Tips on how to use your electronic mail advertising funnel to spice up gross sales, retention & loyalty

By Sean Tinney Could 28, 2024

E mail advertising is a conversion-driving machine.

In truth, electronic mail has the highest conversion price of any B2C advertising channel (and the third-highest for B2B audiences, narrowly behind thought management and public talking).

However you received’t benefit from the sales-generating advantages of electronic mail advertising except you: 

• Construct a dependable pipeline of leads
• Clarify your worth proposition successfully
• Give new electronic mail subscribers a motive to purchase

How are you going to do all of that?

By designing a watertight, streamlined, high-converting electronic mail advertising funnel.

What’s the advertising funnel?

The advertising funnel is a device that helps you visualize the shopper journey, or the trail a prospect takes as they develop into aware of your organization, from introduction to conversion (and hopefully past).

Your advertising funnel ought to embody the next 5 phases:
1 – Consciousness
2 – Consideration
3 – Conversion
4 – Loyalty
5 – Advocacy

E mail advertising funnel vs conventional advertising funnel: What’s the distinction?

E mail advertising funnels and conventional advertising funnels have the identical purpose: persuading your viewers to purchase from you by feeding them a gradual stream of data and incentives.

Nonetheless, they’ve alternative ways of attaining this purpose in numerous methods.

The standard advertising funnel makes use of quite a lot of advertising instruments and channels — search engine optimization, paid advertisements, social media, electronic mail, and extra — to maneuver clients by the completely different shopping for phases, whereas the e-mail advertising funnel is all about selling your services or products to individuals in your electronic mail checklist.

5 advertising funnel phases

Now that you simply perceive what the e-mail advertising funnel is, I’ll describe every stage and supply you real-world examples for shifting your viewers by these phases.

1. Consciousness

Consciousness is the primary of the advertising funnel phases.  Throughout this stage, prospects which can be strangers to your model and firm. That is your alternative to begin constructing a trusted relationship with them.

It’s your job throughout this stage of the advertising funnel to exhibit your worth to prospects by free, instructional content material. They’re not prepared to purchase from you but — as a result of they don’t but perceive what you carry to the desk. 

Tips on how to use electronic mail within the consciousness stage

Undecided what free content material to ship in your emails? Let’s say you’re a private coach who’s attempting to show your prospect into paying clients and also you’re utilizing electronic mail as your primary supply of communication. Listed below are some concepts for content material you can embody in an automatic electronic mail collection to your prospects:

• Weblog posts about diet or health
• A meals monitoring calendar worksheet
• An e book that explains the well being advantages of being match
• A dwell 30-minute exercise webinar

(Listed below are 25 sensible lead magnet concepts to develop your electronic mail checklist proper now.)

Right here’s one other instance:

Health influencer Massy Arias builds a relationship with prospects by providing personalised steerage on coaching and diet by a quiz on her web site:

Prospects who land on Massy’s quiz touchdown web page reply a bunch of questions on their age, physique kind, health objectives, and extra. Then they hand over their identify and electronic mail handle to obtain their customized health plan.

With this technique, prospects get a priceless piece of content material tailor-made to their particular wants, whereas Massy will get one other subscriber to her electronic mail checklist.

It’s a win-win!

Right here’s an instance:

Health influencer Kayla Itsines builds a relationship along with her prospects by displaying her experience and demonstrating the worth of her providers by giving her prospects a free week of her Bikini Physique Information exercise program.

When prospects enroll, they obtain an e book with a full week of exercises to allow them to take a look at this system and see the worth of it for themselves.

2. Consideration

As soon as a prospect strikes previous the attention stage of the advertising funnel, they enter the consideration stage. Within the consideration stage, a prospect is keen to think about buying your providers or merchandise. They’re eager about studying extra about you and what you possibly can supply them.

Since you already know extra about your prospect on this advertising funnel stage than you probably did throughout the consciousness stage, you possibly can ship them extra focused content material that addresses their particular ache factors. This helps construct belief between your prospect and your model, since you’re displaying them that you simply perceive them. 

Tips on how to use electronic mail within the consideration stage

So what sort of content material must you ship your prospects throughout the consideration stage? 

Let’s say you run a web based retailer promoting out of doors furnishings. Potential clients might need a ton of questions on your model and product. Is your furnishings well-made? Does it appear to be the images? Is it definitely worth the cash?

It’s your job to reply these questions in your electronic mail advertising funnel by sharing content material like:

• Testimonials from present clients who love your merchandise
• Opinions from thought leaders and trusted publications
• High quality and security scores from unbiased business our bodies 

Let’s check out how this works in follow.

Right here’s an instance:

On this electronic mail, out of doors furnishings model Outer shares a few of its finest buyer evaluations:

These evaluations sort out a number of the widespread points that may put somebody off shopping for from Outer. Extra importantly, the solutions come from actual clients somewhat than the model, which makes them far more persuasive.

Sharing evaluations is particularly priceless if you’re attempting to transform first-time customers, provided that 98% of customers say they’re extra more likely to learn evaluations for a product they’ve by no means bought earlier than.

👉 Be taught extra: Tips on how to get Google evaluations: A step-by-step information to boosting your gross sales

3. Conversion

It has lastly arrived: resolution time. As soon as your prospect is aware of the worth of your product and you’ve got educated them on the product itself by the usage of social proof, webinars, weblog posts, and different instructional content material, they’re able to determine whether or not or to not buy.

When you’ve reached this advertising funnel stage, you can begin speaking about why your product and repair is healthier than your rivals’ and why it’s good in your prospect. Give attention to the advantages of your product/service somewhat than simply explaining options.

Tips on how to use electronic mail within the conversion stage

Listed below are a number of ways you need to use to persuade your prospects to buy:

• Invite prospects to a gross sales webinar the place you present them your product/service and inform them the advantages
• Create an automated electronic mail collection that describe a special advantage of your product/service
• Supply a free trial or give away samples in order that prospects can see the advantages for themselves
• Ship prospects an electronic mail that gives a sale or low cost for buying inside a sure timeframe

Right here’s an instance:

By providing reductions and offers by way of electronic mail, Thrive Market creates a way of urgency round their merchandise. If prospects are eager about buying however haven’t but, this electronic mail convinces them that now could be the right time to take motion.

4. Loyalty

As soon as a prospect turns into a buyer, chances are you’ll be tempted to pat your self on the again and transfer on to the subsequent prospect. Nonetheless, forgetting about your clients is a nasty thought.

Until you’ve gotten a plan for growing buyer loyalty, you’ll in all probability lose a lot of your clients, losing quite a lot of your prior advertising efforts throughout the earlier advertising funnel phases.

Keep in mind the Pareto Precept? Repeat clients are too priceless to disregard. So what sort of electronic mail content material will increase loyalty and retention?

Tips on how to use electronic mail within the loyalty stage

Let’s say you’ve gotten a web based espresso retailer. You promote subscriptions to your coffee-of-the-month membership, and also you don’t need your coffee-of-the-month members to lose curiosity and cancel their subscription. Listed below are a number of concepts for priceless content material you can embody in your emails to extend retention:

• A month-to-month dwell stream to YouTube that describes the coffee-of-the-month and provides espresso brewing finest practices.
• A survey that asks clients how joyful they’re with the coffees they’re receiving and what different kinds of espresso they’d wish to get.
• Instructional content material in regards to the historical past of espresso.
• A 20 p.c low cost to clients that buy a yearly subscription of your coffee-of-the-month membership.

Right here’s an instance:

SaaS device Zapier reaches out to customers after they’ve constructed their first automation by the platform:

This electronic mail makes clients be ok with themselves by (metaphorically) patting them on the again for organising their first profitable automation.

Extra importantly, it suggests some further automations they will create, thereby encouraging them to get extra worth from the platform. And the extra helpful they discover it, the extra doubtless they’re to remain subscribed, boosting Zapier’s buyer lifetime worth.

👉 Be taught extra: Enhance repeat purchases with these 5 simple suggestions

 5. Advocacy

Advocacy occurs when your clients develop into one thing greater than clients: they develop into followers. 

Bringing clients to this stage of the advertising funnel is extraordinarily priceless. The best advertising is referral advertising. That’s when your good friend tells you a sure product is superior, you’re more likely to buy that product since you belief your good friend.

Tips on how to use electronic mail within the advocacy stage

What are some methods to make use of electronic mail to show your clients into raving followers?

• Determine clients that love you and ship them an electronic mail asking them to refer you to their mates
• Embody a survey in an electronic mail to learn the way you can enhance your services or products
• Begin an affiliate or loyalty program the place clients get incentives for referring you
• Have interaction along with your advocates by replying to their emails, posting on social media, providing incentives for writing evaluations and collaborating in testimonials

You additionally wish to acquire suggestions throughout this stage. The extra you hearken to your clients, the extra you possibly can be taught and enhance your content material so it’s consistent with their challenges, wants, and needs. Instruments like SurveyMonkey and SurveyGizmo make gathering suggestions simple. 

Professional tip: Inside AWeber’s platform, yow will discover survey templates, too. All you must do is add your personal content material into the templates and ship it to your clients.

Right here’s an instance:

To make their clients really feel particular, trend model Torrid sends them an unique low cost on their birthday:

Even when recipients don’t benefit from the supply, this tactic positions Torrid as a model that cares about its viewers.

Which, in flip, makes clients extra more likely to advocate Torrid to their family members.

👉 Be taught extra: Birthday emails: Tips on how to increase subscriber loyalty and make extra gross sales

5 tricks to construct a high-converting electronic mail advertising funnel

Now that we’ve defined the worth of the e-mail advertising funnel, let’s contemplate 5 tried-and-trusted ways to generate extra leads and gross sales:

1. Use your web site and social channels to develop your electronic mail checklist

For finest outcomes, guarantee your electronic mail advertising funnel is recurrently topped up with new leads generated by your web site and social media.

YouTube progress coach Matt Par (AKA Make Cash Matt) is a grasp at utilizing YouTube for lead gen. Let’s check out how he does it.

First up, Matt created a video explaining find out how to become profitable from YouTube with out truly publishing your personal content material:

He clearly hit on a standard ache level, as a result of it had racked up 1.9 million views at time of writing.

The video is step one in Matt’s advertising funnel.

He makes use of the YouTube description to steer viewers towards the subsequent step — his free coaching supply:

Clicking that hyperlink takes you to a devoted touchdown web page on Matt’s web site that spells out the advantages of signing up for the coaching.

When you hit the CTA button…

…you open up a lead seize type that prompts you to pick out the popular date in your coaching session and hand over your electronic mail handle.

Now Matt can attain out to you by way of electronic mail when he launches new providers or particular affords.

Intelligent stuff!

👉 Be taught extra: 5 Confirmed methods to develop your electronic mail checklist utilizing YouTube

2. Ship welcome emails to new subscribers

You understand what they are saying: you solely get one probability to make a superb first impression.

Welcome emails are your alternative to reassure new leads that they have been proper to enroll in your publication. Use them to share priceless info like:

• Your model story and worth proposition
• Explainer movies about your product / service
• Weblog posts tackling widespread viewers ache factors

And you need to contemplate including some type of promotion or incentive to drive first-time purchases, too.

Cosmetics model Duradry has constructed a killer welcome sequence.

For starters, they share some background about their model and the way they created their first antiperspirant merchandise:

Then, within the second step of their welcome sequence, they go into extra depth on how their merchandise work:

Lastly, at step #3, they incorporate a bunch of buyer testimonials (together with video evaluations for added credibility), adopted by a 20% cashback incentive to encourage first-time purchases:

👉 Be taught extra: Welcome electronic mail campaigns: Tips on how to onboard new subscribers 

3. Drive conversions with limited-time affords

Brief-term reductions and promotions add an air of shortage and urgency to your emails, which might help you flip publication subscribers into paying clients.

For instance, on-line coding lessons platform Codecademy shared a limited-time supply giving electronic mail subscribers 50% off their premium membership bundle:

That preliminary electronic mail was adopted 5 days later by a remaining warning that the promotion was about to run out:

This mix of a pretty low cost and a looming deadline provides potential clients all the motivation they should purchase now.

4. Encourage subscribers to advertise your model by evaluations

On-line evaluations play an important position in changing people who find themselves on the consideration stage of the advertising funnel.

How important?

Nicely, 98% of customers say evaluations are an important useful resource when making buy choices, whereas 45% received’t buy a product with no obtainable evaluations.

So it pays to construct a continuing stream of evaluations. Make it occur by asking individuals who’ve just lately purchased a services or products to evaluation their buy. Then share the outcomes as a part of your electronic mail advertising funnel, similar to pet food model Sundays did right here:

5. Ask clients to refer family and friends

Opinions aren’t the one approach your clients might help you drive conversions.

They’ll play an much more direct position within the path to buy by encouraging mates, household, colleagues, and random individuals they meet on the street to purchase your services or products.

How are you going to flip present clients into model advocates? By constructing a referral program and sharing it along with your electronic mail subscribers, similar to digital advertising company Circles did right here:

This tactic is especially efficient provided that referrals enable you to attain extra priceless clients.

Certainly, an evaluation of just about 10,000 new German financial institution accounts over a 33-month interval discovered that referred clients:

• Are extra loyal
• Generate increased revenue margins
• Present the next buyer lifetime worth

Create your personal electronic mail advertising funnel

Develop your electronic mail technique with the advertising funnel in thoughts. Doing so, you’ll convert extra prospects into clients and extra clients into followers, which suggests more cash for your small business. Yay!

And with a device like electronic mail automation, it’s simpler than ever earlier than to maneuver individuals by your funnel towards advocacy.

Automation options assist you to give every prospect the content material, info, or merchandise they want after they want it most. It personalizes their expertise in any respect areas of the funnel.

And as soon as it’s arrange, you by no means need to elevate a finger! You’ve successfully arrange an engine that generates passive earnings to gasoline your ardour.

Begin implementing your electronic mail advertising funnel in your AWeber account. Don’t have an account but. No drawback, signing up is fast and straightforward.