Strategy

In its simplest form, here’s what a business’ email marketing strategy can look like:

An email campaign is one or more emails focused on a single, overall goal.

Goals can include:

• Increasing conversion
• Building brand trust
• Decreasing churn
• Driving engagement

These emails can take on different formats. Let's take a look at the different types of emails.

Types of emails

There are two types of campaign distribution models: broadcasts and automated.

Broadcasts

Broadcasts are one-time emails you manually sent to your subscribers. Think:

• Newsletters—things that can’t be automated, like our Demand Curve newsletter
• Updates
• Special promotions

Automated

Automated campaigns are sent automatically when someone performs an action or a certain amount of time has passed.

For example, you can receive transactional emails including receipts:

And you can receive welcome emails, cart abandonment emails, and hundreds of more variations. Let’s cover a few:

Automated email flows

An email flow is a series of emails that move leads through your funnel.

Use flows to:

• Greet new subscribers and get them to immediately engage
• Nurture subscribers and get them to buy from you
• Win back subscribers who stopped engaging your emails
• Maintain a “clean” subscriber list to improve deliverability

Let’s cover the three flows that are essential for most businesses:

1. Welcome/onboarding
2. Nurture
3. Win-back

1. Welcome/onboarding

Welcome/onboarding flows drive customers to take their first meaningful action with your business. The action could be around product usage, reading a piece of content, or making a purchase.

Subscribers are more likely to take an action on your emails when they first sign up. You’re still top of mind.

Here’s an example of the first email in a welcome flow.

Subject: Welcome ! You’re one in a billion ⭐

Bite’s welcome gets a few things right:

• They introduce the brand (with an elegant, aspirational design)
• They showcase their mission: end plastic waste
• They immediately ask customers to purchase with a “Shop now” CTA

Bite goes for a purchase on their first email because their sales cycle is short—they’re selling toothpaste, not enterprise SaaS.

2. Nurture

Nurture flows are focused on providing value and, in return, turning subscribers into customers.

Here’s the Demand Curve email we showed you earlier in the CTA section:

Subject: “More growth resources”

Notice that the goal of the email is to provide as much value as possible. We offer three free resources to subscribers. There’s no attempt to monetize with this specific email—we simply want our subscribers to find the resources valuable.

That way, when we send a marketing email down the road, customers are more likely to have affinity for Demand Curve. They’re more likely to purchase. They know we know our stuff.

3. Win-back

Win-back campaigns help you recover leads who are stuck in your funnel. There will always be a percentage of subscribers who don’t engage with your emails after a certain stage. Win-back flows entice customers to come back.

Examples include seeding promotions, highlighting new features, or providing a unique incentive that is valuable enough to move subscribers to the next stage of your funnel.

Noom used a steep discount to win-back unengaged subscribers.

Subject: “Come back to get your Custom Plan for up to 90% Off”

The subject line, “Come back” and the header, “Don’t wait to reclaim your health” meet unengaged customers at their stage of the buyer’s journey with Noom—most of them haven’t opened or engaged with emails in a while. The tactical copy above combined with the steep discount likely win-back customers who would otherwise simply drop out of the funnel completely.

Use case examples for email flows

Let’s take a look at how different startups apply these email flows in practice. We'll take a look at a few product types:

1. SaaS, mobile apps, chrome extensions
2. Ecommerce

1. SaaS, mobile apps, chrome extensions

Onboarding: Since product adoption and usage is critical, welcome flows for most SaaS, apps, and chrome extensions are educational. They work best when they explain how the product works and highlight benefits to users.

Here’s how Headspace does it. The goal of the email below is to educate subscribers so that they start using the app.

Subject: “Where will meditation take you?”

Headspace provides education in their onboarding email, providing information about when to use the app, and how science supports meditation. The included CTA reads “Start with basics” which is Headspace’s freemium meditation offering.

They want early engagement so that they can get people onboarding and enjoying the product—they’ll upsell users later.

Nurture: Nurture flows turn subscribers and free users into paying customers. Promotions are effective here. Let’s take a look at one of Calm’s nurture campaigns below:

Subject: “Your exclusive discount on a lifetime of Calm”

Calm’s nurture campaign meets users where they’re at—it’s triggered after people start using Calm’s free product. See, Calm knows when customers are engaged, and they use their nurture flow to upsell and generate revenue from subscribers.

Win-back: target subscribers who were actively using your product but stopped recently. Invite them back by highlighting new features.

Here are examples from Asana and Grammarly.

Subject: “Since you’ve been gone…”

Here’s why Asana’s win-back email works:

• The subject, “Since you’ve been gone…” is relevant to the subscriber because they haven’t been engaging Asana’s emails in some time. It gets people to click.
• The line, “We haven’t seen you in a while. Is it us?” is witty and relatable.
• Highlighting the fact that Asana improved and is now 2x faster is enough to recover a strong percentage of customers.

Here's another example. Grammarly’s email is a properly-executed win-back campaign.

Subject: “You’ve Earned a New Badge!”

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Here’s what Grammarly gets right:

• The subject, “You’ve earned a new badge” is enough to incentivize subscribers to click—they’re hit with a dopamine hit when they’re acknowledged for doing something productive.
• Lines like, “back when you were into writing things on the Internet” and “Then you just disappeared” are both light-hearted and relatable for subscribers who’ve been ghosting.
• The big red “GO!” button is a refreshing CTA. It gets people to click and reengage with Grammarly.

Moving on, let's take a look at how Ecommerce companies approach emails.

2. Ecommerce

Welcome: in ecom, the best welcome flows move people towards purchase of their product. Typically, the initial email introduces your brand and showcases how you can help them. The ensuing emails highlight features and benefits of the product, handle relevant objections, and go for purchase.

Here’s an example from Casper.

Subject: “Welcome to Casper”

Here’s what Casper gets right:

• Social proof by adding a note that the subscriber is joining a community of 1 million people.
• “Let’s get sleepy” CTA is witty and clickable
• Subscribers benefits showcases immediate value
• Sleep tip is a smart way to build trust
• 20% discount gets people to shop

Nurture: Nurture flows in ecom focus on building a brand moat, and turning customers into repeat buyers. LTV is the name of the game. So they often include upsells, new product launches, referral programs, and targeted promotions to incentivize purchase.

Here’s an example from Harry’s

Subject: “Small steps for a smoother shave”

Harry’s nurture email comes in a flow after a welcome email. The text, “A grown man’s guide to getting a baby face” is on-brand. Think about the business of DTC ecom (like shaving)—it’s an LTV game.

Harry’s email:

1. Educates subscribers on how to properly pre-shave.
2. Executes #1 in a brand voice that helps dig a brand moat

Both improve LTV for Harry’s.

Win-back: Win back flows in ecom are similar to those in software—it’s about reengaging subscribers who are stuck at a certain point in the funnel. Personalization can help here to catch inactive subscribers’ attention and move them towards purchase.

You’ll recognize our Blue Apron email below from our section on subject lines.

Subject line: “Come on back - we made dinner easier! 😋”

• Blue Apron’s subject alone helps win back customers
• The phrase, “Come on back” clearly indicates that they’re speaking directly to the segment that is getting this flow—those who haven’t been engaging emails
• They include a $30 coupon in their CTA, which is a brilliant way to incentivize customers who are on the fringe of ghosting.

Bonus: try adding a touch of personalization in the subject line by including the subscriber’s first name. This isn’t something to use in all flows, but it can be effective in win-back campaigns since it captures the eye and generally gets more people to click.