Email marketing has been around for years. While people have lost the sensation of getting an email like what happened in the 2000s, it is still one of the most direct and effective ways of connecting with your leads, nurturing them, and converting them into customers.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the entire process of lead generation and email marketing funnel creation so that you can acquire leads and generate sales, 24/7.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is when you send an email message to your ‘email subscribers’ — contacts who have signed up to your email list and given express permission to receive email communications from you. It can be used to build relationships and provide updates about your business to them.
Compared to relying mostly on social media or other platforms to manage your audiences, an email list is what we control and will never be missing unless you lost it yourself. This is also one of the most valuable assets of your business.
As digital marketing had emerged, different emails have been designed for customers at different stages of the funnels and are able customized based on customer personalization. For example, you can direct the customer personally by saying “Hi {first name}” so it doesn’t look like a generic email that you spam to everyone.
By using this definitive guide, you’ll know:
- How to build an email list full of targeted customers.
- How to optimize your emails for the highest open rates and click-through rates (CTR).
- How to automate the process of nurturing your leads and turning prospects into customers.
The Benefits of Email Marketing
Conversions Rate
Email marketing had been an important tool to increase business conversion rates as the open rate will be much higher if you are able to provide value and build relationships with your list regularly.
Compared to targeting the cold audience all the time, your email list is the group of people that already know you and maybe purchase from you before. They are aware of your business and possibly your solutions.
Not only that but email marketing can also be used in eCommerce for abandoned cart recovery. This is especially useful to bring back people who show interest in our products, added to the cart, but for some reason not finishing the purchase.
They might be rushing out or facing some technical errors or just need more reasons to buy. For this, you can send them the abandon cart recovery email and offer some discounts to get them to continue the purchase.
Brand loyalty
Emails are good as newsletters to promote your brand and connect with your customers. A study on eCommerce business shows that most of the customers for eCommerce are actually existing customers instead of new customers. Return customers are those that will spend the most.
How to start email marketing: what do I need?
To start email marketing, you will need these 3 things:
- An Email list
- A good Autoresponder to host and send emails automatically
How to Build an Email list
Building an email list will be back to our lead generation strategy. Lead generation is the most important key for every business to get more new customers and scale the business.
A lead funnel, by its name, is a funnel built to collect leads. On the squeeze page, you can give some freebies to your visitors in exchange for their contact details. For example, you can give a cheat sheet, step-by-step guides, or training series. Make sure it is something that they can take action on and bring results.
I’ve seen many people providing free eBooks, videos, or reports in this step. But honestly, who cares. No one will read the 200 pages eBook, no matter how good it is. Or watching other videos. They will think that these things don’t bring much value to them.
We always talk about taking small steps in building funnels. Each funnel step will have one small action to be taken. In your squeeze page, the only target is to get them to enter their email and submit. Therefore, make sure your offer on your squeeze page is good enough that no one will resist.
To learn and master the lead funnel, you can get this swipe file from ClickFunnels that collects 106 proven lead funnels that you can use in your business. Also, inside the swipe file, there is also a step-by-step guide on how to create your lead magnets.
How To Choose The Autoresponder Software
If you would like to start small and completely free, you can start with the platform called Mailchimp it provides a free account for up to 2,000 subscribers. But it comes with some limitations in features. If you could invest a bit, I would suggest trying out another platform called GetResponse.
There is a function called automation workflow, it’s able to show visually how the entire email marketing journey for your email cycle. You can create the journey for your email marketing when someone subscribed to your list. They’ll be first greeted with the welcome email series, and then your normal newsletter.
Everything is automatic thanks to the Autoresponder. Not only that, but there are also different decision points included in it where your customers will have different journeys based on their open rate, link click, or YES/NO on your email.
And, to change the process, you simply drag the elements into a new place and create a new link between each step. By this, you can view the flow of your campaign easily on a single page. You’re able to optimize the flow when required.
You can try out Getresponse with a 30-day free trial and see how it works on your own here. Try playing around with the workflow templates and I’m sure you’ll love it as we do as well. If you would need some idea of writing different email sequences. You can read more about the onboarding series here and the daily regular email here.
