey from unaware, to solution aware and most aware (paying customer).

Then you can use the insight to plan the messages you're going to send at each stage and how your customers will engage with your emails. For example, a customer that is product aware can be sent an upgrade email.

2. Understand conversions at each stage of the buying journey

Customers at different stages in the buying journey have different needs, challenges and questions. This means that conversion goals can’t be the same for each stage. For example, for a customer that’s at the top of the funnel (unaware), you may need to educate them.

So, your conversion goal will be to download a guide, read a blog post, or attend a webinar.

As the customer progresses further down the funnel, they become problem aware. This means that your conversion goals will change — you’ll want to convert them to trial users and upgrade to a paying customer.

When you understand what conversion means at each stage of the buying journey, you’ll be able to write your emails accordingly and drive more conversions.

3. Create customer segments to drive more conversions

Customer segments help you to understand your customer base better. With customer segmentation, you can spot the differences between customers and group them accordingly. Possible customer segments include:

• Free trial users
• Lapsed customers
• Customers based on a particular location
• Blog sign-ups and more.

With Engage, business owners can track how customers interact with their product(platform or app), and use that data to create unique customer segments.

4. Plan your email sequence

The highest converting email sequences are the ones that are congruent throughout the entire process. Ensure the first email is in line with the next one, nudging the prospect further down the sales funnel.  

This means that you need to outline your email sequences in advance, having your end goal in mind.

For example, if you want to build a workflow for an onboarding email sequence, you'll need 3 - 5 emails. Outline the structure and goal for each email. Plan the right workflows and templates to increase your chances of more conversions.

With Engage, you can create workflows for your campaigns, add leads to a nurturing sequence and move them further down the sales funnel.

5. Personalize your email copy

When you include your customer’s personal information in your messages, you have an increased chance of creating an email copy that converts. Why? Your emails become more targeted and relevant to your customers.

Most marketers apply the simplest form of personalization in their emails — using the customer’s name in the subject line. However, you can go further than this by applying other personalization techniques like:

• Use the customer’s timezone to deliver emails at the right time.
• Use behavioral triggers to deliver emails based on your user’s activity with your product.
• Use customer feedback to address pain points.

Here is an email example from Zapier that applies personalization based on its user’s activity:

6. Use sensory words to evoke your customer’s imagination

When you look at an email copy that converts, one thing stands out — the use of words. Word choice plays an important role in getting your customers hooked on your emails and taking your call-to-action.

If you want to persuade your customers to complete a certain action, you need to invoke your customers’ imagination and trigger the right emotions. You can accomplish this by using sensory words.

Let’s consider two examples:

What does your brain interpret when you read this text:

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And what does your brain interpret when you read this text:

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The two examples share the same message but in different ways. With the second text, you’re most likely to imagine the picture in your brain. When you insert sensory words in your email copy, you help your customers to imagine and feel the picture you’re painting with your words.

7. Write a compelling subject line and preheader text

Why bother spending a great deal of effort to write a compelling email copy if people don't open it in the first place? Persuading your customers to open your emails is as important as getting them to complete your call to action. If they don't open it, none of the words in your email would matter.

To write an email copy that converts, you need to create a persuasive subject line and preheader text that would get your users to want to read more.

How do you do this? You can apply three psychological triggers:

• Fear of missing out (FOMO).
• Power words.
• Offering discounts.

8. Have a clear compelling call-to-action

How you write your call-to-action affects how your customers will react to your email copy. If you include too many options, your customers would end up confused and indecisive. The same goes if your call-to-action isn’t clear enough, your customers may end up not taking your desired conversion goal.

This is why you need to focus on one conversion goal at a time if you want to write an email copy that converts. Here are some ways you can write a compelling call-to-action:

• Use action words like “sign up”  “start now” or “get it”
• Use words that highlight a customer benefit such as “free” or “customized”.

9. Apply persuasion techniques

Persuasion is a communication strategy to influence a person to take a certain action. It is an effective technique that you can use to incentivize customers who are still getting to know your product or are on the fence about trying your product. Here are some persuasion techniques you can apply:

• Reference customer testimonials to build trust. 94% of respondents said customer reviews made them more likely to use a business.
• Offer incentives like discount codes, coupons, and valuable freebies or downloadables.

Wrap up

To write an email copy that converts goes beyond preparing a draft and tweaking it based on intuition or guesswork. You need to look at the bigger picture, and answer questions like- what will be your strategy? What kind of conversion goals are needed in your business?

Remember to track your email marketing performance and apply split testing to identify the factors that engage your users the most. Use customer data to build a solid strategy. Once your email copy is backed up by a solid strategy, copywriting skills, and a good understanding of your customer's buying journey, you have a better chance of driving conversions.

With Engage, you can track your customer data, create unique customer segments and send personalized messages to boost your email conversion.

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