November 15th, 2021

Five Reasons To Get Excited About Email Funnels

In an ideal world, every visitor to your website would be ready to make a purchase. In reality, according to data recently published by The Kibo e-commerce Quarterly, only around 5% of unique visits will result in a sale. If you’re not actively trying to warm up all those cold prospects who find your site before they’re ready to buy, you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers.

So how do you turn a visitor from “vaguely interested” to “shut up and take my money”? That’s where lead nurturing comes in. In this blog post, we’re going to look at lead nurturing via email funnels, and why you should be excited about it.

First off, an explanation: email funnelling is “a marketing strategy designed to turn cold prospects into long-term customers by funnelling them through five stages” (Orendorff, 2021). What that means in practice is that you invite a visitor to your site — who’s not yet ready to purchase your product or service, but whose business you don’t want to lose — to give you their email address and permission to contact them, often in exchange for a freebie that’s going to be of use to them in some way. You then, through a series of staggered (automated) emails, nurture that lead, reminding them of everything your company has to offer, possibly throwing in a few more giveaways, and gently nudging them towards making a purchase.

1. Nurtured leads mean bigger sales

A much-cited statistic from Annuitas holds that sales occurring after lead nurturing were, on average, 47% more valuable than non-nurtured leads. It’s also true that if you can match your communications with prospective customers to where they are in the sales cycle, you’re likely to increase your conversion rate by 77%. The bottom line is that spending some time “warming up” your sales prospects translates to more — and bigger — sales.

2. Email is an incredibly effective marketing tool

Email is (usually) free, accessible, and used by 3.7 billion people worldwide. That’s quite the audience all by itself, but the stats get more exciting when you consider that 58% of email users check their email as soon as they wake up, while a full 91% check in daily. And 66% of email users have made a purchase as the result of a marketing message sent via email.

3. You get a LOT of bang for your buck

How do you fancy a return of £42 for every £1 spent? That’s what a 2019 report by the Data and Marketing Association gives as the return on investment for email marketing. Email automation software and dedicated email addresses — a must-have to keep your email out of recipients’ spam folders — are an upfront cost (and, depending on the level of integration you’re looking for from your mailer platform, the monthly cost can range from “hardly noticeable” to “HOW much?!”) but with such a great return it’s a low price for a proportionally huge increase in sales (Mester, 2021).

4. You just set it up and let the automation do all the work

Targeting customers with the right offers at the right point in the sales process is a delicately balanced operation, and nobody has the time to follow up on every single potential lead. That’s the beauty of a sales funnel, though: automation makes it possible to refine the process with great precision, in a way that’s sensitive to your prospective customers’ needs, and all without eating into your busy working day. Set up your customer pathway in your mailer platform, and the software does all the hard work for you, timing emails and follow ups to nudge your potential buyer at just the right time. Automation means that the process is all measurable to a very high degree, too, allowing you to see what’s working and what’s not, and to make adjustments as necessary. After your initial investment of time, it becomes a highly sophisticated marketing tool that operates at the click of a mouse.

5. You're not just making a sale — you're fostering a long-term customer relationship

The clue is in the name: a nurtured lead is a customer who feels seen, understood, and well-treated by the company with whom they’ve chosen to do business. And this is absolutely key: your relationship with a customer doesn’t — or shouldn’t — end after they’ve made a purchase. Work on establishing customer loyalty should be an ongoing prospect. After all, satisfied customers are not just more likely to make future purchases with you: they’re also going to tell their friends and family. Once your customer has opted into the sales funnel, you have their permission to keep sending them relevant, useful, value-add content via email, which not only continues to nurture brand loyalty, but also keeps your company visible and at the forefront of their mind.

Excited yet? I certainly am. Email marketing funnels can be the bread and butter of any company’s sales generation activities, and I’d love to write the copy that speaks directly to your future customers. Get in touch for a free consultation to see how Fabula Copy can help you write your own email pathway to success.

Get your FREE consultation

References:
Mester, Mor: “How to create an email sales funnel.” www.automizy.com. 2021. https://automizy.com/blog/email-marketing-funnels/
​Orendorff, Aaron: “The Definitive Guide On How To Create A Sales Funnel”. www.clickfunnels.com. 12 February 2021. https://www.clickfunnels.com/blog/sales-funnels/#:~:text=A%20sales%20funnel%20is%20a,targeted%2C%20high%2Dvalue%20customers.