Email marketing that does more than just generate leads, it gets you closing sales too.
When you first think of email marketing, it’s probably because you want to introduce your brand to new customers or tell them about new product launches, or to establish yourself as a voice of authority in your industry. You might not consider it for closing leads.
Sure, email marketing helps to generate leads that are then handed over to the sales team, but it stops there, right?
Wrong.
By using email marketing at every stage of a sales funnel, both your marketing and sales team will connect with prospects, nurture them, and turn them into customers.
Before we launch into building our sales funnel with email marketing, let’s define what it is.
A sales funnel is a representation of the customer journey, from the moment they discover your company, to the moment they purchase (and beyond). Usually, the funnel consists of four stages, Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action, or AIDA for short (there’s loads of variations of this now, so you can create a funnel that suits your business the best).
In essence, the idea of an email marketing funnel is to obtain email subscribers, send well-timed emails to build trust, and then to keep them engaged, until they become customers.
Around 66% of consumers make a purchase because of a message they received through a marketing email – so this approach is not one to be sniffed at.
So, what types of marketing emails should you be sending at each stage of the sales funnel? Let us give you some ideas.
Awareness: Lead generation email marketing
At the start of the funnel, you’ll want to generate awareness of your product/service, in order to generate leads. The best way to do this is to prompt recipients to complete an opt-in form on a landing page.
Best sent as marketing emails, awareness driven, lead generation campaigns should aim to collect as much information as possible, for marketing to then pass this insight over to your sales team.
You’re looking for as much personal information here as possible. Think further than names and email addresses, try to learn more about a lead’s job, their company, their household, their likes, and dislikes.
To be as successful as possible with lead generation email marketing at the start of the sales funnel, you should be designing clean and concise emails (which are easy to do with Transpond’s Brand Analyzer), grab attention with striking subject lines, and always use strong, well-placed CTA’s.
Lead generation email ideas
The best way to generate leads with email marketing? Give something away for free. Some of our favourite lead generation email marketing ideas include:
- A discount on your product or services
- A downloadable how-to guide
- A whitepaper on industry-relevant hot topics
- Free gifts or a free trial
- Early access to a sale/product
2: Interest: Lead nurturing with email marketing
Nurturing leads takes time (If only it were as simple as making one call and securing a loyal customer!) This is where the ‘rule of seven’ comes in. The rule of seven simply states that it takes an average of seven interactions with your brand before a purchase will take place. If you think about it, this makes complete sense – would you buy an item from an unfamiliar brand? Probably not.
This is why email marketing is so useful.
By using automated marketing emails, your sales team no longer needs to worry about scheduling repeat call backs. Instead, you save time and resources by sending pre-designed, automated, personalised emails to potential customers, without having to think about every single one.
Another benefit of using email marketing to nurture leads, is email analytics. Both sales and marketing teams can monitor email engagement, click-throughs, and website engagement. All of which offers valuable insight into which of your prospects are closer to a purchase. Use this information to further inform your lead nurture campaign and you’re on to a winner.
Lead nurturing email ideas
Not all lead nurturing campaigns should be completely promotional. Use these emails to gain engagement, genuine interest and provide value to your prospects.
Some of our top lead nurturing email campaign ideas include:
- Case studies: Demonstrate the success of using your product/service in real life
- Educational content: How to do X, Y and Z with our product/service
- Customer reviews/testimonials – demonstrate a little social proof, it’ll go a long way
- Upcoming sales/new product launches – make them feel part of a club
- FAQ emails – sometimes leads are close to closing but are still hesitating. An FAQ email might just be enough to alleviate their fears and encourage them to make their decision
3: Decision/Action - Closing sales with email marketing
Once you’ve nurtured your prospect through previous stages, your lead should now be sales qualified. Now’s the time to put out your offer. You should be direct, tell them about crazy time-bound offers, tell them to buy it, download it, try it, get registered or choose from any other options you might have for them.
At this point, it’s likely your lead is ready to buy your product/service or go to a competitor. They’ve done all their research and have come to the decision that this is their solution. So, all you need to do now, is make sure that they know you are better than your competition.
Decision/Action Email Marketing Ideas
- Abandoned cart emails – follow up on missed opportunities, perhaps as soon as they leave your site, and 24 hours afterwards?
- Refer a friend discount codes – get two for the price of one! Encourage them to click ‘purchase’ while getting yourself a new prospect email address too.
- Promotional emails – Time-bound discounts are the way to go here. “Buy in the next 24 hours and get 24% off!”
- Triggered emails – emails sent in response to prospect behaviours, such as if they visit a specific page on your website – “We saw you eyeing these up! Buy now with 10% off”
- Customer delight emails – sending an email on someone’s birthday every year might just be all it takes to convert them into a fully-fledged customer.
To get the most out of your email marketing, it’s always worth combining your sales and marketing efforts into one. It’ll benefit your staff internally, but your customers too. So ultimately, it’ll improve your bottom line.
Use email marketing at every stage of the sales funnel, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results. And by bringing Capsule and Transpond together, you can do this as one, simplified process.
Our feature-rich, powerful tool will help you to build stronger relationships with customers, nurture relationships, make pipelines easier to manage and grow your company revenue.
Get started with Transpond by Capsule, for free today: https://app.transpond.io/
Learn more about Capsule: https://capsulecrm.com/