Lean Email Is Three Emails
The lean approach to email marketing is radical simplicity. You need three automated emails and nothing else:
- Welcome email with one action to take
- Day 3 feedback prompt asking if the product is useful
- Day 7 question about willingness to pay
These three emails give you activation (email 1), product-market fit signal (email 2), and business model validation (email 3). Everything else is waste until you have validated the fundamentals.
Email as an Experiment
In lean methodology, everything is an experiment. Email is no different. Test different subject lines to learn which value proposition resonates. Test different onboarding paths to learn which features matter. Test different ask timings to learn when users are ready for conversion.
The key lean principle applies: measure what matters. For email, that means reply rate (not open rate) and conversion impact (not click rate). A 10% reply rate on your feedback email tells you something real. A 60% open rate tells you your subject line was good.
Pivot-Ready Email
One underappreciated advantage of email marketing for lean startups: it survives pivots. Your subscriber list, your domain reputation, and your sender infrastructure carry over when you change direction. You can email your existing audience about the pivot, gauge response, and start the new build-measure-learn cycle immediately.