An Email Marketer needs a Full-Proof plan to succeed in Email Marketing. You have to think thoroughly from the beginning to the end. If you invest time in creating the best email content and designing the best template but forget about the Marketing Funnel, then my friend you are at a loss.
Marketing Funnel
Marketing Funnel is the best email marketing tool that helps you to understand the Buyer’s Journey or the process by which a buyer gets introduced to a company and ultimately makes a conversion. Once you understand their marketing funnel, then you can make strategies for similar targeted audiences. The Strategies to Improve Email Marketing tells you that there is much more you can do while and after analysing a Marketing Funnel.
The Five Stages of Marketing Funnel:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Trust and Loyalty
- Advocacy
Before we land on these five stages, MailPod likes to introduce two different practices of Marketing Funnel.
Old-School v/s New-School Marketing Funnel
Old-School Marketing Funnel can be better understood with the help of a conical shape. This practice tells you to attract as many customers for the top stages but the last stages receive a small percentage of those customers due to filtration. This Old-School technique focuses solely on purchase and disregards the stages after that. Once your purchase is done, you can focus on the acquisition of new customers. But as we know, this is not the correct practice in our modern times. In fact, it can deteriorate your brand image due to neglecting your customers after the point of purchase.
New-School Marketing Funnel does not end at the stage of purchase. It focuses on Customer Retention. Unlike the bottom of the cone, the new-school marketing funnel widens the scope of loyalty and advocacy. It can be best understood with the help of the following image.
This practice tells you to create deeper relationships with your customers because “Old is Gold”. Your existing customers are an asset for you as they can spread word of mouth about your product and services benefits. They work as a free advertisement for you, which includes more reliability and trustability. If you want success in Email MArketing, then using New-School Marketing Funnel is the right practice to start with.
Strategies to Improve Email Marketing
As we discussed what is a marketing funnel and how it can benefit an email marketer, it’s time to learn the best strategies to improve your email marketing.
1. Awareness
It is the stage where you provide knowledge to customers. You have to be conscious of what you are providing. To build a relationship, show the value of your product and its features. Try not to be a seller but an educational provider. In this stage, you provide every possible awareness about your existence. Show them who you are and what you have to offer. For example, if you are a small seller at Amazon, then you can provide a link to your product, blogs on your services, or the introduction of yourself to build a relationship.
2. Consideration
In this stage, you can use a personalisation technique to show your subscriber that you care. You can create content according to their preferences. In this way, you can increase your open rate and click-through rates. When your subscribers receive the required knowledge, they cross the awareness stage and reach into the consideration stage. A subscriber is now willing to consider your product and learn about your company. Also, in this stage, you know the customer better and entice them with their favourite things.
3. Conversion
Now that you establish awareness and consideration into the subscriber’s mind, you can approach them for purchasing your product/service. It is the correct time to be salesy. You can offer discounts to induce them. By sending discount code, you trigger urgency and need to act instantly. You can arrange sales webinars, free-trial, or automated email series to show the availability of your offer. This is the ultimate step marketers are looking for but they should not forget about after-sales services to retain customers.
4. Loyalty
When you convert someone into your customer, you get a feeling of superiority and want to sell more. At this step, you have to beware as you cannot ignore them. Start giving them helpful information and share educational content as it is a prime method to sustain loyalty. For example, you can establish 24*7 customer service to help your customers with the product they bought. Do not forget about your customers and provide them value. This will be the building stone of your stable customer chain.
5. Advocacy
It is the stage where you become a hero figure for your existing customers and turn them into your fans. Under Advocacy, a customer provides many more benefits to you as they are supposed to. The customer can buy more from you or bring more customers by spreading word of mouth so, either way, it’s a win-win situation for you. Moreover, you can collect feedback and improve your product or services on the basis of that. You can also strategise on the basis of the customer’s suggestion.
If you want real results from email marketing, then use Email Marketing Funnel. This will help you in knowing your customers better and establish a strong customer base for the long-term. If you are an Email Marketer, then subscribe to MailPod’s free trial to learn and execute email marketing with the best email marketing tool i.e. Marketing Funnel. We will launch many related articles on How you can make a success out of effective email marketing, till then keep tuned and subscribe to Mailpod for guidance and management.