How to Build Sales Funnels – Utilizing Emails to Boost Your Business
An email sales funnel is a sequence of emails designed to deliver relevant content based on where subscribers are in their customer journey. For instance, newcomers to your list after reading an at-the-top-of-funnel blog post would benefit from conversion-focused messages which nurture them towards becoming loyal customers.
Attraction
Once you have actual email addresses, it’s time to create your sales funnel (https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/sales-funnel-stages). With a professional service, you can use lead capture forms embedded anywhere on your website or blog as popups, slide-ins, floating bars or pop ups – even performing A/B tests to see which opt-in copy and position perform best and use this data to develop an engaging sales funnel that subscribers want to interact with.
Begin by sending out a series of educational emails that introduce subscribers to your brand. These could include welcome letters, product introduction emails and free trial period offers based on what type of business you run. In these messages you should highlight the value proposition and build trust between yourself and subscribers.
Make your product the center of the sales message using any trigger email platform – using it will ensure these emails arrive exactly at their designated times – increasing conversion rate while providing opportunities to upsell larger packages once customers become acquainted with its quality.
Interest
Once a prospect passes beyond awareness, the next step should be cultivating their interest. While this stage can be tricky to reach, with educational campaigns and automated follow-up this goal can be accomplished. Depending on their objections this could involve sending emails that specifically address them while answering their queries or informing them how your product could solve their issues.
By nurturing their interest, your prospects are primed to progress further in the sales process. From exploring options, contemplating purchases or taking that final step of conversion – an email sales funnel offers them a clear pathway.
Consideration
At this stage, your subscribers should understand what issues your product addresses and May even become interested enough to research you further. Emails in this phase – put into an email sequence – should address common objections, highlight benefits of your solution and offer comparison charts and testimonials to keep the momentum high and drive sales.
Once you’ve obtained email addresses of subscribers, they’ll move onto the consideration phase of your funnel. Here they’ll learn about your brand, compare products and services offered, and select what suits their needs best. Sending relevant follow-ups at regular intervals can help to sustain interest in subscribers who may eventually convert into customers; some brands do just this by offering their subscribers a quiz to find their ideal product.
Conversion
Once your leads have made it through the awareness and consideration stages, it’s time for conversion – this is when email marketing should come into play to promote your product or service. Email can be a very effective tool in driving sales conversions as its user-friendly, highly targeted, and cost-efficient.
Your target audience needs a clear call-to-action and persuasive sales pitch in order to convince them that your product is the perfect solution for their issue. When customers see how relevant your solution is for them, they are more likely to provide payment details.
Utilizing video can be particularly helpful here; video is more engaging than text and can add a personal touch to your emails. lead scoring algorithms integrated with email automation software enable you to send tailored messages that match up with their actions; for instance if someone clicks your free trial offer you can offer them a discount incentive as soon as they convert.
Loyalty
As you pursue email leads and convert them into customers, it is critical that you stay in contact. Email offers a unique advantage over social media – with its targeted nature enabling targeted messages according to each subscriber’s journey with your brand. Automation tools allow for engaging subscribers with product updates, new product releases or any other form of valuable content such as product updates.
At this stage, subscribers become repeat buyers and brand advocates. Now is the time to ask your subscribers to help promote your business by sharing stories on social channels or taking advantage of discounts or offering incentives; or by creating an automated email program which sends offers automatically to those customers that remain loyal – either way it’s time for action.
At the loyalty stage, it’s also wise to offer upsells and other incentives that encourage further interaction between your business and its customers. These may include providing them with things that aren’t going to drown your company, like discounts for future purchases, trying out premium versions of products or services for free trials period etc.
Once your email subscribers have become customers, continue building relationships by keeping them informed of product developments, new features and company news. This will show your commitment to them while encouraging them to continue advocating for your business.
An email sales funnel’s goal is to take prospects that are not yet ready to buy and nurture them through a series of emails until they become so. At this stage, email content must clearly communicate how your product addresses issues that they face – avoid aggressive selling tactics that push people too soon into buying!
An effective email sales funnel begins by mapping it to the customer journey, so your messaging aligns with each stage. Doing this will increase its likelihood of connecting with your target audience.
An opt-in process, such as double check-in, should also be employed to verify whether subscribers are interested in your business – protecting you against violations of CAN-SPAM and GDPR laws (if in Europe) while complying with them – as should including an unsubscribe link within emails to keep all parties compliant with these regulations.
Lead Nurturing
A solid lead nurturing program can cultivate latent demand by leading prospects on an educational journey until they’re ready to be passed off to sales, while also speeding up active opportunities by equipping prospective buyers with all of the information they require in order to make purchasing decisions. When combined with effective lead scoring and established sales funnel, nurturing programs can improve win rates while shortening sales cycles significantly.
Marketing automation software provides an effective means of automating various aspects of lead nurturing campaigns, such as sending follow-up emails after someone completes a form or providing educational materials to prospects at specific stages of the funnel. Real-time marketing enables you to focus more effectively on educating leads and cultivating relationships without exerting too much manual effort.
Ideal solutions will enable you to segment leads according to title, industry or other variables to create personalized emails tailored for each persona and reduce unsubscribes. This approach should enable you to avoid boring, irrelevant emails as well as potentially increase unsubscribes rates.
Conversion
Business professionals often describe a sales funnel as taking new leads from “Cold” (where they don’t yet know your product or business) through to ‘Warm’ (when they become aware of your brand) and eventually to “Hot”, where they take action and become advocates. Email marketing plays an integral part in this sales funnel process – nurturing leads until they’re ready to convert and creating more conversions and revenue than with traditional forms of promotion.
Email marketing allows you to tailor messages directly to each of your subscribers, increasing open and click-through rates by up to 139%.
Your email content must demonstrate the value of your products or services, be it through FAQs, educational blog articles, pricing comparisons or testimonials – whatever works to convince readers they should trust you enough to take action and purchase from you.
Once subscribers reach the consideration stage, you can quickly convert them to buyers by offering discounts or calling them with calls-to-action such as special discount offers or offering referral bonuses from existing customers. Email can also be used as a medium to solicit feedback or referrals from current clients; doing so can foster loyalty that forms the basis of long-term client relationships.
Once your audience becomes customers, it’s essential to keep them engaged through loyalty programs, newsletters and customer satisfaction surveys. Use these insights to build stronger relationships with them while simultaneously increasing profits.
Retargeting
As part of an email sales funnel, the initial step involves attracting potential customers through marketing campaigns – this process is known as top-of-funnel marketing, and can include retargeting ads to those who have previously visited your website, social media advertising and pay per click (which you can learn about here).
Once customers become acquainted with your brand, they’ll begin researching products and solutions. Here is where top-of-funnel campaign targeting can come into play, leading them directly to your website and product pages where conversion can occur. Retargeting also serves an invaluable purpose by reminding those who left without making purchases to come back so that conversion can occur.
Email retargeting can help keep visitors to your website engaged once they arrive; cookie-based tracking allows you to keep track of when people visit and send them emails tailored specifically to where they are in the sales funnel. For instance, if someone has added items to their cart but not completed their purchase yet, offering a discounted incentive might just nudge them along further in their buying journey.
Cross-selling and upselling emails are an effective way of increasing average order values among existing shoppers who have made previous purchases. By featuring items that complement their previous purchases or showing new product lines available to them, these strategies will increase average order values further.
An email sales funnel is the best way to expand your list, or convert existing subscribers into customers. Begin with building up quality subscribers using sign up forms and lead magnets. Next, follow the VACUUM formula so your emails add real value for subscribers.