Easy Email Marketing Funnels: How to Build Them and Why You Need Them

How you approach the retention and advocacy stages is dependent on your niche — recent purchase reviews, exclusive discounts, and affiliate programs are some strategies to consider.

You can use this infographic to refer back to when you’re planning your email sales funnel.

Let’s see how these different stages actually function inside a working email funnel.

Once they’ve created a strong and enticing brand image across these channels, their audience is directed to their website.

On their homepage, their lead magnet is a simple one that offers immediate value: free delivery and immediate savings.

Once they have their leads hooked, they guide them through the consideration stage with a welcome email with the promise of more savings.

This email explains what content they’ll receive and how Cotton On will improve their lives with these emails.

Being ahead of trends and enjoying exclusive savings will keep leads warm and willing email recipients.

Following this initial contact, Cotton On uses cookies and data tracking to lead email subscribers from consideration to conversion.

The promise of extreme savings on new items is a frequent tactic for this global retailer.

Following conversion, Cotton On works on retaining customers with engaging emails that target recent purchasers with a review request.

These emails make customers feel like the brand cares for them, and these reviews are often published for full transparency.

This builds trust and brand authority in their particular niche.

If a customer leaves the site without completing a purchase, a cart abandonment email is sent.

This combined with their free shipping offer encourages hesitant shoppers to complete their purchases.

This helps them convert and retain more customers, across the board.

Finally, Cotton On uses a loyalty points system, which often turns customers into advocates of the brand.

They offer a lot of value to their client base in these newsletters, which continues to increase with time and engagement.

With over 1,500 stores across every continent and a formidable online presence, this brand is only growing.

There’s no doubt that as the world moves toward online shopping over physical stores, email funnels like this one will make the biggest difference to a business’ success.

It’s time you build one too.

The first step to building your email marketing sales funnel is planning how you’ll guide your leads to become paying customers.

This step is essential and will benefit you in two ways:

After planning their journey, you’ll need to gather some leads to feed into your email marketing funnel.

This is the first of the funnel stages, where you work on making your target audience aware of your brand.

People won’t give you their email addresses for nothing — you have to give them something valuable in return.

There are several ways to grow your email list:

Opt-in forms are a great way to collect email addresses and subscribe contacts to relevant email campaigns.

Opt-in forms are what help you take your ideal customer from the awareness stage to the consideration stage.

These forms should be placed on high-converting pages on your website:

Following capturing leads, you need to create an email sequence that welcomes them and starts pointing them towards purchase.

Your email sequence is where you start nurturing your leads because warm leads are more likely to convert.

This is where your planning comes in handy.

We suggest you set up at least 5 emails in your welcome sequence:

The final stage of the email marketing funnel is all about keeping your customers engaged.

If you ignore existing customers as soon as they complete their sales, you’re throwing away a powerful asset and all the hard work you put into them.

Here are 5 ways you can stay connected with your current customers:

As with a traditional sales funnel, there are many benefits to running a successful email funnel as part of your marketing strategy.

While there are loads of reasons why you need an email marketing funnel, here are the top 4 benefits you can expect to enjoy.

By mapping out each step your customers take, you’ll have a deep understanding of where they’re at on their journey.

You’ll be able to:

Personalization is the key to an engaged audience — 72% of consumers say that they’ll only respond to emails directed at them.

However, this personal approach goes beyond using someone’s first name in the email greeting.

An email marketing funnel lends itself to personalization opportunities like these:

Digital marketers can drive 3x the revenue per email in an email sequence compared to unsegmented and impersonal email blasts.

Getting customers to continue to engage with you and your business is one of the greatest strengths of email.

Email marketing funnels can help you nurture your leads towards:

The final benefit of using an email marketing funnel is how easy it makes measuring your email KPIs.

Look at click-through rates and repeat purchases to get an idea of how well you’re doing.

These key performance indicators will show you:

There’s a fair amount of effort that goes into building email funnels — that’s why you need email marketing tools.

There are loads of options to choose from depending on your specific business needs.

However, your best bet is always starting with a free tool, like systeme.io.

Unlike other platforms, systeme.io is a true all-in-one marketing solution.

While other all-inclusive software might skimp on some features, we ensure you get everything you need to run your entire business.

Our email marketing features will easily help you build your first email funnel:

One of the best things about systeme.io is how affordable it is.

There are 4 scalable pricing plans available, including the Free plan, which is free forever.

You’ll start with the Free plan, and there are no credit card details needed when you sign up.

For 2,000 contacts at $0/month, you’ll get access to the following:

An email marketing sales funnel is a tactic that needs to be part of your marketing strategy.

Now that you know how to build one, partner with one of the easiest, most affordable platforms around — systeme.io!

Sign up today, and let your email funnel take your business to new heights.