Email Marketing

An effective sales funnel needs to attract people, capture their interest, and engage them long enough to take your desired business action: of either making a purchase or giving out their contact details, at least.

But it’s frustrating when visitors land on your website yet leave without doing anything. It really is. As a concerned business owner, you begin to wonder where you went wrong. You start asking the wrong questions: Was it the design? Was it the colors? You might even begin to doubt your product or value offering.

Wait, before you go any further, what if we told you people are leaving because they’re confused. They’re confused about what you do and how you can be of help to them. They’re leaving because of the amount of confusing or rather unnecessary information you’re mistakenly throwing at them.

For this reason, clarifying your company’s message is the number one step to creating an effective sales funnel that draws customers in, keeps them engaged, and drives positive business results. It’s that simple. Your message must be clear, simple, and straightforward. Not cute, confusing, or clever.

To clarify your company’s message, you’ll need to tell an interesting and compelling story. And what a better way to do this by utilizing the StoryBrand framework. Wonder what this is all about? Take a look here. You’ll get to discover what makes this framework powerful for telling your company’s story in a non-confusing way.

If you don’t clarify your company’s message, to begin with, then you risk being left with a sales funnel that is ineffective and ultimately loses.

Your website will be a prime touchpoint in your sales funnel. Once you start marketing, usually, you’ll be directing most of the traffic to your website, if not all. Your website is that important. But if visitors are coming to your site and not converting, then let’s face it, your website isn’t working.

It’s not your fault, though, since you probably weren’t the one that created your site. At least, you’re inculpable that most web designers are oblivious to what truly makes a website optimized for conversions. They’re rather focused on making your site look like a Paris art showroom. Except that an art gallery sells, your website doesn’t.

Creating a working website goes beyond the colors, images, and artistic illustrations, as you’ll soon see. Sure it matters, but beauty alone doesn’t sell. Certain things need to be included in your site to make it conversion-optimized.

Interestingly, the StoryBrand framework also blends in with the development of your website using a strategic wireframe. Yes! The framework is that powerful.

For a winning sales funnel, you need a working website that is primed for conversions. Without a website that works, your efforts can be likened to pouring water in a basket.

The sales funnel is synonymous with a journey. Essentially, when you create a funnel, you’re trying to move people along each step of the journey as smoothly as possible. You’re looking to move them from visitors (cold prospects) –> hot leads –> happy customers.

Except you’re running your company with some sorta metaphysical powers, the reality remains that not everybody will transact with your business on first-time interaction. But that doesn’t mean some people wouldn’t. It’s just not immediately.

If you’ve clarified your company’s message, and you have a working website, then visitors already find you interesting and will readily drop their contact info. This is why before they leave, you need to capture their contact details. And to do this effectively, you should give them a reason to give it out. This is where a lead generator comes in handy.

A lead generator is a helpful resource you offer visitors in exchange for their contact details. Lead generators can take several formats, but we recommend having yours in pdf format. It’s the easiest and fastest to create.

Without a lead generator to capture your visitors’ contact details, then you’re likely to lose interested prospects, usually forever. The first three steps of creating a winning sales funnel aim to convert visitors (cold prospects) to hot leads. For the next two steps, we’ll look at how you can convert these leads to customers.

You now know you should sustain visitors’ interest and even capture their email, but it doesn’t end there. The work continues.

Usually, most people would require more level of familiarity with your company before making a commitment. They still need nurturing and guidance. Since you now have their email, this is where you step in by providing a series of helpful information regularly.

Nurture email campaigns are a series of helpful and valuable emails you regularly send out to your leads. This is done to further instill trust in their mind and strengthen the relationship bond you’re building. Because when it’s then time to make a commitment, your business would be fresh in their mind. You’ll be the one they think of, not your competitor.

Here are few things to consider when creating a nurture email campaign series:

• Give free informational value that helps people with their needs.
• Emphasize your value offering. Never miss an opportunity to tell people why you matter.
• Showcase your products or services and talk about what problems they solve.
• Give updates/announcements about new products, shipments, and even relevant operation or service changes, especially if useful.
• Create emails that constantly direct customers back to your site to keep your business top of mind.

In fact, structuring your nurture email campaigns with these concepts improves the chances they’re likely to be read. Without nurturing email campaigns to progress customers on their journey, then they might never commit. Worse, they’ll unsubscribe and altogether forget about your business.

You’ve been helpful all along with your nurture emails. Your leads are aware of how helpful you’ve been, and they now trust you. Now is the time to make a sale. It’s why you are in business, or at least why you’ll remain in business. You’re in business to solve a problem or need and earn while at it.

Are you passive-aggressive when asking people to make a commitment? Well, you shouldn’t. Of course, you don’t want to be too aggressive either. You wouldn’t want to risk coming off as a used car salesman. But with a set of email campaigns targeted for sales, you can properly challenge customers to take the next step by making a commitment.

After all, what’s the essence of having a great product or service if you can’t actually ask people to buy it? Since you’re sure of the value you bring to the table, you should encourage people to commit.

When it comes to developing an email campaign targeted at sales, here are a few things you should also keep in mind.

• Articulate your offer (what are you particularly selling?)
• In your email, quickly describe the value of the product/service. i.e., iterate on the problem it solves.
• Place a glaring call to action throughout the email. e.g., buy now, place an order.
• Give incentives in the form of discounts/coupon codes if possible.
• Lastly, instill a sense of urgency. Communicate that your offer is not forever by giving a time frame for which the sale ends or when the coupon code/discounts will expire.

A sales funnel won’t be a winning one if, eventually, it doesn’t make sales. The absence of a series of email campaigns that finally calls for commitment can practically render the funnel altogether ineffective.

Now that you’re armed with all the necessary steps for a successful sales funnel, the last step requires execution. Without execution, you won’t get results. It’s that simple.

First, you want to generate all the marketing collateral for your sales funnel, then ensure that each funnel step is well-laid out and properly implemented.

If you have a team, you might even end up holding a series of meetings with your team of web designers, copywriters, or other crucial team members. You’ll definitely require your team’s collaborative efforts.

These meetings would aim to develop all the marketing collateral necessary for the execution. And ensure that every team member also knows their role and what part they play.

Better still, as a smart business owner, you could just leave it all for us to handle for you. Overall, the success of your sales funnel will also depend, without a doubt, on how well it is properly carried out.