Email marketing continues to grow as a channel that brings money to businesses. Businesses can invite customers to return to their business because of email campaigns. It allows them to remain in contact with them, keep them informed, and to remind them about upcoming deals.
Many businesses find convenient using a funnel to guide potential customers, hoping that they will make a purchase. The funnel allows the business to convert email subscribers into loyal customers and retain them. They do this by applying key techniques, such as sending automated emails and informing them about new products.
As you follow this guide, you can improve your email marketing by focusing on the email funnel. Learn about email marketing funnels, their key techniques, and how to send emails as efficiently as possible.
1. What is an Email Funnel?
An email funnel facilitates your marketing strategy by turning your prospects into customers. Prospects initially show interest in your company, and customers refer to those that make a purchase and might return to your business. Customer retention should also be a part of your email marketing funnel.
While you will receive many prospects from an email list, only some of those people will become customers. This makes sense, because some people may have an initial interest, but lose interest over time. There are common reasons why this happens.
- People feel that a product isn’t right for them.
- They receive too much or too little contact from a company.
- Something changes in their life preventing them from making a purchase.
While some people may leave your email newsletter or stop showing interest in your company, people will continue to turn into customers as you help them through the funnel process.
2. Email Marketing Funnel Parts
The email marketing funnel process consists of multiple parts. Each of these parts make up the steps that potential customers go through to become returning customers. This is a five-step process that ends with them sharing your business with others.
The process begins with awareness. The potential customer learns about your business and may have some interest in it. They seek out more information through friends, your website, and your social media pages.
They reach the consideration stage once they think that they might purchase something from your company. Potential customers at this step tend to sign up for an email newsletter so that they can stay informed about your company. They might also place items into a cart on your website as they think over the purchase and consider products that interest them.
Conversion happens once the customer goes to your website and makes a purchase. From here, they test the product to see if they like it.
Customers reach the loyalty stage once they consistently return to your website to make purchases from you. They trust your company and want to make more purchases. This happens as they have positive experiences and appreciate your great product line.
If they start to share your company and products with friends, then the customer reached the advocacy stage. They appreciate your business and want to show further support. They do so by encouraging friends and family to buy from your business as well.
This process takes some time, but it leads to loyal customers that return to your business and consistently make purchases. Due to this loyalty and consistent sales, many businesses use the funnel process to gain more customers.
3. Email Marketing Funnel Techniques
To help potential customers through the funnel process, you need to consider different techniques and strategies. These strategies allow you to use your email marketing to send them reminders about your company. This will help them learn more about your company and to keep them interested in your products.
Always make sure that new subscribers to your email newsletter receive a welcome email. This will help them during the consideration and awareness stages. A welcome email shows that you want to keep them informed and they appreciate the message.
The hardest part of the email funneling process comes from getting potential customers from consideration to conversion. Many customers shared their opinions and mentioned that the emails help them make a purchase.
Send emails to your customers that keep them informed about new information. Send them emails about deals, new products and services, and remind them about abandoned carts. As you do these things, you guide them towards making a purchase, which helps them become loyal customers.
4. Widening the Funnel’s Neck
People call the bottom portion of the funnel the neck. Your ultimate goal with email marketing funnels is to widen the neck as much as possible. This means adjusting and improving your techniques so that you gain more loyal customers that share your business with their friends.
This comes down to convincing more potential customers to make a purchase. Ask some questions about your current emails to see what adjustments you can make.
- Which email subject lines draw in the most customers?
- How can I get more clicks on the links in my emails?
- Where do I lose potential customers in the funnel process?
If you notice that certain subject lines draw in more customers, then use similar subject lines. Make links clear and give customers a reason to click on them. Send emails at points in the process when you usually lose customers.
Widening the funnel’s neck comes down to adjusting your emails based on your customer’s needs. As you do so, you can increase the number of sales that you gain while helping you increase customer retention.
5. Email Automation: A Necessity
It’s unreasonable to send all of these emails on your own. This would require so much work and manpower that you wouldn’t get to work on other problems in your company. To make things easier for you, get an email automation program that will send emails to people based on their interactions with your emails and your website.
By using email automation software, you can improve revenue, click-through rates, open rates, and deliverability. The last three lead to more sales and a wider funnel for your business.
When you get a higher open rate, it means that more customers click on your emails, increasing their number of interactions with your company. You also increase the odds of them making a purchase as the click-through rate increases. This means that they click on the links in your emails which redirect them to your website.
As for deliverability, emails need to reach customers for them to open the emails. Each of these factors increases your revenue since you gain more loyal customers that make purchases. Email automation makes things easier for you and widens the funnel’s neck so that you gain more customers.
Conclusion
As you work on your email marketing funnel, make sure to keep this guide in mind. Even if it’s your first time creating one, you can use the techniques mentioned here to get you started on the right foot.
Remember that email funnels take time and won’t lead to new customers immediately. Before a customer can trust your business and share it with friends, they need to interact with it. They do so by learning about it, viewing your products, and trying those products out for themselves.
Get a personal 1-on-1 demo and build your email marketing funnel today!
This article was originally published by our friends at Omnisend.