Every business is in the race to acquire as many customers as they can because that’s how they will grow and create a strong foundation for them in this competitive market. But it is not as easy as it sounds. For creating a loyal customer base, businesses need to target which ones are right for their brand, connect with them, convince to buy your products or service, and deliver great quality. That’s how the process works and those who understand this process well have higher chances of reaching their goal.
There is one thing every business must remember, that without having a structured and strategic approach, it will be really difficult to make a mark. Thus, they need to create a plan for everything they do from targeting customers to promoting their products.
One of the most effective and most widely used tactics to connect with the target audience and product promotion is email marketing. Sending emails is one of the best ways to connect with the bulk audience at the same time and it has worked for businesses for years.
As we have said above that there needs to be a strategic approach for everything you do, similarly, email marketing also requires a structure so that it’s progress can be checked anytime. The structure we are talking about is known as ‘email marketing funnel.’ Let us dig deep into it.
What is the email marketing funnel?
The email marketing funnel is a strategy that drives your target audience into customers. As the name suggests, it makes use of emails to deliver the right and interesting content to the audience for getting their attention. This funnel helps businesses send emails with the most relevant content at the most relevant time to the target audience and that’s how they will improve engagement.
The same content is not ideal for all people, some of them might require more information than others, and that could be well defined by the email marketing funnel. The timing is most important during the email marketing campaigns and that’s where the importance of this funnel multiplies.
The main goal of using email marketing funnel is to get the attention of people whom you have sent the emails. You can only get recognition when receivers will open your mail and see what’s in there for them. If your mails get unnoticed, you will get nothing but frustration and to avoid such a scenario, it is advised to use email marketing funnel in your email marketing campaign.
How does email marketing funnel look like?
The email marketing funnel can be broken down into several stages:
-
Gather emails
To run an email marketing campaign, the first thing you need to have is a list of email addresses of your target audience. As without email addresses, whom will you send the content? So, the first thing you are required to do is to gather email addresses and that could be done in several ways.
-
Opt-in forms
The first method to build your email list is via opt-in forms. They are short lead capturing forms having fields of the name of the person and his/her email address. Such forms can pop-up on any page of your website as set by you. They are one of the best ways to get the basic information of your target audience and also to get the traffic into the marketing funnel.
A defining way of using opt-in forms is on one of the popular blogs or the most visited landing pages of your site. That’s how you will be able to show the form to a wider audience and get a high number of emails to build your list and put them in the funnel.
With opt-in forms, one thing you need to ensure is that at which position and on which page it does well. For that, you need to place the form at the top, at the bottom, as a pop-up and anywhere else you find it feasible to place. With automated marketing tools, you can check the progress of each of the form placement and analyze which works the best for you.
-
Dedicated landing page
Another way of getting email addresses to start your email marketing funnel is by creating a dedicated page to collect the information of visitors. But one thing you need to consider while creating the landing page is not to make them long enough that instead of filling, people leave that.
A great idea to improve conversions with the landing page is to display the offer you have for them. Besides keeping the form short on the landing page, you can also brief about the benefits of choosing your products or services. The chances of getting leads are high if people find the products good enough for them.
Another good thing you can do to improve conversions is to offer something in return for signing up with you. The offerings could be free subscription, free e-book download with beneficial content, or even discounts.
-
Awareness
The real game starts from here. Now when you have built the email list, you need to make people aware of what you offer, because if they don’t know about the products or services you provide, how will you bring them bottom to the funnel.
While creating awareness about your brand, don’t try to fill the email with the benefits of your products or services only, rather try to be educative and helpful. Because people need to know why they should buy something and how that will help them. If you only talk about your brand, you will sound pushy and that’s not a great sign for your business.
The goal of creating awareness should be to show the expertise in your business’s niche not to sound self-obsessed. If people find you knowledgeable enough in your field, they will automatically get attracted. Be genuine with your awareness mails, as more effective they will be, much easier it will be for you to bring them to the second stage of the funnel.
-
Consideration
Once you have created the awareness and made sure that people know about your brand, it’s time to ensure that people think of buying your products. For that, you need to share more relevant and enticing content that makes people consider your products. With consideration mails, it is important to send a bit detailed information than you have sent with your awareness mails.
Here, you need to be specific with your content and don’t forget to be helpful as well. The catch here is to talk about the points that your products or services can solve and that’s how you can make up their mind to choose you over others.
The type of content you can share to get results in your favor could be blog posts, case studies, webinars, informational videos, or something else you have in your mind. Such content can either be shared directly in the mail or a brief with a link to get the complete access. Your focus while preparing the content should be to deliver what people are looking for not what you want them to see. That is the way by which you can maintain their focus towards you.
-
Conversion
You have done most of your part to tell people how & why you are different from others and now is the time to make one deciding effort to see how your other strategies worked. If people consider about your brand/product and respond the way you’ve expected, the chances are high that will convert into your customers.
But this will not happen on its own, for that you need to follow up regularly and in such a way that it does not annoy people. Send another email to your segmented list showcasing the benefits and other important information about your product. This will make their desire strong to buy what you are offering. In this mail, do tell something unique about your product that your competitors are devoid of.
Getting conversions is not an easy task, for that, you need to make some real efforts along with setting your product quality high. To improve the chances of getting sales, you can also create a sense of urgency for people to buy as quickly as they can by providing some exciting offers, discounts, or even freebies. When already people are considering your brand, having a better deal will be the icing on the cake for them and they will want to grab it as soon as they can.
-
Loyalty
Your work doesn’t end with getting sales from the customers once, because that will not get you anywhere. To ensure a strong position in the market, having customers who come again & again are a must because they will be the ones who will become the mouth of your brand. Remember, people who choose you after getting references from existing customers tend to remain for a long time.
To be referenced, you need to ensure the loyalty of your customers and for that, you yourself need to be loyal in the first place. Never stop providing informational, relevant, and interesting content to your customers once they have purchased from you. Doing so will create a negative image of your brand and you might start losing customers.
Thus, it is important to be in contact with your existing customers and wherever possible, keep sending discount codes to ensure that they buy from you again. Another thing we should say is to be helpful to your customers and they will reciprocate.
-
Advocacy
Advocacy is where your email marketing funnel will end on a high. This is something we have talked about in the above point as well. You brought the audience successfully from the top of your funnel to the point where they became your customers. Tactically you have done a really good job with your email marketing campaign and made it a success.
Now, along with getting customers, if you manage to make them your advocate, it’ll be an added advantage for you in the process. What we mean by saying the word ‘advocate’ is to make customers talk about your brand and that’s how you will be able to make your empire.
Talking about your brand could be in several ways, by sharing your content on social media or other channels, giving positive reviews about your products, and recommending it to the friends. When people will see your brand in their news feed, especially when shared by their friends, they will consider it. While on the other hand, having positive reviews is always good for any brand to attract new customers, because it is the tendency of people to see the experience of people before buying any new brand.
Again, to ensure advocacy, you need to do everything possible to maintain a loyal customer base. And for that, you need to consistently deliver useful content, give discount offers, and ask customers to give feedback.
What type of mail you can send to your audience?
-
Welcome email
These are the most common types of mail brands send to their customers. Such mails have a welcoming message for the customer who has made a purchase for the first time or the ones who have subscribed to your account. Sending a welcoming mail will lay a foundation right from the start to make a strong relationship with your customers. Such emails are known to have high open rates.
With welcoming mails, one can also send some suggestions relevantly according to the type of product purchased by the customer or a discount offer on the next purchase. In this way, you will increase the chances of bringing the customer back.
-
Promotional email
Another mail that can be sent is promotional mail. As the name suggests, this mail includes information about the products or services a company offers. Generally, a newly launched product or the one which is going to be launched soon is promoted via emails. It is important to focus on your call to action while sending a promotional email. It could accompany with something like early bird offer or pre-launch offer. Considering this will deliver good results in increasing the sales and popularity of that product.
-
Blogs and other informative content
To make people think about your brand or a particular product, you can send blogs or guides on the relevant topic that shows your expertise in that particular area. You can also send one of your most-loved blogs in the email. This will help you build authority and increase the chances of your email marketing success. Sending informative content is the best way to improve engagement with your audience and bring them down towards the marketing funnel.
-
An email with loyalty and rewards
This another great type of mail that you can include in your email marketing campaign. Send rewards and loyalty points to your existing customers through emails with other offers. Considering this will only strengthen your relationship with your customers and increase the chances of making a purchase again. Such mails also have a decent open rate as you are giving something in return for the purchase made by the customer. Remember, if you keep rewarding your customers for their purchases, they will buy more from you.
-
Email with surveys
Such type of emails is best to check the performance of your brand in recent years. By sending a well-structured survey form in an email to your customers not only give insights into your success but also assists in improving the engagement with your customers.
With survey or feedback emails, you will also have proof about the genuineness of your brand and that has the highest chances of having improved loyalty.
-
Behavioral email
Such emails are sent to the visitors on your website or app based on their activity. Such emails show that the brand is concerned about the visitors coming on their site. For example, you can send emails to the people with an abandoned cart to remind them for completing the purchase or the ones who have recently checked some of the products on your site with suggestions similar to those they have checked.
Such emails are also best in maintaining a good client-business relationship.
-
Newsletters
We all might be well aware of newsletters as we might have encountered them in our inbox. Through newsletters, companies share some of the insights of their products along with new product launches and other related information. This is also one of the great ways of interacting with the target audience. With newsletters, it is important for you to notice that the content should be compelling for your readers and they find the information worthy.
The Bottom Line
Emails will never get old and that is what we are seeing for years and probably that is the reason why email marketing has got too much priority in this technologically advanced world. It won’t be wrong to say that emails are one the best mediums of communication and a professional way as well. Not only they are convenient, but effective as well. We must say that every internet user has an email Id and more than half of the world’s population has access to the internet. Thus, you can imagine how effective this channel of communication would be.
While running an email marketing campaign, it is important for every business to consider email marketing funnel. This is how they can improve the results and get closer to their success. This post was entirely dedicated to telling you how impactful email marketing funnel is and what role it could play in your marketing success. We hope this post would have been helpful for you in understanding facts about email marketing funnel and you will experience the benefits after implementing them with your email marketing campaign.