Steps To Creating An Effective Email Marketing Funnel

Every digital marketer has the same goal when it comes to email marketing which is to “grow their email list and convert leads into loyal customers”

The fact is, as a digital marketer, you’re in control of the steps you take to influence your customers especially as it relates to email marketing.

Creating an email marketing funnel for your business can be divided into four steps.

Each step represents a unique touchpoint along the customer journey that requires a different type of marketing approach.

If you don’t provide the right approach at the appropriate stage, you may lose a customer. Email funnels do take time to develop, but they come with a huge ROI.

Step 1: Generate Leads At The Top Of The Funnel

At the top of the funnel (TOFU), you want to get quality leads that are most likely to convert into becoming a paying customer.

The quality of your leads can be the difference between having a good number and exceeding your sales targets.

There are several ways to generate leads at the top of the funnel.

The first and best way is to create a landing/opt-in page to receive emails.

To do this, you will need to create a free offer (Lead Magnet) that will attract and entice your prospects to make them want to provide their contact details (name and email address).

Once they provide their details, you are free to email them all your offers and place them in the appropriate funnel.

Step 2: Nurture Your Leads in the Middle of the Funnel

Now that you’ve got quality leads, the next step is for you to nurture those leads into paying customers.

Nurturing your leads is critical to your business’s success because these directly have an impact on customer’s decisions about whether they want to convert into paying customers or not.

When it comes to lead nurturing, there’s no one size fits all approach, but there are certain key points to put into consideration.

First is to create enough touchpoints that keep your brand in the mind of your leads, but care should be taken, you don’t want to come off as being too pushy.

Another important point is to follow-up regularly with relevant and personalized messages.

There are many ways personalizing your emails can help you improve your lead nurturing strategy.

You can send triggered emails when a visitor carry out specific action like downloading a content, click on links in your emails, or visits certain pages on your website.

Combining marketing personalization with behavioural triggered emails will help you to deliver the right marketing messages to the right people, at the right time.

Step 3: Conversion of Leads Under Funnel

As your prospects approach the bottom of the funnel(BOFU), they will be almost ready to turn into paying customers.

You’ve attracted them to your site, turned them into leads, and nurtured them into potential customers. Now, you need to close the sale.

Your hottest prospects are most likely converts. For instance, these are individuals who abandoned a product in their cart on your eCommerce website or did not complete an opt-in form.

You can follow up on these prospects with emails encouraging them to return to where they last left off.

Your email copy should have enough urgency to initiate a positive outcome. You don’t want to make the deal sound too good to be true.

Simply nurture leads one last time to remind them of the worth they receive by buying from your brand immediately.

Step 4: Retain Customers By Repeating Funnels

It will always be cheaper to retain an existing customer than to change a new one.

Having said that, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stop growing your email list and start new subscribers on your email channel.

However, you don’t want to forget a customer who has already made a purchase.

In fact, your business growth is tied to the percent of exciting customer you can retain To do so, simply repeat the funnel.

Identify a new trigger or preference for which they want to see the email. Continue rearing them until they are at the bottom of the funnel. From there, turn them into paying customers once again.

Sending personalized message can be difficult especially if you don’t have the right tool.
Engage messaging allow you to send personalized messages, while also creating uniques customer segment based on different attributes and events(customer behaviour)