Email is an often overlooked growth hacking tool. But if done right, you can see huge gains in user acquisition, user retention, and user engagement. These are all important to a growth hacker. Unfortunately, just shooting off any email won’t work. It has to be perfectly timed and super relevant users. The only way to do this, without spending hours a day manually emailing each user, is by using trigger-based emails.
Trigger whaat?!
Trigger-based emails are personalized emails that are sent to your users automatically, based on what they do in your app or website. For instance, when someone becomes a new user, you can set up an email to go out to them a few minutes after they join, welcoming them to your site.
But what does this have to do with growth hacking? EVERYTHING.
You can use these perfectly timed, personalized emails to get your users to do something. This could be referring other users, downloading the mobile version of your web app, or anything else clever you can think of.
So now that we understand the power of trigger-based emails, how do we use them?
Here’s four emails you can use set up in just a few minutes to start getting more users and retaining the ones you have.
1. Send an Email to Users that Haven’t Referred a User
There are all kind of tricks you can use to get your users to refer others. But the simplest has to be asking for the referral by email.
All you have to do is set up a rule to send an email to users that haven’t referred another others yet.
The reason this email works is because it’s personal and encourages your user to think of a friend to send it to.
It’s not just giving them a link and telling them to share it. You told them that this link is for one friend, which means they have to think a little about who they want to give it to.
You also welcomed them to email you for more. This gives you a chance to have a conversation with some of your top referrers and get feedback, but also makes it seem more personal.
They’d be a fool not to share this personally emailed deal with a friend.
2. Send an Email to Get Users to Upgrade Before Their Trial Ends
Getting trial users to become paying customers is the ultimate goal. But most SaaS businesses only convert 10% of their trial users to paying customers. If you want to improve your trial to paid conversions, you need to get people paying as fast as you can.
One thing to try is incentivizing the upgrade.
All you do is set up a rule that sends an email with an incentive to all your active trial users. This would be anyone using your trial actively for three days.
Why three days?
On average, users that actively use your trial for three days are 4 times more likely to convert into customers.
So you need to grab those customers now, before they become inactive or find your competitor.
Your email doesn’t have to be anything fancy, something as simple can do the trick.
In the email, remind the user how much value they get from using your tool.
You’ve also given them a promo code for their second month, which means they’ll probably be around for at least three months, and they have a short time to act.
They’ve already been actively using your tool for three days, they pretty much know if you they’re going to choose your app. Why not close the sale now?
3. Send an Email to Inactive Users
Most marketers, founders, and growth hackers focus on user acquisition. But the key to running a successful long term app business is actually user retention.
What’s scary is, the average churn rate for a SaaS company is 5% per month.
If you could reduce your churn by even 10% per month, you could see a huge difference.
So how can you increase user retention easily, with email?
Just set up a rule that sends an email to any user that’s been inactive for about three days.
This is enough time for them to be considered “inactive”, but not too far along where they don’t remember who you are.
In the email, perhaps remind them of cool or useful feature that could entice them back to using your app.
At the very least, they’ll be curious enough to sign back in and try the new feature. Then you can begin re-engaging them.
Pretty neat, huh?
4. Send an Email to Users That Haven’t Invited Team Members
If you have a B2B app, one of the most important things you can do is ask your users to invite their teammates.
There are a few reasons why:
- Sometimes the right person in the company doesn’t sign up for your service, but by allowing them to invite teammates, you’re more likely to get to them.
- If your new user leaves the company, no one else in the company is using your app. By getting more users on board, the rest of the team can still use your app.
- It’s just more people using your app. That means, it’s more people that can talk about your app and share it with others.
I know you could easily build an invite tool in your app or even purchase one to use. But sometimes, there’s no time to add it or people ignore the invite prompt and never actually get their teammates using the app.
To get your users to invite others by email, set up an email that automatically sends a reminder to users that haven’t invited a team mate.
This kind of email would inspire anyone to get their entire team using your app.
So there you have it, that’s four email growth hacks you aren’t using…yet. These are so simple to set up, take just a few minutes to get done, and are powerful ways to boost user retention, user acquisition, and user engagement. This helps you with everything you need for serious growth.