Nobody really prepared me for the amount of different emails I would have to send when running a SaaS business. It’s something I didn’t even think about – all I was thinking about was what to build, and what problems I wanted to solve with my software. Now after running BudgetSheet for a several years, it seems like I run into a new use case to add a new email at least once a month. I don’t see it talked about a lot, so I wanted to share the ways I use email with my of SaaS business here.

Emails I Currently Send

Emails that I fully control. These either send directly from my application via Amazon SES, or from a 3rd party application like Customer.io or Loops based on events that I send or lists that I maintain.

• Triggered by an event:
  1. User signup welcome email – Thanks/welcome with some basic instructions on setup
  2. Upgrade Reminder Email – 10 days before free trial ends
  3. Upgrade Reminder Email – 3 days before free trial ends
  4. Free Trial End Email – After free trial expires. All connected accounts will be automatically disconnected and are listed in this email
  5. Post-Purchase Email – A thank you email with the BudgetSheet Pro license key in it. Paid sheets are automatically upgraded after payment, but users still like to have the license key in their email
  6. Google oAuth Issues Email – Notice to user that some auth issue occurred with their Google account and the oAuth connection
  7. Account link issues – Email when certain issues occur with an account a user has linked
  8. Cancellation Feedback Email – A more personalized email from me asking for candid feedback on why the user cancelled their subscription
• Marketing emails (Requires maintaining a list of subscribed users):
  1. Product update emails – Emails every quarter or so when I make big product updates
  2. Other one-off marketing or sales emails

Emails Others Send To My Users On My Behalf:

I use a few 3rd party services that send emails to my users for me. You probably do, too.

• Subscription/payment emails (formerly Gumroad, and now LemonSqueezy)
  1. Purchase receipt email
  2. Subscription renewal reminder email
  3. Cancellation email (when it happens 😢)
  4. Subscription charge/change email
• Double opt-in email for product updates and marketing

Emails I Avoid Sending by Using Google Accounts:

Since BudgetSheet is a Google Sheets Add-on, I have fully leaned into Google accounts. Upon install, I get the user email address and a spreadsheet ID that I use to track everything for a specific user and spreadsheet. This makes my software easer to use from inside Google Sheets since you don’t have to setup a separate account, and it also means I get to skip all the super fun user account support issues and emails, like:

1. User forgot password
2. User password reset
3. User 2FA emails
4. User password expired/change email

Emails I am Considering Adding Soon:

As I add more automated processes to BudgetSheet to reclaim more of my time to operate the business, I often run across another use case for email that could be helpful. I also occasionally get emails from users highlighting an issue or deficiency in the product that a good automated email (notifying the user about a potential issue with steps on how to fix it) would easily solve.

1. Dunning emails (when cards expire or are declined) – A user recently had their subscription expire due to an expired card and then all their accounts were unlinked when their subscription expired (an automated process). They did not get a notice to fix it before the subscription lapsed. They then had to signup for a new subscription and re-link all their accounts. Yikes!
2. More emails for account fetch/link failures – With a link in them to fix the issue quickly (requires engineering effort to make this link/page).
3. Autofetch result emails – An Autofetch process runs nightly for Pro users that have it enabled. Right now it runs and updates the sheet and writes fetch results (success or errors) to a log. It would be nice to also send an email with these results for users who want it, and would surface any errors more quickly for end users.
4. Budget recap emails – Weekly or monthly recap emails with stats like money inflows, outflows, number of transactions, etc. anything that might be useful to get on a periodic basis.
5. User retention emails – Send a discount code to a user who has paid for the product in the past, but cancelled. Would be after N months, around holidays for sales, or something like that.

Even More Emails…

I feel like I am just getting started with my SaaS journey with a relatively small niche Add-On application, and I am already maintaining 15+ email templates for various different scenarios. Over time, this number will easily balloon to over double that amount in a short period of time as I continue to scale up and cover more use cases. SaaS apps that involve more integrations and maintain their own user accounts will have exponentially more email templates than this.

Sending lots of specific emails isn’t a bad thing – it’s just a lot more important, varied, and specific to certain situations than I expected it to be. Setting up a few upgrade notice emails quadrupled my free trial to paid conversion rate. That’s bonkers, but obvious in hindsight. Before implementing these emails, people would have to be in the app itself to notice that the free trial was about to expire. This assumes that people would actively use it every day, which is absurd. Putting these in email reminders pulls this out of the application and puts it in front of the user, right in their inbox. These emails have been absolutely critical to my success with BudgetSheet.

When starting out, I never imagined spending several days getting emails, templates, and the conditions for sending them just right when I was a starry-eyed developer with a SaaS twinkle in my eye. The realities of running a SaaS business, however, mean that these emails must be sent. Emails that will make a huge positive difference for my users – like a well-timed automated email when something needs attention, or even just to confirm that something happened. If you are running a SaaS business, don’t forget about the emails. 📧

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Credits: Post Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash