Want to create an email sales funnel that takes the hard work out of selling?
Then look no further! We’re going to take you through all the steps you need to get this highly effective marketing strategy for turning prospects into customers efficiently, effectively, and with nobody left behind up and running.
And because we’re Sendspark - and we love connecting with video💖 - we’re going to make sure you don’t miss out on the power of video to turbocharge your funnels.
Here’s what we’ll look at:
A sales funnel is a customer-focused marketing model that sets out an ideal path for people to develop from cold leads into paying customers.
It breaks the journey down into distinct stages, each of which is characterized by a different set of needs or desires on the part of the potential customer.
The most famous version - outlined in 1898 by Elias St. Elmo Lewis - used four stages:
An email sales funnel is one that uses email at various points in this journey to communicate with the lead and to get them to take the steps that move them further down the funnel.
The big advantage of email for this sort of work is that it’s really easy to automate, meaning that you can be driving thousands of people through your funnel at any one time with minimal marginal effort.
Because video multiplies the effectiveness of email - that’s why!
Plus, as everyone in sales knows, “people buy people”.
And video gives you the chance to put your face and your personality in front of prospects on a scale that was never possible before.
OK, now that we’ve got those bits and pieces out of the way, let’s start on those steps for building a killer email sales funnel.
A successful email sales funnel relies on correctly anticipating the needs of the leads who enter it, and their reactions to the prompts and information you provide at each stage.
So for most products, a one-size-fits-all email sales funnel isn’t going to cut it. There will be too many diverse segments making up your audience for one sequence to work for everyone.
You need to tailor your funnel as closely as possible to the various different audience personas you want to target, so:
With this data, you can construct models of the different types of user you have that includes:
You should plan to build out an email sales funnel for each different persona you have identified. There may be a lot of overlap in parts between them, but because each persona has different needs, you’ll need different content to fulfill them.
We’re going to stick with the four-phase AIDA model introduced earlier, but you should know that there are lots of variants of this general approach.
Some have more phases, some use different terminology. But they all work in basically the same way, and everything we’re going to say here can be applied to any of these frameworks.
Work through each phase and answer questions like these:
What’s all this about a Plan B? 🤨
Well, even the best email sales funnel won’t capture everyone on the first pass. You mustn’t forget about the people who don’t follow your ideal customer journey perfectly or even those who say “no” to start with. If you do, you’ll be leaving money on the table. 💰
Now you need to decide on the number of actual steps getting leads past all of these obstacles will take - and what the best channel for each one is.
Your Awareness activities can and probably should take many forms. But before we start building an email sales funnel, we’re going to need some email addresses.
Assuming you’re not already starting with a long list, the best way to collect them is via a “squeeze page” - a kind of landing page that offers something valuable (a newsletter, daily tips, a free ebook, etc) in exchange for contact details.
Whether visitors get there in one jump or more, your traffic from social media, search, ads, etc should all find their way to the squeeze page.
Of course, you may have lots of different squeeze pages aimed at capturing different audience segments’ data.
Video is awesome for squeeze pages:
Clickfunnels is a company that does video brilliantly, as the landing page above shows. Not only to they have an advert, showing happy customers - they also feature a demo video from their founder.
You might want to jump in right away with a sales offer as soon as a lead has given you their email address.
This kind of “upsell” approach can be helpful - once somebody has completed a “micro-conversion” of this sort, they’re likely to be more open to bigger commitments. If your product is an “impulse purchase” or priced very low, this might be the time to go for it.
The upsell can be offered on a dedicated landing page or in the email that accompanies the bait the user signed up for in the first place.
But most of the time, you’re going to need to nurture leads to a point where they’re ready to move to the next level.
And this is where a drip campaign plays a key role in your email sales funnel. A drip campaign is a sequence of messages spread out of a period of time with the aim of gradually building engagement.
Why bother with this?
Lead scoring algorithms are really helpful here: most email automation tools allow you to send tailored messages to leads on the basis of their previous interactions. So your drip campaigns can be branched to be of greater and greater relevance.
Userpilot does a great job of this with their regular emails, featuring Emilia’s thoughts.
Each email in the sequence should invite readers to take the next step with clear Calls-To-Action, that lead them to the “bottom of the funnel”.
Depending on what you’ve fed them so far, this may involve addressing objections or exploring options, or it might take them straight to the checkout.
When people get to those final stages:
Your email sales funnel should plan to bring people who don’t follow the ideal path back on track:
The next step is about creating the content that will do the jobs you identified in the earlier stages.
The content in your email sales funnel should all be about giving value to your audience and showing them how your product will do that for them:
Using video in your email sales funnel can be very effective, but it’s not the answer to every problem.
If your funnel content comprises nothing but video, the element of surprise and delight that video can add will be lost.
Video has the greatest impact on sales funnels when used for:
But do bear in mind: most email clients don’t support inline video.
If you need to send a video that is too large, the best way is to use Sendspark which:
Finally, it’s vital to remember that an email sales funnel is not a one-and-done proposition.
It’s something that needs to evolve and improve on the basis of the results you achieve. Your email automation platform will give you plenty of data on where leads are dropping out, and where you should change the content or even the shape of the funnel.
When it comes to your videos, Sendspark makes this easy too:
When you have a fully mapped-out funnel, like the one we’ve been describing, you’ll be able to see all the touch points with leads, which makes fixing the ones that are underperforming much easier.
And that’s how it’s done!
Email sales funnels can be incredibly effective, but when you sprinkle some video magic on proceedings, the sky really is the limit.
And Sendspark is the ideal selling tool for creating videos for your email sales funnel.
You can use it to record yourself, distribute your videos via email, and make awesome landing pages that drive your prospects further through the funnel. Sign up now to start creating and sending videos for free!