Many e-commerce brands send hundreds of generic emails that don’t yield positive results. Why don’t their emails drive desirable results? Well, it’s because they don’t target their emails towards particular customers. That’s where an email marketing funnel can help.
An effective funnel can allow you to have personalized conversions with customers based on where they are in their customer journey with your brand.
In this guide, we’ll explore what an email marketing funnel is, the various funnel stages, how to build an effective email marketing list, how to measure the success of your funnel, and more.
Let’s get started.
What Is an Email Marketing Funnel?
An email marketing funnel is an email marketing strategy that involves sending subscribers a series of automated emails. These emails aim to guide subscribers through the buyer journey, converting them from prospects to loyal customers.
Stages of an Email Marketing Funnel
An email marketing funnel consists of various stages. These stages show where your subscribers are in their customer journey. They also determine which type of email to send. Here are the email marketing funnel stages:
Awareness Stage
This is the first stage where potential customers encounter your e-commerce brand. At the awareness stage, you shouldn’t attempt to sell any products. Instead, aim to connect with subscribers and educate them about your brand. You can achieve this by sending subscribers well-crafted welcome emails to familiarize them with your brand and its offerings.
Consideration Stage
At this stage, potential customers are aware of your brand and products but aren’t ready to purchase them. At the consideration stage, you should aim to educate prospects about your offerings and how they solve problems. You can do this by providing product comparison guides, sharing customer testimonials, or offering free samples.
Conversion Stage
The conversion stage is where you encourage potential customers to make a purchase. You can do this by providing discount coupons, limited-time offers, or other incentives to entice prospects to take action.
Loyalty Stage
Once you’ve converted prospects to paying customers, you shouldn’t stop there. Afterward, you should aim to forge solid bonds with customers to keep them returning. You can do this by sending customers exclusive discounts, soliciting feedback, or offering early access to new products.
Advocacy Stage
The final stage of the email marketing funnel involves transforming satisfied customers into brand advocates. You can achieve this by starting a referral email marketing campaign to reward customers for spreading the word about your brand. In the process, this can drive new leads to the top of the funnel.
How to Build an Effective Email Marketing Funnel
Creating an email marketing funnel can be an excellent way to attract high-quality leads that convert into loyal customers. However, creating one can feel daunting if you’re unsure where to start.
Next, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step process on how to create an effective funnel easily. Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Capture Leads
First, you need to generate potential leads and grow your email list. This is known as list building. Here are some ways to bring leads to the top of your funnel:
- Use signup forms: Place opt-in forms strategically across your e-commerce website where visitors can enter their email addresses to receive promotional emails and updates. Some great places to place opt-in forms include your website’s footer, sidebar, about page, blog pages, or exit popups.
- Use lead magnets: Provide valuable resources to entice visitors to enter their email addresses. These could include free e-books, webinars, or guides.
- Use landing pages: A landing page is a standalone page on your site where visitors can opt-in to your email list. Use landing pages to capture specific information from leads if you’re running digital ad campaigns like social media ads.
Step 2: Nurture New Leads
Once you’ve convinced visitors to sign up to receive your emails, you’ll need to nurture them to push them further down the email marketing funnel. Here are some simple ways to nurture leads:
- Send welcome emails: Send new subscribers welcome emails thanking them for signing up for your email list and explaining what they can expect from your emails.
- Provide educational content: Offer subscribers useful content about your offerings to build their trust and confidence in your brand.
Pro tip: Eight out of ten customers are more likely to purchase products or services from a brand that offers a personalized experience. Personalize your welcome emails by including the subscriber’s first name in the subject line or first line of your emails.
Step 3: Convert Leads to Customers
After welcoming and nurturing your leads, you’re ready to encourage them to make a purchase or sign up for a service. Here are some great ways to convert prospects to customers:
- Create a sense of urgency: Employ limited-time offer marketing strategies such as flash sales or countdown timers to urge leads to complete purchases before time runs out.
- Leverage targeted offers: Send leads targeted offers based on their previous interactions on your site, such as offering discounts for products viewed recently.
- Send abandoned cart emails: About seven out of ten online shoppers abandon their shopping carts. Send abandoned cart reminder emails with incentives to nudge shoppers to complete purchases.
Step 4: Retain Customers
It’s easier and more cost-effective to encourage existing customers to make repeat purchases than to attract new ones. In fact, it can cost your online store up to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an old one.
So, don’t neglect your customers after they complete purchases. Turn them into repeat customers and brand advocates after the sale.
Here are some high-converting post-purchase emails you can send to retain customers:
- Shipping confirmation emails: Customers want to know the status of their orders after completing purchases. Send them shipping confirmation emails to keep them posted on when they can expect their orders to arrive.
- How-to information emails: Send how-to information emails demonstrating how clients can make the most of your product or service, particularly if it’s complex or has sophisticated features.
- Survey emails: Send survey emails to assess customer satisfaction with your offerings or to obtain information on how to improve your product or service.
- Upsell/cross-sell emails: Recommend related offerings or upgrades based on customers’ previous purchases. For instance, if you run an online store that sells beauty products, you could suggest makeup brushes to customers who purchase makeup.
How to Analyze Email Marketing Funnel Success
Using an email marketing funnel is a powerful way to send emails that resonate with audiences. However, it’s just one part of the equation. If you want to optimize your email marketing funnels, it’s vital to keep an eye on certain metrics.
Using a robust email marketing and automation tool like Klaviyo, you can easily monitor various metrics to assess the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. That said, here are key metrics worth tracking:
- Open rate: This is the percentage of subscribers who open your email out of the total number of subscribers. A low open rate could indicate that your subject lines are weak or your emails aren’t following email best practices.
- Click-through rate: This is the percentage of subscribers who clicked on a link in your email. A low click-through rate could indicate your content doesn’t resonate with audiences.
- Conversion rate: This is the percentage of subscribers who take a desired action after reading an email, such as signing up for a service or completing a survey.
- Unsubscribe rate: This is the percentage of people who opt out of your email list. A high unsubscribe rate could indicate that your content doesn’t resonate with audiences or you’re sending emails too often.
Why Open Rates Are No Longer a Reliable Way to Measure Campaign Performance
Open rates simply show the percentage of emails opened out of the total emails delivered for a particular email marketing campaign. Let’s say you email 1,000 people, and 250 of them open the email. Then, your open rate would be 25%. But open rates aren’t a reliable way to gauge email campaign success. Here’s why.
First, open rates reveal nothing about subscriber engagement. Many subscribers may open and read your emails without taking any desired action, such as clicking on a call-to-action (CTA) button within your email. In fact, most of your subscribers won’t take any action.
Second, several email clients now have privacy and security features that prevent senders from tracking open rates. For instance, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) feature prevents marketers from using invisible pixels to monitor email data like open rates.
Additionally, MPP automatically preloads all content in emails. Similarly, Gmail prefetches email content like images, making open rates an unreliable way to measure campaign success.
As a result, you should focus on other more valuable metrics like your click-through rates, conversion rate, and list growth rate to determine the efficacy of your email marketing strategy.
Pro Tip: Set up a UTM link in every CTA or hyperlink in your email to track user subscriber engagement effectively.
Tips for Creating an Effective Email Marketing Funnel
Building an email marketing funnel that converts requires a calculated strategy. Here are some practical email campaign tips to help you get the most out of your email marketing funnel:
- Understand your audience: Before building your funnel, learn what makes your audience tick. Research their needs, desires, and pain points. Use customer data, surveys, and analytics tools to glean insights into your audience.
- Segment your email list: Divide your subscribers into smaller groups based on demographics, geographical location, purchase history, interests, or more. This enables you to craft targeted emails that resonate with subscribers.
- Use email automation tools: Use an email automation tool like Klaviyo to send automated emails to visitors based on their actions on your online store. This could include welcome emails, cart abandonment emails, or shipping confirmation emails.
- Refine emails: Tweak different elements such as subject lines, headlines, images, buttons, email copy, and layout. Use A/B testing to discover what works best and enhance conversion rate optimization.
Start Building High-Converting Email Marketing Funnels
You can’t afford to use a spray-and-pray approach when it comes to your email marketing if you run an e-commerce store. Thankfully, you don’t have to. Funnels can allow you to send relevant emails to customers regardless of where they are along the buyer journey.
Ready to start building an effective marketing funnel for e-commerce? Contact us today and start building an effective email marketing funnel that attracts qualified leads and boosts conversions.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What Is the Difference Between a Sales Funnel and an Email Marketing One?
A sales funnel is a visual representation of the buyer journey across the various stages of the funnel, and it encompasses marketing and sales efforts across multiple channels. In contrast, an email marketing funnel focuses solely on email marketing.
How Many Emails Should I Include in My Email Marketing Funnel?
There’s no hard-and-fast rule on the number of emails you should include in your funnel. The number may vary depending on your campaign objectives, offering, or audience awareness level. As a rule of thumb, most funnels include at least three emails.
How Do I Measure the Performance of My Email Marketing Funnel?
You can determine the effectiveness of your funnel by keeping tabs on metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates using an email marketing tool like Klaviyo.
How Frequently Should I Send Emails in My Email Marketing Funnel?
There’s no hard-and-fast rule on how often you should send subscribers emails. The frequency may vary depending on your campaign objectives, audience engagement, and the buyer journey stage. As a rule of thumb, you should send subscribers emails regularly enough to keep them engaged, but you shouldn’t flood them with emails until they become overwhelmed.
What Are Some Best Practices for Creating Email Marketing Funnels?
Some best practices for building effective email marketing funnels include personalizing emails, segmenting audiences, crafting targeted emails for each funnel stage, and consistently monitoring campaign performance to identify areas for improvement.
