Email Marketing Funnel: How to Build One That Converts

Key takeaways

What is an email marketing funnel?

The top of the funnel is where there are lots of potential customers. Those most interested in what you’re selling make it to the end of the funnel. 

Knowing the details, you can predict what your subscribers will need at each stage and create the right email content for them. To visualize these stages, here is a graphical representation of the email marketing funnel:

Email marketing sales funnel and its stages

By understanding what your audience wants and needs at each stage of their journey, you can create content that will improve their experience and increase the likelihood of sales.

The stages of a typical sales funnel are: 

Awareness

As potential customers learn about your company, send emails that will interest and motivate them to find out more about you. Introduce your brand and let the subscribers enjoy all the benefits of working with you

This email makes it clear that when working on the Heroku platform, clients receive access to a variety of features that make their experience more enjoyable.

Consideration

Here it is important to show the clients the benefits of your product or service so they can see why it’s better than your competitors’. You have to prove your expertise and that it is you who can solve the client’s problem.

So the second stage is time for useful educational content and justification of why your product is better than others and specific tips for solving customers’ problems. That way they’ll see that you don’t just want to sell a product, but to help.

At this stage, include testimonials and case studies from past clients, as well as guides and tutorials. Make your content engaging by incorporating features like gamification and product comparisons.

The Unum team sends emails that share tips on how to improve a social media strategy:

Conversion

Once you have explained the product to your prospects, add a call to action: buying, trying, downloading, or purchasing the product.

The conversion stage is when the customer completes a purchase. You can make your emails persuasive by offering free shipping, demos or free trials, discount codes, or other incentives.

Make the buying process easy and seamless by including clear “Buy Now” buttons in your emails.

Don’t forget to thank users for the order, provide information and offer to give feedback as Chipotle company does:

Loyalty

To retain your customers and keep them engaged with your brand after purchase, continue providing them with supportive content that reinforces their decision. This might include sending them packing lists, tips, and tricks for using the product effectively, or other relevant information related to your industry or niche. You can also schedule cross-sell and upsell campaigns to further engage your customers and encourage repeat purchases.

Creating a connection with your customers will ensure they keep coming back, and providing content that helps them get the most out of their purchases will show that you value their business.

This is how Crate and Barrel uses its confirmation emails to cross-sell products to its clients:

Advocacy

When consumers are happy with their purchase, they spread word-of-mouth advertising which leads to more sales and builds trust with potential customers.

To encourage advocacy from customers, brands can give incentives for leaving reviews, offer repeat purchase discounts, nudge clients with a referral offer, or send them complimentary products.

Below is an example of a referral email marketing campaign from Maude:

Why use funnels in the marketing campaigns

An email marketing funnel allows you to focus your efforts on the right people at the right time. This ensures that your marketing campaigns are more effective and efficient. There are many reasons why businesses need a marketing funnel. Some of these include:

Providing more value to your marketing strategy

When you have an email marketing funnel, you know the journey your customers take towards buying your product. This means that you can send emails that are targeted to where they are in the funnel, and move them along to the next stage. Thus, you can develop an email marketing strategy without having to guess.

For example, in the awareness phase, you should not sell your product head-on. Instead, prepare emails that show how great it is to be your customer, and how valuable your product is.

Creating personalized messages

Email marketing funnels are a powerful tool for reaching your audience and engaging them effectively. By collecting data about your subscribers and understanding their needs, you can create custom emails that resonate with each individual person.

For example, you can personalize your emails based on factors such as a client’s demographics, purchase history, time zone, past behavior, and other interests.

Tracking the performance of your campaigns

Email funnels provide a way to measure and see what strategies work for your audience, as well as to determine why some are dropping off at certain points in their journey and make changes accordingly.

For example, if many subscribers are lost just before conversion, the problem may be with the content of the emails or the conversion process itself. By understanding where issues arise, businesses can make necessary adjustments to improve their email marketing campaigns.

How to build an email marketing funnel

When building an email marketing funnel, there are basic steps you need to take to engage and retain your leads.

Map out the customer journey

A customer journey map is a way of representing the diverse steps, emotions, and thoughts that a customer goes through when they are considering and then purchasing a product or service. This can be very helpful for enterprises as it allows them to understand what improvements they need to make in order to better serve their clients.

Additionally, mapping out the customer journey can also help businesses to create more convincing email marketing content. Knowing the different phases that customers go through can help businesses avoid making common mistakes, such as sounding too sales-oriented too early in the process.

Your map might look something like this:

Create lead magnets

If you want to get someone’s email address, you need to offer something in return that is of value to them. This is called a lead magnet. It should be something relevant to your target audience so that they are motivated to give you their contacts.

To figure out what would work as a lead magnet, think about what your audience wants or needs, what kinds of solutions they are looking for, and the nature of their problems. Consider how your offer will make their lives better and why they would be interested in it.

Emails at this stage may contain:

• Quizzes or questions about their interests. Feedback helps you better understand your audience.
• Content in different formats. It could be documents, webinars, videos, or articles. depending on what gets opened/clicked more often, you can see what your audience prefers best.

By understanding your audience, you can create effective lead magnets that will help you to collect email addresses and reach new buyers.

There are many different types of lead magnets available:

• PDF cheat sheets and checklists
• Reports and ebooks
• Video downloads, webinars, tutorials, templates, and toolkits

Generate leads

There are two ways to collect email addresses: opt-in forms and dedicated landing pages.

• Opt-in forms are embedded throughout the website and only ask for the user’s name and email address.
• Landing pages are focused on one lead magnet, like a course or free trial, that educates the user to enter your sales cycle.

The example below shows a landing page designed to get the visitor’s email address.

If you want to get an idea of how you can use an opt-in form to grow your brand, take a look at Bliss. They offer a 15% discount to customers who sign up for their emails. This is also an amazing pop-up form example.

Nurture leads

After finding a lead generation tactic that attracts subscribers, continue engaging with them to build lasting relationships. You can create tailored content and messages for each subscriber by making segmented lists and using a product positioning technique. This allows you to send content that is specifically designed for each individual based on their preferences and interests.

While the segmentation task may seem like a complicated process, with the help of an email automation platform, it can become much easier. With this type of platform, you can segment your subscribers based on criteria like lead magnets, forms, website behavior or demographic data.

At this stage, it is necessary to show all the advantages of the product. And to help with the choice, send customers’ testimonials, case studies, success stories, guides, and tutorials. Marketing strategies for lead nurturing might also include a variety of free resources such as webinars or blogs.

The email nurture campaign below emphasizes the importance of finding creative and engaging ways to promote even mundane products. Using clever illustrations and typography can help make the content more compelling and engaging.

Convert leads into customers

As your subscribers move further down the funnel, it’s time to send some more personalized campaigns with a stronger focus on conversion.

At this phase, emails might include product recommendations based on the specific products that a subscriber is interested in, time-sensitive offers such as coupons or birthday messages, and onboarding programs for users who are nearing the end of their free trial period. You can see an example of such a message below.

Retain customers

To retain customers and build long-term loyalty, it is important to stay engaged with them and promote repeat purchases and referrals. You can do it by:

• Keeping your customers regularly informed about your products or services with things like progress reports or technology updates.
• Offering upsells and cross-sells that your customers may be interested in based on their purchase history.
• Running referral loyalty campaigns that encourage sharing and word-of-mouth advertising through things like earning points or discounts.
• Sending win-back emails to reach out to people who have stopped engaging with your company.

In this win-back email from Teespring, the company encourages readers to come back by showing a picture of a sad-looking puppy.  In addition to personalizing the message with account-specific statistics, Teespring also appeals to emotions to engage its audience and encourage them to take action.

Steps to improving an email marketing funnel

To improve your email marketing funnel, start by evaluating your current funnel. Check things off this list to make sure you’re doing everything you can to optimize it.

Set measurable goals

To effectively measure the results of your email marketing funnel, set clear and measurable goals. This can include tracking metrics such as the number of subscribers, click-through rate, download numbers, or ROI. With these measurements in place, you can easily assess the performance of your email marketing efforts and make any necessary adjustments based on the data gathered.

Whether you need to modify your content funnel strategy, decrease the frequency of emails sent, or take other steps to improve your results, having measurable goals will help you achieve success with your email marketing campaigns.

Choose quality over quantity

Focus on sending quality content rather than just loads of emails. Too many emails can be overwhelming and make people unsubscribe. It’s better to send fewer, more interesting emails that will keep people engaged with your brand.

Add value

Include content that will be of value to your clients. This could be a PDF file, whitepaper, educational resource, or giveaway. By adding value, you are introducing your brand and positioning yourself as a trusted source of information. Don’t sell from the first email as this can dissuade potential customers. Instead, take baby steps and start with adding value. This will earn the trust of the customer and eventually lead to a sale.

FAQs about email marketing funnel

What is an email marketing funnel?

An email marketing funnel is a series of emails that guide subscribers from their first interaction with your brand to making a purchase and beyond by delivering the right message at each stage of the customer journey.

What are the stages of an email marketing funnel?

Most email marketing funnels include five stages: 

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion
4. Loyalty
5. Advocacy

Each stage has a different goal and requires different email content and calls to action.

How many emails should an email marketing funnel have?

There’s no fixed number. A basic funnel may include 5-7 emails, while more advanced funnels use multiple automated sequences. The key is aligning emails with subscriber behavior rather than sending a set amount.

What metrics should you track in an email marketing funnel?

Common metrics include open and click-through rates (engagement), conversion rate and revenue per email (performance), and repeat purchases or referrals (retention and advocacy).

How can I improve an email marketing funnel?

You can improve your funnel by segmenting subscribers, personalizing content, focusing on value instead of volume, testing subject lines and timing, and optimizing emails based on performance data.