The majority of the businesses today have these key goals that they wish to achieve –
1. Increasing their customer base i.e getting as many customers as possible,
2. Retaining customers in the journey and ultimately converting them into their ‘repeated customers’.
While this sounds extremely easy, in reality, it is quite the opposite of that.
Businesses can manage what they do at their end but can not seem to control how their customers react to it – that is where the problem lies and these goals are then not achieved by most businesses.
There are various ways in which this problem can be solved – but here, in this blog today, we are going to talk about one effective solution to this problem – Email Marketing Funnels.
Now that you are reading this section, we assume that you already know the benefits of email marketing to your business, and thereby would not indulge in that here.
Therefore, this blog will be your ultimate guide for Creating the perfect Email Marketing Funnel that aims to convert and retain those prospects.
Before we begin, let us understand what Email Marketing Funnel means for your conversions.
What Is Email Marketing Funnel & What does it mean for your Conversions?
An Email Marketing funnel is a representation of how your lead glides through your sales pitch. To put it simply, it is the whole journey that your customer goes through before actually ‘becoming your customer’.
It is a bi-product of your business’s creative ways to persuade and educate the customers into buying.
There are certain stages that your customers go through while they are in this funnel.
1. Awareness – This is the introduction phase wherein your marketers tell your prospects – yes, your product/service exists and can help them beat their problem!
2. Consideration – This is the phase where your customer is interested in knowing what you have to offer and you tend to learn about your customer’s needs and give them exactly what they desire.
3. Conversion – This is the phase where you need to tell your customer why you’re the best in the market and give enough reasons for them to commit to you.
4. Commitment – You just achieved what you wanted in the last stage but that’s not where the journey ends. This phase requires you to increase the customer’s lifetime value with your business and maintain the relationship with him.
5. Advocacy – This is the phase where businesses get to sit back because now they have a dedicated customer base who promotes the business for you because of the great experiences you just delivered to them.
Your funnel stages say a lot about you and if done right, it can bring about a massive difference for your business.
As much as people say that Email Marketing now does not work – the reality is known to real marketers out there. Believe it or not, but the majority of marketers even today rely on email marketing tools to increase their conversion efforts.
Without further ado, let us dive right into getting your Email Marketing Funnels right!
4 Steps You Need To Know To Create the Perfect Email Marketing Funnel
1. Top of the Funnel: Capture Leads
Before you commence, you need to have a set of leads you want to interact with and that starts with – building your list.
Gone are the days when you want to be targeting every person as your audience. Therefore, you need to filter down on ways you can go about building your lists.
There are various ways in email marketing to build these lists but not all ways are equally reliable and effective. So, we are going to talk about the 2 most reliable sources of building your lists:
Opt-In Forms and Landing Pages.
A. Opt-In Forms
Opt-in Forms is nothing but simply a form positioned on your website to collect the email addresses of the parties interested. It can be in any form such as a pop-up, scroll box, sidebar, etc. but its function remains the same – to gather subscribers through your website.
It is a fantastic way to build on your lists based on the opt-ins because the audience you would then be catering to, would be filtered.
B. Landing Pages
Landing pages are well thought dedicated sales pages that aim to extract your visitor’s information in exchange for an attractive offer.
Landing Pages are an effective strategy to collect your email leads that are wanting to engage with your business.
2. Middle of the Funnel: Nurture those Leads
You must give your customers what they need more than what you have to offer. From the vast variety of the services or the products you offer, it is really important to dissect your lead’s needs, assess their problem areas, find a solution and give them just the right remedy for their problem.
There are a few ways you can go on about nurturing those leads.
A. Focus on Personalizing your Emails
Personalization is the key to provide the most appropriate value proposal to your subscriber. Your subscriber should feel that your business cares about him and has a tailor-made solution for his needs.
Get to know your leads better and get a sense of what they want from your business.
Once you have done your research, you go on and prepare those tailored solutions for your subscribers and offer them a great deal they just can’t refuse.
B. Segment Your Lists for a Better Response Rate
Email Marketing Funnel is of no point if there is no engagement from your user’s end. One of the major reasons why emails are used to market your business with your prospects is because of their engagement rate.
A higher engagement rate is only possible if you segment your subscribers based on their interaction on your website, their demographics, their past behavior, etc.
So, focus on strengthening your relationship with your subscribers by sending them relevant information in their inboxes.
3. Middle of the Funnel: Converting those Leads
If you have made it past the first two steps, chances are – you have got their attention and maintained that relationship with them which is going to get converted in this step.
There is a high possibility of converting your lead into a paying customer by continuing to nurture your lead. You need to continue doing that with an even more aggressive technique.
Some of the ways you can do this are as follows:
A. Sending Cart Abandonment Emails
Retargeting should be your mantra to bring back those dead subscribers. Send them emails regarding those products they had previously liked and added them to their cart. Such emails would get these subscribers to take some action or even get them to be alive again.
B. Time Sensitive Emails
Time Sensitive Emails always have an upper hand and make your customers want to purchase from you. Creating some form of urgency in your emails such as by providing a limited-time offer for a purchase, a birthday discount, or certain vouchers, etc. is a great way to grab your subscriber’s attention and to make them feel the need to take action.
C. Sending Out Valuable Content
Send those emails that include webinars, case studies, or great results that you accomplished for your other customer to give them a sense of positioning your business as a solution for his problems.
4. Repeat Funnel: Maintain those Paying Customers
If you thought conversion was your last step of the email marketing funnel, you were wrong! This is an even more important step of your funnel that requires your business to stay equally active.
This step requires you to construct a long-lasting relationship with your customers to increase the customer lifetime value.
It is that phase that focuses on building a loyal customer base that would not want to buy from your competitors in the industry and would advocate your business to their peers as well.
Some of the ways you can accomplish this are by:
A. Keeping them updated with all the new products or services
Always keep them engaged with your business by educating them about the recent innovations, product launches, etc. so that you remain at the edge of their minds for the unbeatable solutions that you have to offer.
B. Offer Up-Sells And Cross-Sells
Now is the time you can tell them how their previous purchase can be made even more powerful by other complementary products. Do not be pushy but do drop in such suggestions in their emails.
C. Reward them for their Loyalty
Come up with an attractive Loyalty program wherein your customers earn extra points for advertising your business or for every purchase they make with you. Such emails always add to the experience of your customers.
Conclusion
A perfect Email Marketing Funnel multi folds your sales opportunities with a smooth marketing customer journey.
With this well-thought email marketing funnel setup, you can turn your opportunity leads into repetitive loyal clients which would ultimately fuel your business.
Now that you have an awesome foundation for building your email marketing funnel approach, it’s time to roll out that content that you have been wanting to send to your list of subscribers!
Checkout the Best eCommerce Tips here.
Sara is a content writer at PeppyBiz, a platform that allows businesses to grow a list of email subscribers, design and build customized email templates through email marketing software.
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