If you are wondering what an email marketing funnel is, you’ve come to the right place.
In this blog post, we’ll talk about creating an email marketing funnel and the best tools you can use to build one.
What is a marketing funnel?
A marketing funnel is a journey that your audience goes through after interacting with your business for the first time.
Suppose someone views your blog post; they then decide to follow you on Instagram and Twitter.
Maybe go live on Instagram and advertise a discount on your ebook. That person then visits the link in your Instagram bio and buys the ebook.
It’s important to note that a marketing funnel is rarely linear.
The person in the example above may not buy your ebook on Instagram even though they’ve watched your live.
Instead, they may join your mailing list when they visit your blog for the fifth time. Maybe you email them about the ebook, but then they remember you offered an ebook discount on that Instagram live. They may decide to find Instagram live on your highlights and then buy the book there.
What is an email marketing funnel?
Simply put, an email marketing funnel includes email marketing as part of your funnel.
Although an email marketing funnel is the simplest form of a funnel, it can become attractive in conjunction with other marketing channels such as ad retargeting.
Let’s take a look at the different strategies and components of an email marketing funnel beneficial for you.
- Traffic
- Lead Magnet
- Lead generation funnel/ signup forms
- Email processing sequence
- Sale
- Traffic
There are several ways you can drive traffic to the lead generation funnel or registration forms.
For example, maybe you’re optimizing your blog for SEO and have website visitor sign-up forms all over your website so website visitors can sign up for your main magnet.
Or maybe you run Facebook ads straight to a lead generation funnel.
You may be using Pinterest to drive traffic to your landing page.
Funnel traffic is anything that brings people to the page where they sustain you their email address.
Lead magnet
A primary magnet, also known as a freebie opt-in, is an incentive to offer your email subscribers in exchange for their email.
This incentive motivates visitors to your website or those who click on your Facebook ads or Pinterest Pin to subscribe to your email list.
There are several different main magnets that you can use to get people to subscribe to your email list.
Here are some things to remember when creating a lead magnet:
- The main magnet should be in sync with the paid bid you make at the end of the funnel.
- The main magnet doesn’t have to be super complicated to figure out.
- It should give your audience a quick win.
- Lead generation funnel/ Signup forms
- A lead generation funnel typically consists of 2 pages, the landing page where you collect the emails and the thank you page.
You can also add a low-cost offer on the thank you page, called the tripwire offer.
This is typically used when you decide to show ads to build your mailing list to offset the ad’s cost.
You can also use sign-up forms directly on your web pages to build your email list.
Email Nurture Sequence
An email support sequence is a journey you take with your new follower to help them get to know you, trust you, and ultimately buy from you.
Suppose you are visiting my website for the first time today. You find the main magnet on my website that interests you and decide to subscribe.
If I try to email you an offer for $ 1000 immediately after signing up, you won’t buy it; in fact, you will probably unsubscribe from my list.
But if I spend 10-12 days sending emails to build a relationship with you, show your social proof and testimonials, invite you to my Facebook group, and more, the odds are many bigger that you buy something if I made that same offer the 12th day.
This journey from someone who goes from not knowing you or your company to liking and trusting you using an email sequence is known as the email marketing funnel.
This means you need first to think about the means offer you want to make at the end of this funnel.
Based on this, you will write the training sequence via email and create the guide magnet.
The funnel should flow naturally from the main magnet to the final supply.
Suppose I have a course called “Google Analytics over a weekend.”
To sell this course, I need to create a Google Analytics related lead magnet. It could be a workbook, a PDF, or a 10-minute workout.
Therefore, I must create a bridge in the form of an email marketing funnel for those who have just dumped the main magnet and build reliability and trust, and authority with them.
This can be a sequence of 5 to 8 emails, depending on the cost of the course.
The best email support sequences tell a story, share testimonials, and build audience trust.
Now, every time someone signs up to my main Google Analytics magnet, they’ll automatically be added to my email support sequence and run the entire course.
Tools used to create an email marketing funnel.
Since an email marketing funnel is the most free funnel to create in terms of technology, you don’t need tons of tools.
Just an email marketing platform that allows you to build landing pages.
If you only use your website to build your mailing list, you don’t even need a landing page platform.
If you are looking for an all-in-one platform, check out this Kajabi vs. Clickfunnels comparison.
If you want a more complex and sophisticated tool that you can use even when you are scaling your business, I highly recommend the Active campaign.
The active campaign is also cheaper than Converkit, starting at $ 9 / month for your first 500 subscribers.
Convertkit recently added a free plan, but that doesn’t give you the option to create strings, which means you can’t build an email marketing funnel on the open plan.
