Effective Email Outreach for SaaS in 2023 (Template Inside)

In my recent post, I showed how we used SaaS link building and SaaS SEO to 50x organic traffic for a cloud cost management SaaS in 14 months.

Today I share the secrets of effective email outreach that we use in our link building service.

These secrets will help you land more links from absolute beast-type websites!

In fact, these websites will help you increase your organic traffic and fill up your SaaS pipeline without relying on PPC.

Let’s get right to it.

Caution! Effective Email Outreach Only!

If you read any other guides on email outreach, you’d see they are advocating for all sorts of ways to get more responses by additional personalization, making effort when writing the outreach email template, showing your wit, using humor, etc.

Here is one piece of ugly truth for you – (almost) no one gives a cr*p about that.

I did this once exceptionally well for a client…I wrote a killer email outreach template.

In fact, that template ended up on Ahrefs’s blog because I reached out to one of the guys (he was part of the target audience since he covered the topic I was promoting) in their content team and he decided to publish the template on the blog.

Fun fact: I never got a link for it, even though I reached out to him directly!

Here is the response…after me following up for 4 months LoL:

For the rest of this article, I’m going to ignore the fact that this reply is complete BS and teach you instead how to do email outreach for link building purposes as effectively as possible.

SaaS Brands, Here’s a Cold Email Outreach Template Writing Secret!

Here is the honest truth.

Sure, you can be fun and witty and get a response from whoever you are reaching out to.

I had that done with the template I had featured on Ahrefs blog.

In fact, I got tons of replies saying something like:

Oh, I never respond to cold emails but…this was the best email I have ever received. Unfortunately, I still can’t give you a link. Sorry.

Funny, right?

You put all that effort into writing the best cold outreach email and all you get is a compliment on your exceptional copywriting skills 😀

Here is the email outreach secret any SaaS company building links should grasp…

You need to offer something in return that is actually useful for them.

Here are the easiest options:

Option #1: Money. It’s the easiest of all the easiest options because all you need to do is negotiate the price.

Option #2: Guest Post. I hate this method because you are creating great content for another blog in exchange for one single backlink. Nonetheless, it’s still a viable option because there is some value for them…even though you are competing with a myriad of others.

Option #3: Link in Return. They give you a link and you get them a link in return. That’s a really nice offer and SaaS companies love that.

For our outreach campaigns, we use Option #1 and Option #2.

Outreach Emails That Convert

Your outreach email design would slightly depend on the type of outreach campaign you are running for your SaaS.

As I mentioned in my SaaS link building guide, we only use two strategies:

Google search link building
Competitor link building

No matter the campaign, every single email outreach template needs to provide the following:

Intro. They need to understand “who the h*ll is this guy” right away.
Context. Answer the “Why is the heck is he reaching out?” question.
Motivation. “What does this clown want?”
Benefit. “What am I getting from this?”.

You’d then need to annoy them with 2 follow-ups because some of these guys (not all) need to be reminded a few times in case your initial email was ill-timed.

That’s pretty much it – not really rocket science!

A Healthy Approach to Personalizing Outreach Emails

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against personalizing outreach emails but, in my opinion (entirely based on my first-hand experience), you shouldn’t be going above and beyond when personalizing outreach emails for websites with DR40-75.

That specifically applies to mass email outreach campaigns.

However, you still need a degree of personalization and we’ll achieve that when giving context to the recipients (as I mentioned above).

The easier way to do that is by using cold email outreach tools.

SaaS Company Email Outreach Framework

An email outreach tool would use, what’s called, dynamic variables (aka merge tags) in order to create a more personalized email.

Here is an example:

Hey {{ Name }},

{{ FirstLine }}

I am Artem from Huyarit, a SaaS company dedicated to hardcore fitness enthusiasts.

Cna we have a backlink please?

The dynamic variables above are:

{{ Name }}
{{ FirstLine }}

So an email outreach tool would replace these with whatever blurb you have specified.

In the case of {{ Name }}, you’d have their first name appear instead of that field. Alternatively, it would be some fallback…for example, “there”, so the phrase would be “Hey there”.

And the {{ FirstLine }} variable may translate into whatever sentence you want to include that shows you had it all personalized (we never do this level of personalization as it’s too much work for too little benefit).

Usually, these variables are kept on a Google spreadsheet or you can upload them as a CSV.

We’ll need to use them for our highly effective outreach emails.

Before we jump into them, let’s touch on the subject of a few tools you can use for pitching.

A Word on Email Outreach Tools

To date, I tried a ton of them – YAMM, Gmass, Mailshake, NinjaOutreach, BuzzStream, Pitchbox, Mailmeteor, Lemlist…and a few others I can’t recall.

The thing is…if you are using outreach emails for link acquisition working on one single SaaS company, you’d be totally fine with something really basic.

Here are my top picks:

Gmass. I used it for a year and it’s a great tool that has a ton of functionality…at the expense of the UX – the dashboard on that thing is horrible! They also have a free warm-up tool, which is essential for outreach email deliverability.
Mailmeteor. The newer tool that I also used initially and then stopped, because they didn’t have a follow-up feature. They now got the feature and are now priced almost identically to Gmass. They also have a nicer UX. At the time of writing Mailmeteor is on Appsumo with their LTD but…as it turned out, it doesn’t include follow-ups, so I decided to get a refund!

Anyhow, I don’t recommend anything fancy if you are just one single SaaS company.

All of the tools that I mentioned have the dynamic variable feature in place so let’s get going.

Filling Up Dynamic Variable for Email Outreach

As I said, we use two types of link acquisition campaigns:

Google search
Competitor outreach

I covered them both in my SaaS link building guide, so I’m not diving deep into them here, but…

I’m going to use Google search type campaign for example purposes here.

To find the URLs of prospects that we are going to pitch, we use a set of preselected seed keywords that we plug into Google, one by one.

We then populate our spreadsheet with the following columns:

Keyword. This is the keyword that was used.
URL. The URL that was found using the above keyword.
Email. Their email.
Name. If we can find the name, we use that. Most often we use a fallback.

So, using my example of a fitness-oriented SaaS company…

Let’s suppose that I’m building links to my guide on neck exercises, so, naturally, that would be my first keyword to tap into.

Here is what my example spreadsheet would look like:

Now we have exactly the right amount of dynamic variables filled for our outreach emails to look crazy personalized!

Let’s check it out in action…

Effective Outreach Email Template for SaaS Companies

Without further ado, here is what your template would look like.

Hey {{ Name }},

I was searching for {{ Keyword }} on Google and came across your piece on that subject (talking of this one – {{ URL }}).

I’m Artem from Huyarit, a SaaS brand dedicated to hardcore fitness enthusiasts! We help muscle-less nerds get crazy gains from using our smart tech.

It seems to align pretty well with a piece that we just published, so I’m wondering whether I could get mentioned there at all?

Obviously, we’ll be able to reimburse you for your effort…please let me know what your terms are!

P.S. we could also do a link exchange so it’s a win-win for everyone. Let me know!

Thanks,

Artem
Lead Outreach at Huyarit

Let’s break this outreach email down so it makes sense to you.

Paragraph #1: Give context – why are you reaching out? Connect with them immediately to show that your outreach email is not spam.
Paragraph #2: Brief intro. Try to make them smile – this is the best thing to do now.
Paragraph #3: Tell them what you want. Easy!
Paragraph #4: Show that you are open to giving them something in return.
Paragraph #5: Indicate a high-value option. In this case – it’s the link exchange idea.

Then you outro and wait…for 2 days!

Once you’ve given them some time to respond, it’s time to remind them about the amazing opportunity they have for linking to you!

Outreach Email Follow-Ups

This is the part that people get wrong – you can’t be lousy with your follow-up but…you also don’t need to jump out of your pants!

I also see a ton of self-entitled outreach emails like:

Did you get a chance to read my email?

Oh, I’m so sorry, your majesty, for missing your important email marketing! Lol

Anyhow…on to the good follow up email

Based on the reply statistics that I see, the recipients that haven’t opened your initial email will not open.

It means that your follow-up should be targeted to those that did open your cold outreach email but didn’t reply (even though you’d send the follow-up to everyone).

Here is my way of doing the first follow-up:

Hey {{ Name }},

This is Artem from Huyarit, following up with you in case I sent my previous email at the wrong moment.

Here is my original letter for your convenience:

—

I was searching for {{ Keyword }} on Google and came across your piece on that subject (talking of this one – {{ URL }}).

I’m Artem from Huyarit, a SaaS brand dedicated to hardcore fitness enthusiasts! We help muscle-less nerds get crazy gains from using our smart tech.

It seems to align pretty well with a piece that we just published, so I’m wondering whether I could get mentioned there at all?

Obviously, we’ll be able to reimburse you for your effort…please let me know what your terms are!

P.S. we could also do a link exchange so it’s a win-win for everyone. Let me know!

—

Would love to hear from you if you have a moment.

Thanks,

Artem
Lead Outreach at Huyarit

As you can see I am:

Not blaming them for not reading my email
Making it easy for them by actually including my initial message even though the follow-up is in the same thread

Then you wait 2 days again.

After that – it’s time for the final outreach email…here is how it goes:

Hey {{ Name }},

This is Artem from Huyarit following up with you one last time.

I hope you are well and not replying simply because my offer doesn’t fit you.

However, in case you are actually interested but are busy or on a vacation of some sort or are doing anything that’s more important than a link request from a random Internet stranger (that’s like all things, right? hehe), do ping me if you wish so, when it’s the right moment!

I hope to hear from you this last time but, as always, no reply is necessary!

Thanks,

Artem
Lead Outreach at Huyarit

Here is what’s happening in this, mind you, engaging outreach email:

I am not blaming them for not replying to my email
I’m assuming that my offer is sh*t or it’s ill-timed (self-blame does wonders in outreach emails)
I’m showing a bit of wit and humor (well, I hope so)
I’m dragging them into replying to me…by stating that they don’t need to reply to me (that came from Tim Ferriss)

I hope you’ve found my outreach templates to be a great example of quality content marketing!

However, we still need to cover one “important” topic – the subject line!

Do Not Overcomplicate the Subject Lines

Again, anything that shouldn’t be personalized, should not be personalized because I don’t want you to waste time on coming up with a custom subject line for someone that would ditch you with “oh, such a nice email but…we don’t accept guest posts at the time” type response.

I like to keep our subject lines nice and short:

inquiry
question
{{ Name }}, question (if you have their name)

If you are craving for additional subject line personalization, you can go for the title of their article. It can work pretty well…especially when you can have that automated!

In essence, subject lines have turned into something like a secret language where you indicate what you are after and…

That’s totally fine!

As long as what’s behind your subject line is good for them.

Random Email Outreach Tips for Maximum Reply Rate

Right, this is crazy but in my link building career I tried a few things and saw interesting results.

Create a female email outreach persona and use an image from thispersondoesntexist (you might need to refresh it a few times before you get something suitable)
Use a more exotic name…come up with something fancy 😉
Mention your SaaS brand’s accolades (if any), especially when pitching top-tier websites (e.g. we were mentioned by FastCo)
Try to give more than you take

Try these tips in your link building efforts and you’ll see how effective your outreach emails would become!

Use My Outreach Emails…With Caution!

Good artists copy, great artists steal!

Steal my outreach emails templates and enjoy using them but…

Make sure you tweak them for your outreach efforts because that’s how you will make them even better!

No matter what you do, remember…

All the outreach strategies should rely on what’s in it for them.

Once you grasp that, your email outreach efforts will bring you quality links in no time!

Ready to Leave Google’s Graveyard & Stop Dangling on Page 2+?

As you can tell, writing outreach email templates for guest posting, building links or whatever is a ton of work, but…it needs to be done!

I and my team are here to help you get started with building up your SaaS brand in order to drive relevant traffic directly to your pipeline!

After helping several SaaS businesses get more and more organic traffic, we know exactly how to bring you gains…fast.

Don’t let it hang – schedule your intro call today and let’s get’s going!