The primary objective of every business is to yield customers and sell the products or services to them. Eventually, the goal is to get repeat customers and build evangelists for the brand. The most daunting task in achieving this goal is that despite having total control on how you run a business, you do not have much say in how your prospects or customers behave. The only thing you can do is carry out marketing activities that leave a lasting impact on them.
There are several ideas for doing this but one of the most effective one is to create email marketing funnels. This is supported by the fact that 73% of in-house marketers worldwide said that email marketing provides a strong ROI than most other channels.
To start with, let’s understand what you mean by email marketing funnels.
How a prospect goes to be a customer is referred to as a marketing funnel. Email marketing funnel depicts the similar thing with respect to email. In other words, email marketing funnel represents the process of converting prospects into customers with the help of email marketing.
When done right, it can drive a higher ROI than all other marketing channels. That’s where email marketing funnel comes into picture.
Once you have an organically built email list of genuine subscribers, you are all set to put an email funnel into action.
1.Nurture Your Leads
The prospects at the top of the funnel present a great nurture opportunity. Majority of them would be new to the email list and might not be fully aware of the kind of products or services you provide. You would certainly not want to start selling to someone right at the outset.
Begin with building trust with the subscriber. The best way to do this is send a welcome email as soon someone signs up to your email. The email should introduce the brand and let the prospect know more about your products or services.
Here’s an email example from Duolingo. They have explained the user about how to use their app more effectively.
Of course, it is important to understand that the prospect will not make a purchase right after the welcome email. Devote enough time to create awareness and educate them with emails that would make them trust you and consider buying from you.
Email on Acid presents a nice example of an educational email that enlightens the subscribers and builds credibility. Sending similar emails over time would help in brand recall and facilitate conversions for them.
2. Convert the Leads
The next step after nurturing is conversion. When a subscriber gets to know you and understand your brand, they would be willing to buy. Nonetheless, there’s a very thin line between willingness to buy and actually buying. You can get rid of that thin line by asking your subscribers to “buy” with a gentle nudge. Just subtly ask them to purchase from you with an engaging copy and clear CTA.
Hope for Justice is a global non-profit organization that sends thought-provoking emails with copy and images that would inspire the reader to take action and donate.
Take a look.
3. Retain the Customers
Many marketers are under the fallacy that the funnel ends after the conversion. That’s not true. Attracting new customers can help you drive business growth, but maximum business growth happens when you can retain them and entice them to come back to you.
The good news is that an email marketing funnel can help you with this. The retain stage is quite similar to the nurture stage. Several emails like product recommendations, feedback emails, and other targeted emails can help you retain the customer.
Let me share few examples with you.
Product recommendation emails like the one by Amazon can encourage the customer to make another purchase and bring more business to you.
This transactional email kills two birds with one stone. Not only does it inform the reader about the delivery date but also cross-sells related products.
Next example is of an email by Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Their feedback email effectively conveys the fact that the customer’s opinion is important to them and makes him feel special.
Another example is of referral emails that bring new customers as well as encourage the existing ones to make a purchase.
Airbnb sends a perfect referral email with a nice illustration depicting the same. The copy is short and sweet and ends with a prominently placed CTA.
4. Re-engage the Dormant Customers
An important aspect of the email marketing funnel is re-engaging the dormant customers. An inactive customer is not all doom and gloom. By sending a re-engagement email, you can revive these customers and make them purchase from you again.
Here’s an example from Jack Wills that incentivizes the dormant customer to buy again from them. However, you should make sure that doing so does not attract the discount shoppers and butt into your profit margins. Also, you should use this tactic prudently to avoid gamification of the buying behavior.
Some Pro-tips to Swear by
- Maintain a consistent schedule to send your emails. For example: Really Good Emails sends an email every Tuesday and Friday which makes me look forward to seeing them in my inbox on those days.
- Always automate your triggered emails and monitor them at regular intervals. Doing so will make sure that the right message is going to the right person at the right time.
- If you are an ecommerce brand, make the most of transactional emails, product recommendation emails, and cart abandonment emails. These emails should reach the customer’s inbox at the right time so that it drives the next action.
- Track the metrics like email open rates, click-through rates, bounce rate, and unsubscribes. Based on this information, keep optimizing your email marketing campaigns.
- A/B test your emails to figure out what’s working and what is not.
- Test the emails before hitting the send button so that there are no rendering issues and it warrants a flawless user experience.
Wrapping Up
Are you using an email marketing funnel yet?
If not, we can help you with the entire email campaign management including the creation of an email sales funnel.
Just get in touch with us and we shall have you covered.