#59 - Write your SaaS Growth

You better understand your buyers.

Welcome 326 Tech Founders and Marketers to the 59th edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

  • Cold Email: 15 checks for better open rates

  • Copywriting: 5 landing page CRO checklist for the week

  • Email Marketing: 8 lessons to grow your SaaS email base

  • Growth Marketing: How to 3X your SaaS sales

  • SEO: 5 SEO strategies for newly setup SaaS blogs

Let’s GO!

Growth Tip of the Week! 🚀

Patrick says he got 250+ people to refer him to $10M+ in revenue. With Value bombing. 

When you meet someone potentially valuable to you, bomb them with value the first 3 months of meeting. Data. Crucial intros. Custom consulting. All for free.

Across enough people, you'll get 10x back.

Cold Email 📈

Stop sending cold emails if you’re making these mistakes.

Raul says there's absolutely nothing worse than setting up your email accounts, scraping leads, cleaning them, writing the copy and launching a campaign only for 10% of people to open it.

If this happens to you, here are 15 things to check:

  1. Your email accounts aren't set up properly. If you don't have SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up properly for your email accounts, that will hands down affect your deliverability.

  2. Awful subject lines. If your subject line is generic asf, cheesy asf and not targeted, guess what. People aren't gonna open it.

  3. Your email accounts aren't warmed up enough or at all. If you haven't warmed up your emails for at least 2 to 3 weeks before you start sending, you'll see lower open rates.

  4. You're using spam words. Avoid using any spam words. If you're sending emails with words like "Easy cash" or "Skyrocket revenue", you're most likely ending up in the spam folder.

  5. You're sending too many emails. If you’re sending too many emails you might get flagged and most of your emails will end up in spam and won’t be opened.

  6. You're sending Non-personalized emails. If it’s obvious from the email snippet that the email is generic and not targeted, there’s a lower chance of being opened.

  7. You're using an unverified Lead List. If you don’t verify your email lists, there are gonna be a ton of email accounts that don’t exist and bounce. Check SaasyDB to get verified leads from funded startups every week 

  8. You use images in your Copy. If you're using images, it might cause more of your emails go into spam and lower your deliverability.

  9. You use links in your copy. Using links will cause more of your emails to go into spam and ultimately lower your deliverability.

  10. Your open rate tracking is off.

  11. You aren't using a custom tracking domain. Not using a custom tracking domain means that you're using the same tracking domain as other people. That means you won't get as good of a deliverability rate as using your own.

  12. You're on blacklists. If the domain associated with your email address, custom tracking domains or any links included in your email body are on a blacklist. Your deliverability will plummet.

  13. You're using a generic email address. Send emails using info@company instead of name@company.

  14. You're sending at the wrong times. If you're sending emails before or after work hours, or during the holidays or over the weekend, they aren't getting opened.

  15. Reputation of email service provider's IP. While most major providers (like Google, Zoho, Outlook, etc.) automatically take care of the sending server’s IP reputation, this could yet be another reason for low deliverability.

❤️‍🔥 Community Shoutout ❤️‍🔥

Copywriting 📈

Optimize your landing page for higher conversions this week.

Jay shares 5 simple tactics to create killer landing pages:

  1. Write a benefit-focused title. No one cares what you can do. Everyone cares what you can do for them. Your title should clearly state what benefit you’ll provide to their life if they sign up. If you don't know where to start... use a proven formula: Formula = Benefit x Hook.If you already have a title, work on writing a better one this week? Remember, the purpose of your Title is to get the reader to read your first line. That’s it.

  2. Specify how you create the benefit in the subtitle. The title teases the value. The subtitle embellishes the benefits.

    1. What exactly are they getting by subscribing?

    2. What will they miss out on if they don’t subscribe?

    3. Get specific and explain the value you provide.

  3. Illustrate the offer. Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. It’s not enough to tell people what they’ll get. Show an example of past content. The goal is to illustrate your newsletter in action.Again, the purpose of your illustration is to get the reader to read your first line of the page.

  4. Include social proof above the fold. Social proof is one of those things that bring instant credibility. It leverages the Bandwagon Effect. “If everyone else is reading this, I guess I should too.” There are 2 main places to feature social proof:

    1. In the underline below your CTA

    2. In the testimonials section

  5. Make it easy to take action. A Call-To-Action (CTA) button is meant to prompt visitors to take action. By now, they should know the value you provide. All that’s left is to subscribe! So here’re 3 ways to guide people to subscribe:

    1. Highlight the benefit

    2. Handle Objections

    3. Use social proof

Your copy can help you scale. Keep Optimizing.

🆘 Community Chat of the Week: 🆘

What’s your conversion rate on your Pricing Page?

Email Marketing 📈

Do you build lists for your SaaS? Read this.

Yong just hit 5,000 subscribers on his newsletter. Here are 8 lessons on newsletter growth:

If you don't have one, your copy will likely bomb. But nail that part? And your copy will CRUSH. How to come up with a BIG idea?

  • Compounding is powerful. It took me 94 days to go from 0-1k subs. It took me 11 days to go from 4-5k subs. Same number of subscribers, shorter timeframe. Growth is non-linear. Just keep going.

  • Content is your product. Make it great. Make it shareable. Make it memorable. Nothing matters more than having remarkable content.

  • All roads lead to the newsletter. Social media is rented land. Newsletter is owned land. So, what do I do?

    • I plug my newsletter into my Tweets.

    • I auto-DM my new followers on Twitter.

    • I build my newsletter in public. (Like this.) Convert followers into subscribers.

  • Swapping Recs > Cross Promotions. This is by far my best growth lever: Swap recs with other newsletters on newsletter platforms. Build relationships with other creators. Grow together.

  • Use Boosts as a growth channel. It's a paid acquisition channel. I prefer this over paid ads on social for a few reasons:

    • You don't pay for bad subscribers.

    • You can select your own Boost partners.

    • You can easily evaluate each partner's performance.

  • Referral programs don't work. I haven't found this strategy effective at this stage. Maybe my list is too small. Maybe my perks aren't good enough. Probably both. (Would love to be proven wrong. If you have a successful referral program with a small list, let me know!)

  • Design & branding matters. It's no secret. Newsletters are HOT right now. Everybody is starting one. (And they should.) But, how do you stand out? Of course, your unique content. But you also need to think about your brand. Strong brand identity is key.

  • Build yourself a growth flywheel. Here's mine:

    • Interview well-known guests on my podcast.

    • Make high quality production episodes.

    • Create short-form video to promote.

    • Guest shares the episode. Your results will compound faster.

🧰 Marketing Tech Stack to Add this Week! 🧰

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EngageBay has empowered their team, delighted their customers, and driven sustainable business success!

Growth Marketing 📈

Everyone is looking for more sales. Very few are doing this to ACTUALLY get more sales:

Katelyn shares 3 dead-simple ways marketers can drive 9X more sales (according to new research from Google):

  • Better understand buyers

  • Better understand buyers

  • Better understand buyers

This advice is so good that I’m willing to say it 5/7/9 times.

  • Better understand buyers

  • Better understand buyers

Okay, I’ll stop here but hope you understand your customers better. Here’s why:

  • According to research from Google, customer-centric companies grow 9X faster year-on-year They grow faster AND they’re 60% more profitable. If you want to market smarter... you need to better understand buyers.

  • That means you need to learn from the voices of actual customers (Not gut instinct, focus groups, or surveying random people) It’s as simple as that But just because it’s “simple” doesn’t mean it’s easy...

  • Marketers already know listening to customers is important But in today's economy, many are working with diminishing budgets and smaller teams It can be a struggle—and many marketers don’t know where to start Is that you?

SEO 📈

SEO not working? Here’s how to make it work.

Your SEO strategy determines if you rank in: 3 months, 12 months, Never. Yet, no one talks about STRATEGY. There are a TON of blogs out there about SEO basics... But none about strategy.

Nick has used these 5 SEO strategies to drive 6-figure MRR:

  1. Content Velocity. Ditch link-building, focus on building out a ton of content. This works when:

    1. You're in a niche with not-so-competitive keywords

    2. You're working on a fresh website with no published content

    3. You simply don't have the budget for link-building

  • Epic Content. Ditch content volume. Focus on creating REALLY good content that's miles ahead of the competition. Think, 2-3x better with screenshots, examples, case studies, etc. This works when:

    • You're in a competitive niche

    • Your competitors already have great content.

  • Targeted Link-Building. Ditch content and focus exclusively on link-building. Build out 2-3 pages that target high buyer intent keywords and try to get them to work. This works when:

    • You have a limited SEO budget

    • You're looking to drive revenue ASAP

  • Content first, Link-Building Second. Pick out 2-3 topic clusters that are most relevant to your business. Determine the (ballpark) number of articles you need to write to cover them from start to finish. Then, focus on content volume till you've covered the niche completely.Once you've covered the niche, THEN you can start focusing on link-building. This works when:

    • You're in a niche where you have a low number of target keywords (less than 150)

    • You have the budget to push out a ton of content fast AND also focus on active link-building

  • Local Over Global. Global SEO too competitive in your niche? Focus on local instead. E.g. ranking for "web development firm" globally can be hella hard, but "web development firm salt lake city" is much easier. This works when:

    • The city you're based in is not TOO crowded/competitive.

    • You're actually based in that city or have salespeople there (clients WILL want to meet you in person if you rank in their city)

How can we help each other? 🥅

  • Are you providing any marketing services to SaaS and tech companies? We’re vetting marketing experts to help SaaS companies hire specific marketers. You can apply here.

  • Add your SaaS tool as a featured blog. We have opened up guest posts for SaaS tools like yours in SaaSwrites. Promote your SaaS, get a juicy backlink, and create your content investment

  • Let me help you build a marketing strategy for your Tech Product.Know more

Thanks for reading! SaaSwrites is a humble attempt to help SaaS founders and marketers grow their SaaS.

See you next Saturday.

Ricky,

P.S. If you liked this edition, it would mean the world to us if you share it with your friends. :) Thank you in advance!

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