Raise your hand if you’ve lived through some version of this before:
You’re hanging out on the internet, as we all tend to do. You’re browsing sites. You’re looking at new ways of getting more leads and fixing other business problems, when suddenly, out of the blue, you stumble across an incredibly helpful blog post.
You read what you need. You click out and click away. And then, a few months later, you’re randomly thinking about that site while saying something like, “I would have signed up for their newsletter back then if they’d had one.”
And THAT’S when it hits you.
You don’t have an email newsletter. In fact, you’re not collecting emails at all!
According to Hubspot, email marketing has an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. If it were possible to consistently get that kind of return from the stock market, most of us would never work again.
In this post, we’ll share some tips on using the power of email to get more leads on autopilot!
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What Is an Email Funnel?
For the most part, when you see people using the words “email” and “funnel” together, they’re giving a formal name to the general process of using emails to nudge your website visitors from “Hm. I might be interested in this eventually.” to “I need this service ASAP and I am prepared to pay for it!”.
But of course, none of that answers the fundamental question “Does it work?”. In 2014, Digital Marketer was able to take a site from making $0 a month to $6 million a month, with a counterintuitive site redesign and an emphasis on email marketing.
And to this day, you have entire companies that rely on their email lists to generate new sales and momentum every quarter. But here’s the best part!
Sending emails is cheap. Depending on the size of your list, promotional messaging might even be FREE!
If you don’t have an email marketing funnel, you could be losing money every time a visitor clicks away from your site and doesn’t return.
Here's How to Get More Leads With Email Funnels
We’ve just explained what email funnels are and why your business should have one. But how do you go from wanting more people in your pipeline to predictably boosting sales?
Here are a few email funnel best practices that you’ll want to keep in mind:
1. Have an Epic Freebie
A lot of businesses will spend a lot of time and effort figuring out what their newsletters will look like. They’ve got a content calendar that’s more organized than most people’s whole lives. They’ve put their best designers on the job, and they’re working hard to ensure that every email they send looks breathtakingly beautiful.
In fact, they’ve got everything sorted out, except for their freebie offering.
People are becoming more and more sophisticated. They don’t want their inboxes to be cluttered. They don’t want to have their email addresses potentially exposed in yet another data breach.
But the truth is that if you want to get people’s contact information, you need to make sure that you’re making it worth their while.
It can take time to figure out what you should give away.
Books, email courses, and cheat sheets are all very popular options, but they may not make sense for your business.
If you make sure that your freebie is too awesome to pass up, getting total strangers to sign up for your list, read your emails, and eventually become paying customers is suddenly a whole lot easier!
2. Use Automated Email Sequences
Anybody who’s anybody in the productivity or self-help space knows a thing or two about what’s known as the “flow state”.
In fact, if you’ve ever played a game or had a day at work where you were in the zone and getting things done in a fraction of the time you would expect, chances are that you’ve experienced this phenomenon yourself.
Lots of people have tried to figure out why everything comes so easy when you’re in the zone. And in many cases, what it ultimately comes down to is the fact that we’re less prone to overthinking things when we’re working in a flow state. We see a task that needs to be done, and BOOM. We do it.
When you’re email marketing, you want the people on your list to be more or less getting the same, high-quality experience, no matter how they found you.
Automated email sequences give you a set-it-and-forget-it part of your marketing arsenal that allows you to turn the flow state into your advertising norm.
With these pre-written sequences under your hat, there’s no “I should really knock this off of my to-do list.” or “I don’t know what to say this time.” You get all the perks of sending ultra-thoughtful and ultra-responsive messages. But you only have to write up your email sequence ONCE!
3. Make Sure Your Content Delivers Value
According to DataProt, nearly 85 percent of all emails are spam. Yikes!
If you want your leads to read what you have to say, you have to make a point of consistently giving them the information that they’re looking for. And in many cases, that means you’ll have to be bringing your content A-game.
What problems are driving your leads to visit your site, sign up for your email list, and open your first few messages? Is there an industry-wide concern that you could be giving your email subscribers the inside scoop on?
It’s a balancing act. If your email marketing involves picking up emails and sending messages every once in a blue moon, there’s a good chance that you’ll see people unsubscribing or just not opening your messages when you click “Send”. On the other hand, nobody wants to be contacted too frequently either.
The best email funnels are ones that give away value while subtly letting people know that you’re available, savvy, and know what you’re talking about.
4. Write Grabby and Engaging Messages
Clickbait titles have been around on the internet for years. So much so that those “This List Will Make Your Jaw Drop” headlines are the type of thing that people laugh about over dinner.
Of course, you’re a professional who has a business to run. You don’t want to be the lawyer who’s sending clickbait or the government contractor with a penchant for writing listicles that entertain more than they inform.
But that doesn’t mean that your emails need to be a total snoozefest either!
We talk about the importance of using attention-grabbers on landing pages elsewhere. And although you might not necessarily be trying to convince your customers to buy your goods in the first message, you can still use these general principles to get people clicking on your messages and to your site.
What kind of colors are you using? Could you add an image or two for visual interest?
In a world where attention spans are short and people are always looking for their next bit of entertainment, you should always be looking for ways to make every email more interesting than the last.
5. Track Your Results
Did that subject line grab people’s attention the way you thought it would? Was that launch email effective at generating sales for your business?
The only way to get definitive answers to these questions is to make a point of tracking your results.
But unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s impossible to miss the fact that online privacy is becoming an increasingly important issue for people. So much so that Apple is rolling out new settings that allow people to basically turn off ad tracking.
What this means for marketers is that tracking the results of your email campaigns is going to become a lot harder going forward.
But with some creativity, a solid attribution model, and some experienced help, you can easily get your slice of the email marketing pie.
Need Help Getting More Leads?
For many business owners, getting more leads at a 42x ROI is the Holy Grail of marketing. And through the power of email, driving sales without having to spend tons of money has never been easier.
However, when you’re new to marketing, it’s easy to make client-losing mistakes with your emails.
Book an appointment if you want BrashBerry to help you create a high-converting email marketing funnel that generates results again and again! We’d love to hear from you.
As always, follow BrashBerry on social media to stay up to date on the latest!
