8 Email Marketing Funnels You Must Automate to Ensure Rapid Growth
Your email subscribers are your biggest asset — Learn to Retain them using the email marketing funnels!
Building an email list is not easy — especially in today’s world where everyone is fighting for the same email.
So it makes extra sense to retain the subscribers with utmost care.
Every day, I get at least 13 email newsletters from brands & blogs. Do I open all of them? No. The ones I don’t open, I usually delete. And every six months, I go on an unsubscribing spree to get out of the newsletters I don’t use.
Your email subscriber is likely to behave similarly. Just because you are sending an email, doesn’t mean they are going to open it. And you don’t know when they’d leave your lists.
That doesn’t help your purpose at all.
You want your subscribers to become loyal, visit your website and purchase your products.
Here’s how you should do that —
Fire Up Your Email Marketing Funnels
Your journey, with your potential customer, usually follows a growth funnel.
Know The Marketing Funnel — Proven Secret to Getting & Retaining New Customers — Introducing Part 1
When people join your email list, they’ve already crossed the awareness stage.
From there, you need to activate them by making them more engaged, acquire their business by convincing them to purchase a product and retain them by coming back for more content (free & premium) and products.
You need multiple email marketing funnels so that you can nurture your audience with the respect they deserve.
8 Email Marketing Funnels You Must Automate to Ensure Rapid Growth
1. Welcome funnel
Immediately after someone joins your email list, send them a welcome email.
Depending on your type of business, it can be about navigating your platform, or it can be about what to expect from you.
Some creators and brands ask you to confirm your email as a step. This step only keeps the engaged audience with you but also acts as an extra step that can cause some loss in subscriber numbers.
You may also create a lead magnet that gets delivered via the first few emails. In that case, your welcome message should be part of it.
How to set up:
- Set up an automated email for anyone who signs up.
- Write a copy that'd keep them hooked for what's coming.
2. Website visit funnel
If you’re trying to get the traffics to your website (might be a blog) up, then your target can be to only bring your audience to that.
It makes sense when you’re not selling anything, trying to build a blog/website or running retargeting campaigns based on website visits.
How to set up:
- Describe why the viewer should care about a content/product
- Close your email with a button that takes your audience to your website.
- Place the button more than once.
- (Optional) Set up retargeting campaigns to make sales
3. Third-party platform sales funnel
There are many sites out there that help you sell your product, course, or ebook.
The main objective of this campaign would be to make a sale through a third-party website.
In such cases, you skip the hassle of setting up a shop and payment portal for your site.
How to set up:
- Explain how the product adds value
- Add a CTA button that takes the viewer to the website
- Place Google Analytics & other trackers (pixel) to enable retargeting option
4. After-sales funnel
A wise man once told me, service starts after selling a product.
Before making a sale, everyone’s nice to you because they want your money. Whether someone’s still nice after selling something indicates whether that person/business genuinely cares about you.
Make sure you’re not forgetting your customers after they make the sale.
Try to give them something unexpected to delight them further.
How to set up:
- Automate a mail immediately after making a purchase
- Tell how to redeem the item or any other instructions
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5. Abandonment Funnel
Your audience may have visited the page but didn’t purchase your product. Or they might have added the product to the cart but didn’t complete the purchase.
It might help if you trigger an abandonment funnel after a set period. The period can be 2–3 days or even more, depending on your business.
But it’s better not to start this funnel immediately.
In this email, you can give them a price-sensitive discount or send another reason to buy. Or you can just remind them that you’ve limited stock left.
The purpose is to create some urgency. They’re on the fence with this purchase, give them a slight push.
How to set up:
- Write an email that highlights a discount, reason to buy or limited stock
- Automate the mail to reach segmented audience after a set period of time
6. Upsell funnel
The upsell funnel is usually for those who have decided to purchase.
The upsell funnel works wonders because —
- Your audience has already purchased from you. So, they are over that mental barrier.
- The buyer is in a state of mind where they have shut out the naysayer portion of their mind. For some additional money and with enough reason to buy, they’d be willing to buy again.
The upselling product can be part of the sales confirmation email or be part of the website.
Or you can send upselling emails to existing customers to ensure repeat purchases.
How to set up:
- Create an email with complimenting products with relatively lower price
- Make that email part of the thank you email you'd send.
- (Optional) A time-sensitive offer can do wonders here as well
- Also, use upselling to bring back existing customers.
7. Goodwill building funnel
Till an audience buys from you, they are getting value from you. You’re like a helpful friend to them.
The moment they buy, they become your customer. The dynamics changes.
When you deliver value for free or exceed expectations with paid ones, you build goodwill with your audience.
Think of it as a game. In games, you often have strength bars that need to fill up for you to wield a special move. The goodwill builds up that bar and then you can push a sale.
This funnel is likely going to be the major part of your email marketing strategy. That’s because your audience is not only paying for the product but the overall email experience they are getting from you.
How to set up:
- Create emails that add value to your audience
- At least 75% of the time, send those emails
- Check analytics to identify which type of content is more appreciate
- Fine tune your funnel to add that type of content
8. Sales funnel
The sales funnel is the most complex (and important) one you may need to design.
You can randomly send an email to your list and ask them to buy a product, but that might misfire.
Instead, it would help if you nurture your audience by adding value to their lives. Only when they trust you, they’d be willing to purchase from you.
Even then, the sales funnel will have to be a combination of other activities; e.g., building goodwill, upselling, down selling, promoting a reason to buy, etc.
For example, you can consider sending free checklists, and three or four articles on building a routine. Only then you can ask if they want to buy your product. If they don’t, you can start a time-sensitive promotion or down-sell them something cheaper. In case they abandon your product on the cart, you can offer an added discount.
Final Thoughts on Email Marketing Funnels
As a marketer, the more you use email marketing funnels, the better off you’ll be.
Email Marketing funnels are ways to make it easier for your audience to get to the final step. Remember, you want them to have your product because your product adds value. Make it easy for your audience to see that as well.
