We're trying a different model - pay for your core audience and any emails (product updates, user touch points, and transactional) are all included. If you have a use case that sends outside of your core audience (maybe sharing content with non-users of your product, we bill on a more traditional email volume pricing.
Potential SaaS customers register trial accounts all the time. Do each address count as a new contact even though they only receive, say, an activation email once and never come back?
You could remove those contacts and not be charged for them however if you only email someone once that started a trial account you’re doing your business a disservice in our experience.
As someone who formerly lived in email marketing, the onboarding flow for a trial signup was usually a 7-day flow, 2 emails on the first day, the first was very transactional and automatic for activating your account, the second one was still automated, but a few hours later, and from me (the developer of the product) providing my personal email for any questions. Then one email per day with a tip on how to use the product effectively with mini-case studies from customers.
This converted at 9-15% depending on time of year and product. We built a lot of micro-SaaS offerings.
Our conversion before we did this onboarding multi-touch email approach was closer to 1-2%. These onboarding emails really do work with get a customer engaged and using the trial instead of signing up, and forgetting about it because it was free.
After that, if they converted, they would be moved into a different flow with a less frequent emails (weekly or monthly depending on the product). If they didn't convert, we had a second flow that would lead to an extended trial or discount which would convert another 3-5%.
Effective trial marketing is very important to sign ups. Our "marked as spam" and unsubs never went above 2% because we were providing value in our emails for a customer who signed up for a trial for a reason.
Yes, we send follow up emails to remind them to get things setup. But I don't send much mail beyond that. I do not like sending spam. Conversion is around 10%.
I still don't get it; let's say I have 100+ signups a day on trial accounts and 200k+ paying clients which almost never receive email from us, but do sometimes (maybe 1-2 times every few months). What are we looking at?
