Email Swipes

About Email Swipes

How do you sell a $20,000 product to a busy school principal who’s never heard of your brand? How do you win back public favor when the NY Times slams your company? How do you build community when your huge Earth Day initiative is shut down by a global pandemic? You send an email of course. These are real challenges that real SaaS brands faced – and solved – with email marketing. Listen in on SaaS email marketing experiments that worked – and didn’t – to inform and inspire your own SaaS email marketing strategies. Every other week, an email marketing expert will share an email story – and the following week, I’ll walk you through the concrete takeaways you can apply to your SaaS email marketing.

Publisher

Nikki Elbaz | Email marketing strategist for SaaS brands

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

31 Jan 2024

Latest episode

26 Nov 2025

Latest episodes

80 of 108 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   26 Nov 2025

   ✨️ Special Episode ✨️ How to make The Internet mad at you for raising your prices (plus: how to raise SaaS prices without raising ire) | Behind the Scenes of the Pricing Increase Emails Report by Open Loop Studio ft. Jess Haney

   Shownotes: When SaaS companies raise their prices, the internet explodes – but why do some brands face massive backlash while others skate by unscathed? If you're Jess Haney, you don’t just follow the drama, you collect over a dozen pricing increase emails, analyze the social media storms that follow – and distill the patterns into a must-read report. From Canva's rollback to Kit's creator rebellion, discover what makes customers rage-quit versus grudgingly accept – and the three non-negotiables that could save your next price increase from becoming a PR disaster. About our guest Jess Haney is the founder and head strategist of Open Loop Studio — a lifecycle email agency for B2B SaaS companies with free trials who are ready to increase conversions and turn trial users into revenue. Ideas you don’t want to miss (4:45) Why companies should take social media price increase rants seriously – even if they seem overblown (6:34) The crucial (and easily reversible!) mistake that sends angry customers to social media (9:36) The only reality where brands get positive reactions to price increases – and how to spin that to your advantage (16:48) Jess's non-negotiable rules for price increase emails (hint: no-reply = no-no) (20:38) The Kajabi paradox: why a well-written email still generated massive complaints (24:42) What Jess swipes religiously (and it's not promotional emails) Links from this episode Take 76% off the complete email toolkit with our Black Friday Blowout Bundle (http://Nikkielbaz.com/black-friday). And as an Email Swipes listener, you get an extra 10% off with coupon code 10OFFBFCM25! Grab Jess's free Price Increase Email Report (https://openloopstudio.co/price-increase-emails-in-saas) to see what 10+ SaaS companies did right (and wrong) with their pricing announcements Follow Jess on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesshaneycopy/) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@open-loop-studio) or book a lifecycle call (https://openloopstudio.co/contact) Listen to Ep. #30 (https://nikkielbaz.com/podcast/winback-emails/) with Rand Fishkin about SparkToro's intentional approach to customer communication Revisit Ep. # 42 (https://nikkielbaz.com/podcast/price-increase-emails/) for how I handled Detrack’s pricing increase email – and compare my approach to the insights Jess shared today Get Nikki's email musings at ⁠nikkielbaz.com/subscribe ⁠ Let me know what you thought about the episode by emailing podcast@nikkielbaz.com (mailto:podcast@nikkielbaz.com) Subscribe to Email Swipes and never miss another episode Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/email-swipes/id1728740510) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/7haXM58Bl6BiSoaQhnXXFG) Google Podcasts (https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8yMzEwMzMwLnJzcw) Or find on your favorite podcast player (https://www.notion.so/Licorice-com-c20c92363847469e8d63bfc5040cba0f?pvs=21)

2. 

   29 Sept 2025TRANSCRIPT

   REPLAY: Plain text emails might be exactly what your email marketing strategy is missing| Takeaways from Winning Winback

   Host Nikki Elbaz analyzes SparkToro's winback email, revealing how plain text strategies enhance engagement and customer connection.

3. 

   24 Sept 2025TRANSCRIPT

   REPLAY: How SparkToro prioritizes feature requests, builds relationships, and shares killer pasta recipes with a combo feedback-retention-winback email (with Rand Fishkin) | Winning Winback

   Host Nikki Elbaz interviews SparkToro cofounder and CEO Rand Fishkin about a unique email strategy that prioritizes feature requests, builds relationships, and shares recipes.

Inside a recent episode

REPLAY: Plain text emails might be exactly what your email marketing strategy is missing| Takeaways from Winning Winback

Published 29 Sept 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] The first similarity was when Rand said that in the early days of Maz, he was the voice of the company, and that changed as it grew, and how he didn't like losing touch with the customers, and so he brought that element back when he started Spark Tour. It reminded me of what Alex said and how he worked really hard to streamline and systematize all the typical founder stuff, so that he could stay focused on the stuff that normally doesn't scale but makes such a difference to the customer experience and community, aka communication. This in itself was similar to what Rand said about how he makes sure to keep Casey in the loop because one of his regrets for Maz was not keeping the devs in touch with customer feedback and experiences, because essentially when growing, all the teams begin to lose the connection to the customers, and it takes a lot of effort to break down those walls and get things back to feeling super communicative, supportive, and continue to really listen to their needs. […]

Who has been a guest on Email Swipes

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Rand Fishkin
• Taylor Raffa
• Detrack
• Joanna Wiebe
• Jay Oram

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Spotify

3.7 / 5

3 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 45 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

69

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

51

Contact Email Swipes

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Questions about Email Swipes