Lifecycle emails for SaaS: the set a small product needs

What lifecycle emails are

A lifecycle email goes out because of where a person is with your product, not because of the date. They sign up, so they get a welcome. They pay, so they get a thank-you. Their card fails, so they get a note about the card.

A newsletter goes to everyone on a day you picked. A lifecycle email goes to one person on the day they reach a point. You write each one once and it keeps going out, which is why they suit a team of one.

The set a small SaaS needs

You do not need thirty emails. These eight cover the road from sign-up to cancellation:

• Welcome. Goes when someone signs up. Says the one thing to do first.
• Nudge. Goes a few days later to people who signed up and have not done that thing. Activation emails covers it.
• Thank-you. Goes when someone pays for the first time.
• Trial ending. Goes a few days before a trial ends, with what happens next.
• Failed payment. Goes when a card fails, with a plain way to fix it.
• Founder check-in. A few weeks in, a short note asking how it is going.
• Cancellation. Goes when someone cancels. Asks why and keeps the door open.
• Win-back. Goes weeks after a cancellation. Win-back emails covers it.

For the days and the order in the first two weeks, see the onboarding email sequence. The same list as a checklist is in emails every SaaS should send.

What a good one looks like

One job per email. One link. Written like a person wrote it, in plain text, short enough to read on a phone. A welcome can be this small:

Subject: Welcome to Acme

Hi Sam, thanks for signing up. The first thing to do is add one project. It takes about a minute: [link]. If anything gets in the way, reply to this email and I will sort it out.

Dana

What to avoid

• Sending them all at once. Space them by what the person has done, not by the calendar.
• Two jobs in one email. If you ask for a review, a referral and a call, you get none of them.
• A no-reply sender. People answer a founder. Let them.
• Writing to people who never asked. Email someone about their own account, not a list you bought.

How Kicklace does it

Kicklace writes and sends these for you. Paste your website's address and it reads what you sell, proposes the stages your customers go through (visitor, signed up, activated, paying, and your own), and writes the first emails in your voice.

The stages sit on a Lifecycle map. Each stage carries a sequence: emails and waits that start when someone arrives, or once they have been there a number of days. A failed payment, a trial ending or a cancellation can each start a side road of their own.

Nothing sends until you switch a sequence on. Before you do, Kicklace shows who would have got it over the last 30 days. Each person gets each email once, and a sequence stops the moment they move on from its stage. You can see it on your own site in the demo, with no sign-up, and the price is on pricing.

FAQ

How many lifecycle emails does a SaaS need?

Start with the welcome, the nudge, and the two that touch money: the failed payment and the trial ending. Add the others as you see where people leave.

Are lifecycle emails the same as transactional emails?

Not quite. A transactional email is a receipt or a password reset, something the product has to send. A lifecycle email is about where someone is with your product and what would help next. A few overlap, like a failed payment note.