Introduction: Marketing Funnel

Let us first understand what exactly a marketing funnel is.

A marketing funnel is a critical tool in digital marketing and customer engagement. It is a strategic visualization of the customer’s digital journey from lead to the committed buyer. It shows the various steps that a prospective customer should take to move from one stage of the buying process to the next.

For a company using digital marketing and engagement to attract and convert potential customers, a marketing funnel is a valuable tool for the marketing team to design plans to attract, engage and convert potential customers through relevant marketing material. It is valuable because it is a measurable activity and can also help prevent customer leakages, i.e., customers dropping out at different stages before buying.

Basis of a marketing funnel

A marketing funnel is typically designed based on the four stages of a typical buyer journey called AIDA: Attention Interest Desire Action. Visually, a marketing funnel could look like this:

However, customers today are increasingly digital and consume content, shop, and watch movies on a digital device. Therefore, it has become mandatory for most companies to have an online presence and digitally market their products or services to customers.

The AIDA process still works for the digital age customer journey. The only difference is that this journey is now made online, and companies use a slightly modified marketing funnel and different digital marketing and online content tools to move consumers from one stage of the journey to the next. This revised structure can be represented visually as under:

It is important to note that regardless of how the specific stages of the marketing funnel are identified or labeled, the funnel’s function remains the same: attract, engage and convert all possible leads to become customers!

Email marketing

An essential tool for all stages of the marketing funnel

Email marketing is one of the most important digital marketing strategies used by both B2B and B2C companies. It is estimated that over 319 billion emails were sent worldwide every day in 2021. Nearly 75% of all marketers have mentioned email marketing as a critical tool to increase customer conversion efforts at all marketing funnel stages.

Email marketing uses marketing automation tools to reach out to leads and engage them directly, one-to-one, with relevant and useful information. Email marketing can also provide valuable reports on the performance of the email campaign in terms of “email open rates,” “email click-through rates,” and “email bounce rates,” among other metrics.

Email marketing can be used to update existing customers with product or brand information. It can also be used to push customers along the funnel with attractive hooks such as purchase discounts.

In short, email marketing is possibly the most reliable tool to influence leads at each stage of the customer journey.

What is an email marketing funnel?

An email marketing funnel is a process of sending emails with timely, structured, and relevant content at each stage of the marketing funnel (described above) to take the lead from discovery to conversion in a smooth manner.

Why does a company need a marketing funnel for email marketing?

Email marketing is one of the few digital marketing tools that a company can own entirely. The company has no control over tools and channels such as social media. These platforms can, and do, change their algorithms to reflect larger trends, and this can impact the company’s marketing efforts to reach out to potential leads and customers through these channels.

An email marketing funnel does not treat a potential customer as a faceless entity; it helps the company deliver personalized communications to them. It has been estimated that personalized communication improves email open rates by more than 20%.

Email marketing funnels allow the company to judge exactly where the customer is on the marketing funnel. This makes it easier for the company to design and release relevant communication that can ease the journey through the funnel to convert a lead into a confirmed customer.

How to build an email marketing funnel

A company needs to take a few simple steps to build a robust email marketing funnel that generates measurable ROI at every stage. Let us examine these steps:

1. Understand and define the customer journey
   1. The company should understand the buyer’s behavior at each customer journey stage.
   2. This makes the marketing goals clear and helps evaluate the movement easily.
2. Generate useful leads
   1. A company needs email addresses to send out its emails
   2. Companies can use one of two easy ways to build their email lists:
      1. Use opt-in forms that can help capture leads.
      2. Create a dedicated landing page on the company website that captures all relevant information on the website visitors and leads them through the company’s marketing funnel.
3. Choose a good email marketing tool.
   1. Email marketing tools are needed to automate the email marketing process;
   2. These tools help the company create and automatically send emails relevant to customers at each stage of the marketing funnel;
   3. Several popular email marketing tools such as MailChimp, SendPulse, Zoho Campaigns, and more.
4. Create “lead magnets.”
   1. A lead magnet is essentially an incentive given to motivate leads to share their email address.
   2. A lead magnet must be relevant to the customer and should ideally be available for immediate use.
5. Design introductory emails
   1. The email marketing funnel is designed to help build relationships.
   2. “Welcome” and “introduction” emails at the start of the relationship give potential customers the comfort of entering and managing the relationship at their own pace.
6. Reach out to existing and new customers
   1. It is very easy to ignore existing customers – they are already in the company’s marketing funnel.
   2. But current customers can be brand advocates who can draw in leads and new customers.
   3. New leads are needed at the top of the funnel to ensure a wide reach of the company’s engagement efforts.

Email marketing at each stage of the funnel

Email marketing needs to fulfill certain requirements at each stage of the marketing funnel:

1. Awareness stage: help potential leads to discover the brand
2. Interest stage: help the company establish its authority in the sector or field of business so that the customer can trust the company.
3. Consideration stage: this is where the customer decides to use or not use the company’s brand or product. The company needs to send out a clear call-to-action email at this stage.
4. Conversion stage: this is where the lead becomes a paying customer. This is the goal of all marketing funnels. This stage should also address repeat purchases and create/strengthen customer loyalty.

How to make email marketing funnels work effectively

1. Focus on the business goals. Make sure the funnel is always aligned with the business goals.
2. Own the funnel. Customize a funnel template to reflect the company’s own customer journey.
3. Quality matters more than quantity: Sending fewer emails but with quality content will keep the customer constantly engaged and interested in the company and brand.
4. Measure results. Clear and measurable goals help the company evaluate whether its email marketing funnel is working or not.

Benefits of an email marketing funnel

The key benefits of an email marketing funnel include:

1. It simplifies the customer journey and reduces guesswork in the strategy process.
2. It allows personalized email marketing so that the customer can relate to the message.
3. It keeps customers engaged so that they are interested in moving to the next level of the marketing funnel.
4. It is measurable and allows the company to judge exactly what is working and what is not and make suitable adjustments to improve the ROI.

Example of an email marketing funnel

Let us take a look at how an effective email marketing funnel can be designed to cover each stage of the customer journey with relevant content and email messages at each stage:

As we can see from this example, a well-designed email marketing funnel helps a company break through the ad noise and clutter that a potential customer faces all the time.

Conclusion

It is ten times harder to get a new customer than to retain a current one in today’s hyper-digitized world. A well-designed and executed email marketing funnel helps a company retain existing customers more effectively and consistently generate new leads.

Email marketing can be programmed to function autonomously and ensure that prospective customers receive the right content at the right time and the right stage of their journey through the funnel.

A fully customized and properly designed email marketing funnel provides strong and positive brand experiences to customers, which helps them advocate the brand easily and without any guilt.

 Finally, a carefully designed email marketing funnel boosts the ROI Of the company’s marketing and lead generation efforts and improves efficiency by reducing or automating time-consuming tasks. A proper email marketing funnel and campaign can turn idle browsers into shoppers and fully converted customers who promote the brand regularly and consistently.