With an increasing number of marketers prioritizing the improvement of their sales funnels, automation is considered a top strategy to boost business growth. But as you can imagine, automated email campaigns are only helpful if you have built them properly in the first place.
In this article, we show you what an automated sales funnel is, its benefits and how you can build one to use automation to create higher levels of business from your email marketing.
Let's begin!
What Is An Automated Sales Funnel?
It's the
customer's journey from being a new visitor to a loyal customer. Its structure mirrors that of a normal funnel, in that it's broader at the top and narrows down to the bottom.
The broader part is where the customer enters while looking at your business for the first time. And while they pass through the funnel, they are filtered down in stages until you end up with customers, which – if you treat them right – drive repeat business.
Benefits of an Automated Sales Funnel
The process starts by using efficient email automation tools. For example, we've seen the one offered by
Snov.io which can drive an extensive list of benefits to a business. These tools include the following:
- Your leads get ranked: With automation, leads can be sorted and ranked automatically based on the level of engagement. As a result, it becomes easier to identify Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – and these are the people you need to target.
- Time saving: It helps you save a lot of time by qualifying leads, and helps with creating targeted onboarding email guides for new users.
Consistent communication: It ensures that people receive messages in stages. This helps to build familiarity, which enhances trust and loyalty. And this turns prospects into customers, and from there into regular clients.
- High scalability with minimum effort: A high volume of leads can be managed without human intervention. This makes it possible to nurture leads and help business growth by reaching out more and maintaining engagement with prospects and customers at all times.
- Data-Driven insights and optimization: You can track behavior and preferences. This way, you can refine your approach through optimized campaigns that accurately engage with your target audience.
How to Build an Email Sales Funnel
You can build an effective email sales funnel very quickly using the following steps:
- Identify Your Target Audience: To create an effective marketing plan, searching for the right audience is essential. Make sure you understand their likes, dislikes, and needs so you don't fall into the trap of sending out unfocused messages to a “generic” audience.
- Offer a compelling incentive: Provide attractive offerings and gifts like free ebooks, special prices, or product trials. This encourages people to share their email, extending your list.
- Create a landing page: Offer a landing webpage for the incentive. This will showcase the company's offering and explain (concisely) how it fulfills audience requirements. Above all, it must be motivational - i.e. give the reader a good reason to respond.
- Set up a welcome email sequence: Create a series of welcome emails for new subscribers. This will involve sending an initial welcome email, followed up with emails that keep people informed about what they're interested in, in ways they will respond to.
- Monitor And Optimize: Inspect open rates and click throughs so you can assess email performance. See what's working best for you, and use that information to hone and improve what you do.
The 7 Stages Of A Sales Funnel
As with any process, it helps to break things down into stages. So here we go...
1. Conduct market research
How much you actually understand your target audience lies at the heart of whether you'll succeed or fail in what you do. If you do, you'll know their wants and needs, their likes and dislikes, and you'll have a sense of what you need to offer so you cater for their requirements.
Popular ways of doing this are to use Google Analytics, social media insights, and even surveys to collect customer data you can analyze.
2. Create a unique offer
Here, you need to provide the audience with something distinct from what competitors offer. Providing discounts, offering a unique product, or custom packages are some examples of what you can do. But use your own imagination here, too!
The customer data you have collected is helpful here because it helps you to design custom approaches to attract the people you want to target.
3. Offer a lead magnet
A lead magnet, if used properly, can be an extremely effective way of
stimulating interest among customers, who will share their contact information in response. The possibilities are endless: they can include a checklist, ebook, or guide; a price discount or an “early bird” offer on a new product. Again, use your own imagination…
4. Build an automated email marketing system
These are important to create and nurture leads once you have captured them. You can build your own by creating a process that will respond when a customer visits your website or opens an email. Tailoring the message - and the landing page it links to - will keep the audience engaged with your brand.
5. Upsell or cross-sell
Another effective strategy is to show the customer a related product or service whenever they make a purchase. This clearly increases the chances of more purchases – and (since it's entirely voluntary!) a more rewarding experience.
6. Re-engage prospects
Re-engaging will benefit you if, say, your website has multiple visits but few purchases. This involves offering discounts or deals to people who have come across your brand but haven't yet purchased anything. This helps to build connections with what may otherwise be a disconnected audience.
7. Monitor and boost sales
And of course, always monitor sales performance! This helps you determine which strategies are generating the highest levels of business and which haven't worked. Check the click-through rates and interaction. This way, you can also make changes whenever the need arises.
Conclusion
From what we've said here, you can see that automated email campaigns can be a highly effective way of bringing more customers to the business. But to achieve this, you need to design an accurate and effective automated sales funnel.
So follow what we've said to make sure you create a process that will yield long term, sustainable results. You won't regret it!
