Email best practices
For Product-Led Growth (PLG) companies, the product is the primary engine for customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion. Your user’s journey – from their first click to becoming a power user – is the most critical marketing channel you have. But how do you guide them through that journey at scale?
The answer lies in strategic, behavior-driven email automation.
Too often, email is siloed. Marketing runs its campaigns, and developers hard-code basic transactional notifications. This leaves a massive gap where you could be educating users, driving feature adoption, and converting trialists into product champions. An effective PLG email strategy unifies this experience, turning your email platform into a core part of your product’s growth loop.
This playbook provides seven essential email automation workflows every PLG company needs, broken down by each stage of the user journey.
Activation is where your PLG motion either takes off or quietly stalls. The moment someone signs up, they’re making a promise to themselves that your product will solve a problem, and your job is to help them validate that decision as quickly as possible. Email plays a critical role here, acting as a guide that nudges users toward their first meaningful success inside the product.
And at this stage, less is more. Effective activation emails aren’t feature tours or long explanations; they’re about momentum. Each message should remove friction, highlight a single next step, and lead users closer to their “Aha!” moment – the point where value becomes obvious. When onboarding emails are timely, behavior-driven, and tightly aligned with the in-product experience, they dramatically increase the likelihood that a new signup becomes an engaged user rather than a forgotten trial.
So, with that said, let’s look at a few examples for our fictitious PLG SaaS brand, Vivaelbeti – a project management tool.
| Email type | Purposes and best practices | Example |
| Welcome email | Purpose: To confirm signup, reinforce your value proposition, and provide a single, clear call-to-action (CTA). Best practice: Don’t overwhelm them. Make the very next step obvious and easy. The goal is momentum. | Subject: Welcome to Vivaelbeti! Here’s your first step. Hi Lucia, Welcome to Vivaelbeti! We’re excited to help you and your team conquer project management. Your first step is simple: Create your first project board. It only takes a minute and it’s the best way to see Vivaelbeti in action. [Create My First Project Board] Cheers, The Vivaelbeti Team |
| First action nudge | Purpose: To guide users to perform the first key action that leads to value. This is different from the welcome email’s CTA, which might just be logging in. Best practice: Trigger this based on behavior. Send it 24 hours after signup only if they haven’t performed that key action yet. | Subject: Tip #1: Assign your first task in Vivaelbeti Hi Lucia, Ready to get organized? The magic of Vivaelbeti happens when you start assigning tasks. Just open the project you created, click “Add Task,” and @mention a team member. It’s the fastest way to get work moving and see real progress. [Go to My Project Board] |
An activated user understands the basics. Now, the goal is to deepen their engagement, make your product a habit, and introduce them to secondary features that deliver even more value.
| Email type | Purposes and best practices | Example |
| Milestone email | Purpose: To celebrate user achievements, reinforce the value they’re getting, and encourage deeper use. Best practice: Use data from your product to trigger these. Celebrating “10th task completed” or “5th team member invited” feels personal and rewarding. | Subject: Congrats! You’ve just completed 20 tasks in Vivaelbeti Way to go, Lucia! You and your team are on a roll, having just completed 20 tasks in your ‘Q1 Product Launch’ project. Keep that momentum going! To take it to the next level, try creating a custom report to track your team’s progress. [See My Team’s Progress] |
| Feature adoption campaign | Purpose: To introduce valuable features that users may not have discovered on their own. Best practice: Frame the feature around a benefit, not just what it does. Explain how it solves a problem or saves time. Target users who haven’t used the feature but fit the profile of someone who would benefit. | Subject: Did you know you can automate reports in Vivaelbeti? Hi Lucia, Tired of manually compiling weekly progress reports? Let Vivaelbeti do the work for you. Our automated reporting feature lets you create a dashboard that updates in real-time and schedules a PDF summary to be sent to stakeholders every Friday. Set it up once, and never build a manual report again. [Set Up Automated Reporting (2 mins)] |
| Usage summary emails | Purpose: To provide a regular, tangible reminder of the value the user is getting from the product. Best Practice: Send these weekly or monthly. Use data visualizations and key stats to make the value obvious at a glance. Think of it as a mini-report on their own success. | Subject: Your Weekly Vivaelbeti Digest Hi Lucia, Here’s a look at what your team accomplished with Vivaelbeti this week: – 15 Tasks Completed – 3 New Projects Created – Most Active Team Member: Sarah You’re making great progress on the ‘Q1 Product Launch’ project, which is now 75% complete. Keep up the amazing work! [Jump Back into Your Dashboard] |
By the time users reach this stage, your product has already proven its value. People are active, engaged, and relying on your tool to get real work done. So, the goal here isn’t aggressive selling, but continuity. You want to help users maintain and expand the value they’re already experiencing.
Conversion and expansion emails work best when they’re contextual and timely. Instead of generic upgrade prompts, successful PLG emails respond to moments of intent, such as hitting a limit, discovering a premium feature, or achieving a milestone that signals readiness to scale. At the same time, inviting teammates and encouraging referrals unlocks the multi-user dynamics that fuel sustainable growth. When email aligns with user success, monetization becomes a natural next step, not an interruption.
| Email type | Purposes and best practices | Example |
| Upgrade and trial expiration nudges | Purpose: To create urgency and clearly articulate the value of upgrading before a trial ends or when a user hits a plan limit. Best practice: Don’t just warn them – remind them what they’ll lose. Frame the upgrade around continuing the value they’ve already experienced. Trigger this contextually when they hit a paywall. | Subject: Unlock more power with Vivaelbeti Pro Hi Lucia, You just tried to create a new Project Timeline, which is a feature of our Pro plan. You’ve already completed 20 tasks and organized your Q1 launch with Vivaelbeti. By upgrading, you can unlock advanced features to keep the momentum going, including: – Project Timelines – Automated Reporting – Unlimited Project Boards [Upgrade to Vivaelbeti Pro] |
| Invite and referral emails | Purpose: To turn your users into advocates and drive the “multi-player” mode that is crucial for PLG. Best practice: Make it incredibly easy to invite colleagues. Trigger this email after a user has shown signs of being successful and engaged (e.g., after they complete their 10th task). | Subject: Vivaelbeti is better with your team Hi Lucia, You’ve been making great progress in Vivaelbeti! To really see things take off, invite your team to collaborate with you. Projects get done faster when everyone is on the same page. Click the button below to invite your colleagues in seconds. [Invite My Teammates] |
A flexible email platform with a strong API is the engine that runs this entire playbook. It allows you to:
By implementing these seven automations, you can create a powerful, self-service engine that guides users from signup to super-fan, driving the sustainable growth that defines a successful PLG business.
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