Email Marketing Sales Funnel: Stages To Convert Email Into Customers

Right sales funnel stages in a right order are the deep root of any successful email marketing campaign.

Before we start discussing sales funnel, sales funnel stages and stages of banging autoresponder, let’s first understand why are we mapping email marketing and sales funnel using an autoresponder.

The Importance of Email marketing and building an email list is known to most businesses and entrepreneurs.

Why?

Because email is one of the most powerful ways to drive revenue and turn subscribers or leads into customers, in fact, it is so effective that data shows:

But, in order to be successful with email marketing you need perfect email sales funnel stages in a RIGHT order. Stages that have an objective to accomplish some kind of goal.

Now, before we dip dipper, I want you to understand:

What is a sales funnel?

According to the traditional sales funnel definition, it is the process where the prospect enters as a lead moving forward turning into a qualified opportunity or a customer.

There are hundreds of different types of the sales funnels and it depends on what you and your business are trying to achieve.

Vanilla version of sales funnel and its stages:

But…

What we want to do is to convert this sales funnel into autopilot sales process.

Let’s see how could we accomplish that goal and also let’s understand each of the stages in more detail to get the real taste of the sales funnel fruit 🙂

Email Marketing Sales Funnel Stage 1: Awareness Through Marketing Activities (Demand Generation)

This stage is very crucial and super important to get more sales and customers because if you make any mistake at this stage then everything is going to be wrong.

And at the end, the only thing you going to get is lemons.

Why?

Because this is the stage when you are creating an awareness. An awareness among your targeted audience.

The word is TARGETED AUDIENCE.

You must target the right people to bring them into your sales funnel. You can check out these 6 ideas to learn how to find the perfect audience?

If you are going to use Facebook Ads to create an awareness, then read this post first before spending a single PENNY on Ads: How to find your target audience on Facebook

How to create an awareness among your targeted audience?

There are hundreds and thousands of ways to create awareness through marketing activities.

But our goal is to make things on autopilot, so we will create awareness through an online marketing channels rather than traditional offline marketing channels.

As you can see below, you can use several marketing channels to create awareness and drive traffic to your website. But as I’ve mentioned above, it is important that first you do your market research and find out who are your target audience?, where do they hang out?, What are their interests?, What are their pain points?, What are their wants?, What are their expectations? and so on.

And based on those valid and solid data decide which marketing channel is right for you and your business.

Breakdown major social media channels to know and understand where and what kind of opportunities you can have within the social media world. As you can see, all major social media channels could be leveraged in two forms: Paid ads and free organic traffic.

Facebook Ads are good for all niches. LinkedIn Ads can get you good quality of B2B subscribers or Leads. If your product is more for women, household, e-commerce, food dominated then Promoted Pinterest Pins are the best. Instagram Ads can also be super targeted because it uses the Facebook detailed targeting option. Whichever channel you decide to leverage, do your market research first and make a decision based on the data and not on your guts.

If you have no demand or existing awareness for your product, this doesn’t mean that there is no demand in the market. It could be that your audience is not aware of the problem they may have.

In this case, you first have to generate demand and the easiest way to do this is by educating your audience. The best way to educate them is through blog or content marketing.

Related: How to increase website traffic without SEO? 14 easy ways

Related: How to get more traffic to your website: Increase website traffic

Stage 1 on Autopilot

Once you have done your market research and decided on what online marketing channels you are going to leverage. Put these promotion activities on an automation because that’s what we want, most of the things on autopilot.

For social media, you can use social media scheduling software. Automate all of your social media promotion activities. If you decide to use social media ads or any other form of ads (PPC, display ads, CPC, affiliate etc.) then they are automatic anyway, you just need to monitor, track and tweak for the high conversion rates and ROI.

Email Marketing Sales Funnel Stage 2: Squeeze Page or Opt-in Offer

At this stage, visitors come to your website through different channels. Through awareness (stage 1) interest was created, demand was triggered. It is now the time to convert those visitors into email subscribers.

The best way to convert visitors into email subscribers is by using two things below:

Thing number 1: Lead magnet

A lead magnet is an irresistible bribe or a hook offering a SPECIFIC chunk of VALUE to a prospect in exchange for their contact information.

In a simple language, you call it a freebie. Giving your prospect some sort of valuable freebie in exchange for their contact information.

You can create your own lead magnet within 10 minutes. Read this post to learn how to create a lead magnet and get more subscribers. This post has 12 lead magnet ideas or opt-in offer ideas too. So, abuse and take advantage of it.

Related: How to create a lead magnet? Get more subscribers (Free Lead magnet ideas included)

Thing number 2: Squeeze page

A squeeze page is a landing page created or designed to capture opt-in email addresses from potential subscribers.

The ultimate goal of the squeeze page is to squeeze your visitors into your email mailing list.

Read this post to learn how to build your high converting squeeze page in an hour.

Related: How to design high converting squeeze page? (Free blueprint included)

Once you have a right irresistible offer in the form of the lead magnet and high converting squeeze page you are ready to go.

Stage 2 on Autopilot

As you know, our goal is to make the whole sales funnel process and all sales funnel stages on autopilot. Therefore, the next thing you have to do is connect your squeeze page with your email service provider to collect and extract the email subscribers or leads.

If you already have an email service provider then just link it together. Just make sure your email plan has autoresponder feature. If you don’t have an email service provider yet then I recommend two providers:

For beginners: Click here to get GetResponse email marketing tool (30 days trial)

For intermediate or advance: Click here to get ActiveCampaing email marketing tool (14 days trial)

Email Marketing Sales Funnel Stage 3: Email Autoresponder or Drip Campaign

Once you have collected the email subscribers, it is time to nurture and pitch your product. This is the stage where you nurture and cultivate your prospect or email subscribers in order for them to convert into customers.

So how do you do that?

Well, there are again hundreds of different types of email drip campaigns but we will look at the 5 days drip campaign in detail.

Here’s how the flow of 5 day drip campaign looks like:

Let’s pick each of these five days to understand exactly what’s happening.

Day 1 Education + Product Pitch: Once the visitors subscribe to your opt-in offer, an automatic drip campaign will start. So on day 1, you are sending them education email or downloadable freebie together with your product pitching but in a non-pushy way.

For example: If you are into fitness niche, you can send an email that contains something like this: 10 superfoods you need to get six pack abs .

Day 2 Education: On day 2, you can send purely education email, no product pitching.

For example: 5 reasons you are not getting six pack abs.

Day 3 Cultivate + Product Pitching: It is time to cultivate your email subscriber, plus a product pitching in a non-pushy way.

For example: (Case Study) How Chintan got the six pack abs in 45 days with just 3 days/week in the gym.

(I don’t know about six pack abs but definitely, I’m trying to get eight-pack abs FIRST :))

Day 4 Positioning: On day 4, it is all about product positioning for the final hard sell.

For example: Why most six pack programs couldn’t give you results.

Day 5 Product Pitch: On day 5, it is all about hard sell and final product pitching.

For example: Want six pack abs? this program actually works (30 days guarantee)

Stage 3 on Autopilot

The complete Sales funnel stage 3 can be automated using the feature “Autoresponder” or “Automation Series” within your email marketing tool.

This is why it is important that you choose the right email service provider and right email plan that offers autoresponder feature.

Once again, my recommendation is these two email service providers and they both have autoresponder feature.

For beginners: Click here to get GetResponse email marketing tool (30 days trial)

For intermediate or advance: Click here to get ActiveCampaing email marketing tool (14 days trial)

Email Marketing Sales Funnel Stage 4: Customer/Product Sales

This is the final stage of the sales funnel. At this stage, your email subscribers are converted into customers.

Two most important segments are created at this stage of the sales funnel:

1. Email subscribers converted into customers

2. Email subscribers not converted into customers

Using the intelligence of these two segments the further action process is created.

So, for example, the first action you could take is to create an action plan that helps to re-nurture your email subscribers that are not converted into customers. Survey them on why didn’t they buy the product? or re-educate them on your product or offer them some different product if you have any.

Second, you could create an action plan for those who converted into the customers to make them a loyal or repeated customer, such as offering them a loyalty program or a high-end product.

Stage 4 on Autopilot

You could create an autoresponder based on segmentation. You can send survey email and re-nurture/re-engagement email series to the email subscribers that are not converted into the customers. This way you can prepare them for another product pitching.

And the same can be applied to another segment (those who converted into customers). Send them email series containing an offer of a loyalty program, upselling products etc.

Email Marketing Sales Funnel Stages On Autopilot (Final Look)

So I’ve prepared an email marketing sales funnel stages on autopilot blueprint. The only thing you need to do is sign up by clicking an image below that says “Click here to get free”

It is all yours!

And the best part is, it is completely free.

Get yours just by clicking on the image below that says “Click here to get free”

Conclusion:

This is why email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business, get more customers and increase revenue. Look at the screenshot of my Google Analytics account which shows $9,228 in revenue all passive income, without me doing anything.

What did I do?

I leveraged email marketing and designed the right sales funnel with all stages in the right order. I scaled it on a pilot basis, once it started giving me the actual results I then placed all email marketing sales funnel stages on autopilot.

I’m not showing these numbers to brag on or to overwhelm you. I’m showing you so that you know the importance of email marketing and how you could implement the same in your business.

I hope you enjoyed reading the post as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Do you want me to design a sales funnel for you and your business? Send me an email at [email protected] to discuss it further.

(some links are affiliate links, if you are buying using these links I will get some percent of affiliate commission at no extra cost to you)

Featured image by Unsplash via Pixabay