Best Strategies for the Email Funnel

Any business to ever exist was created to make profits, acquire clients each day, and retain them for as long as possible. Unfortunately, not every business is living this fantasy. This is why we have large corporations making millions each day, and small scale businesses that will remain small. The difference is in the marketing.

Sometimes, customers are like babies, they will lose interest or get lost before making a purchase. An email marketing funnel acts as a rail track. It will help you get your “babies” from point A to B smoothly, without worrying about getting lost.

However, to understand how email marketing works, you need a better understanding of what it is. Let’s dive in.

What is an Email Funnel?

An email marketing funnel is a content strategy where businesses follow the sales funnel structure to inspire any content within emails sent to clients. Email funnels turn new subscribers into loyal customers using specific strategies. In fact, according to DMA (2019) email is still king.

However, to run a successful email marketing funnel, you need to automate and personalize your email campaigns. And seeing that the email funnel has different stages, you need to reach out at the right time with the right content for different clients.

The 5 Email Marketing Funnel Stages

The stages in the marketing funnel show the degree of how likely the client is to make a transaction. These stages include:

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion
4. Loyalty
5. Advocacy

The further down a prospect goes in the sales funnel, the greater the chances of becoming a customer. However, do keep in mind that not every prospect who enters the funnel will make a purchase. Some will get lost, lose interest or might fall in love with what you have to offer.

Let’s take a look at all stages and the best strategies to use for each.

1. Awareness

Do: Educate, be helpful and offer freebies.
Don’t: Sell, or go into the specifics of your product/service.

At the top of the email marketing funnel, you have awareness. At this stage, the prospect has just learnt about your product or service from a website, blog, Google Search, or recommendation. During this stage, the client is trying to know more about your company.

Focus on establishing yourself as a thought leader in your specific industry. Your focus on this stage is to give more information to the prospect while getting their email address.

Opt-in forms are great for newsletters that will keep your subscribers engaged. Dedicated landing pages that are focused on one lead magnet that educates the reader enough to enter the sales cycle are the way to go.

Some of the lead magnets you can use include:

• Informative whitepapers
• Coupons/ Discounts
• Giveaways
• Free Trials
• Downloadable PDF Files and much more.

This gives the prospect a brief idea of how it is like doing business with your company.

2. Consideration

Do: Provide tailored content, deliver product-specific content, be helpful.
Don’t: Be too sales-oriented, send content that is not useful or applicable by your subscriber.

Once the subscriber moves from the awareness stage, they enter the consideration stage. Here, subscribers are willing to consider what you have up for sale. Since they already know a little about you (the company), consider sending more targeted content that solves specific pain points in their life. This step shows that you understand the problems the clients are going through, and you have the perfect solution. The goal here is to introduce your subscribers to your product or service.

For example, let’s say you’re a fitness instructor, trying to get subscribers to purchase your 30-day fitness program. You can send emails that include:

• A blog post called “How to Burn Belly Fat Fast”
• A case study showing someone who got fit after using your product
• A live workout webinar. But be sure to include a download or purchase link somewhere in the content. Just don’t focus on it too much.

3. Conversion

Do: Send helpful information relevant to your clients.
Don’t: Stop adding value to your subscribers, or interacting with prospects.

It’s finally decision time. Once the subscriber knows about your company, how you’ve helped other people to solve their problems through case studies, webinars, and blog posts, they are ready to decide on making a purchase.

At this point, you need to send emails showing why your product is better or safer than competitors, and why they should pick you. Try focusing on the benefits of your product rather than just explaining the features. This is a proven method of getting product descriptions to sell. Also, add some more social proof just because.

The best strategies in this step include:

• Creating automated email series with emails that show the different benefits of different products.
• Send invites to webinars talking about the product/service and benefits
• Offer a free-trials or giveaways.
• Send subscribers one-time broadcast emails with discounts for purchasing within a certain time frame.

Offering these discounts creates a sense of urgency in the subscriber. This gives them that extra push to finally make a purchase.

4. Loyalty

Do: Form a bond with loyal customers, keep offering awesome content and great services, collect and act on feedback.
Don’t: Forget about your clients.

Even after converting your prospect into a client, the job is not done yet. Retaining customers and building long-term relationships is crucial in increasing your marketing Return On Investment(ROI).

Loyalty breeds repeat purchases and referrals. This means that you need to work on their next purchase once they convert. In this case, the same techniques for the first and second stages are used. However, with a twist, the message is different. Now, you can talk about your brand more directly.

Let’s say you have an online coffee shop, and you don’t want your subscribers to opt-out. Here are some ideas to keep them engaged:

• Send a monthly webinar that describes the best brewing practices.
• Send a survey about how happy they are with the services and what can be changed
• Send updates of new features added to your product or service
• A 10% discount for clients who make the yearly subscription and much more.

5. Advocacy

Do: Connect to your die-hard customers and ask for referrals.
Don’t: Forget about your clients.

Advocacy happens when clients become like family. They become part of your business by bringing referrals. Here, the client is satisfied with your product, so you should focus on getting insights. This can be through feedback forms. It is important to gather this feedback and work on improving.

Here are some ways to use email marketing to turn your clients into raving fans who will always vouch for you:

• Take note of the clients that love you and send them emails asking for referrals
• Include surveys in your email
• Start an affiliate program

Position Your Brand to Succeed

Whatever is preventing your email funnel from achieving the marketing goals, you can pinpoint which stage of the funnel is the problem, and solve it using the right strategy.

For more information on how to get better results in your digital marketing campaign, contact us. We can help you automate the entire process.