It is crucial to think about the best way to approach potential customers. If you receive an email from a business trying too hard to make a sale to you, then it is likely you would probably move on and delete that message. It’s much more natural to first make an introduction, get to know each other, form a relationship, and then let people decide whether they want to buy from you. Today, we’ll share how to build an email marketing funnel for your handmade business.
You can create a series of emails to build trust and grow a stronger relationship with potential customers in order to convert them into loyal customers. Learning how to build an email marketing funnel for a handmade business will be essential to the business’s success.
What is an Email Funnel?
An email funnel serves as a roadmap to guide people through every step of the customer journey. From making introductions, to building interest, creating a connection, and to finally pushing for a sale. This sequence of emails is designed to create connections around your brand, and show your value so that your email subscribers get more excited and interested in making a purchase.
Email funnels are a big deal in the small business email marketing strategy. This is because the success rate for email funnels is so high. Therefore, not only is it important to learn how to build an email marketing funnel for a handmade business, but to understand why is it so effective. Learning how to implement email funneling into your handmade business will be essential to the success rate of your sales. Not only can it automate the process of your marketing efforts, but it can give your business fast and reliable conversion rates when done accordingly.
Here are some general email statistics to prove so:
- 99% of email users check their email every day.
- 85% of the people you send an email to will receive your email.
- More than 75% of teenagers still use email.
Here are the statistics businesses see by using email funnels:
- For every $1 spent, emails have an average ROI of $38.
- Segmented campaigns can reach a 760% increase in revenue.
Compared to Facebook or Twitter, emails are 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers.
The number of emails you use in your funnel are going to depend on what you’re selling. However, generally speaking, you’ll use a minimum of 4 emails and a maximum of 7 emails. It’s important to find your sweet spot. Sending too little of emails will cause a failure of success to your email funneling strategy. On the other hand, if you are sending an overload of emails, your customers are likely to become agitated and unsubscribe. Thus losing new and loyal customers, and sales.
How to Build an Email Funnel for a Handmade Business
Email marketing tools for small businesses are very important to the success of your handmade business. Before getting started with email funneling, it’s important to fully understand what it is, and how it works. Essentially, an email funnel is a series of emails that guide someone through the motions of becoming a customer or taking the desired action to purchase from your business.
For example, if you are selling candles, your potential customer might:
- Visit your website landing page.
- Subscribe to your newsletter in return for a discount on the first purchase.
- Receive an “about” email, introducing who you are and the essence of your brand.
- Click a link in the email to purchase one of your best sellers’ products.
- Lastly, subscribe to an email about tips and tricks on how to use your products and a deep explanation of the materials used to create them.
- Or subscribe to continue the engagement with your business. Such as receive emails with updates and new product releases
All of these types emails are in order to nurture the relationship between you and your potential customers. Plus, a great way to up-sell your products and build a network of loyal customers. Keep in mind that this is not a just one-time action. You need to keep the emails going to see results. Consistency is key.
The 5 Major Stages of Email Funneling
To understand on a deeper level of how email funneling works, you must know the the 5 major stages a subscriber will move through. We have taken the liberty of outlining this process for you below.
- Awareness: This is all about introduction and gaining new subscribers. People sign up to hear from you. Use his as an opportunity to say hello and present your brand. Awareness should not be too flashy or pushy, the same way you wouldn’t be too flashy or pushy if you were introducing yourself to a new friend. Less is more! Keep things enticing, but minimal.
Here are some tactics that you can use to gain new subscribers:
Sign-up Here: Add a sign up form that you can add to your website
Pop-ups: These forms will “pop up” while your customers are visiting a site. When done correctly, these can be a great way to grab people’s attention. Be sure to make yourself aware to not over do these, because it can turn to some customers off to your brand.
Landing pages: These are standalone web pages that have one specific goal. Try to write something appealing that can make people take the action you want them to take. - Interest: The people in this stage are the ones who open your emails and are interested to know what you have to say, and the content you provide. Let them know more about your products, your inspiration, the materials you use, etc. You already have their attention, take advantage of it!
A good way to connect with your audience is to give them a brief introduction about your story and your mission. This will give you audience a sense of connection to you, as well provide them with a reason to feel good about purchasing from you. Try not to make this too lengthy. You want to grasp their attention without going too deep down the rabbit hole. - Consideration: People will start looking for reviews of your products when they are considering you as the solution to their needs. They are interested in learning about the options you have to be a solution for what they are lacking. This is when you can position your products as a solution. Try to be creative. You don’t need to sell straight away. It’s important to work on your connection with your audience first, then work towards gaining them as your customers.
- Conversion: This is the moment that you’ve been waiting for! At this point, people know who you are and what your business is at a stable level. They are more confident in taking action towards purchasing from you and becoming a new customer. This is your push for them to buy or to take the action you want them to take. Adding an incentive like a coupon code can be the cherry on top. A good way to start is by offering a 10-20% discount code for signing up for your email subscriptions, or for their purchase for next time.
Whatever your goal is, these are some standard steps that you can take at this stage of the funnel:
Subject lines: Try to write a subject interesting enough to be enticing to open and boost the open rates of your emails. Don’t make these too wordy. Try to get straight to the point by using trigger words and important phrases.
Call to Action: This should be one vital part of the email content. Make it clear so people can know what action to take. An example of this could be a pop-up or subscription trigger for your emails. Be sure to make it clear what people will get as a reward to your CTA. As previously discussed, this could be a discount code or secluded opportunities for special discounts and sales.
Incentives: People love incentives when they’re about to take action. You can add a discount code on the first purchase, a bundle promo, offer free shipping, etc. Get creative with this. Think about what you can offer that your competition cannot and use that to your advantage. - Loyalty: Your subscribers are now customers. This stage is where you keep your customers happy and wanting them to come back for more. Regularly email them with new offers, product releases, and business updates. Think about setting up reward points or membership schemes for loyal customers o that they have an extra incentive to stick around.
This is when you retain a current customer. Loyal customers feel more connected with your brand and usually feel comfortable enough to leave reviews and share your products on social media. Be sure to give thanks and attention to these customers when appropriate. It’s important to acknowledge the loyalty they have to your business. Make it known that you appreciate their business.
Email Automation
Automated emails are a great way to provide tailored experiences for potential customers because they’re based on data about their behavior or actions. There’s no need to manually send out individual emails. Therefore, you’ll be saving time for other tasks when implementing email automation into your handmade businesses marketing strategy.
The biggest value of email automation is the ability to send relevant emails to the right people at the right time. If you link your CRM (customer relationship management) to an email marketing app, you can nurture subscribers effectively thanks to the data you will receive about their purchase history and behavior and actions towards your brand.
Automating email sending is easy thanks to email marketing tools and applications. The idea is simple; create a campaign and set up a trigger (a predefined event) that’ll activate automated sending when the event happens. Not only is this a great way to make easy sales, but it’s a huge time saver!
Do not, however, get carried away with email automation. It can begin to feel too robotic to your customers if overused. Remember that they want to feel that there is a real person behind your brand. This is essential to the relationship building process you must take with your customers.
The Best Benefit to Building an Email Funnel for your Business
The best part about email funnel is that you have control over the customer journey. It allows you to be more targeted because you’re sending messages directly to each person based on where they are in your funnel. Email funneling is not like social media where it can b hard to point out exactly which stage your audience is.
With email funnels, you can create an organized, targeted strategy that’s based on your target audience. Email automation and segmentation will make your content relevant to each of your subscribers, and they can be sent at just the right moment without you having done anything. The result of this is gathering new leads and earning more conversions.
An email marketing funnel, written well and executed timely, can be the key for success. Now that you understand how to build an email marketing funnel for a handmade business, you should implement this into your strategy for success. Email funneling should be a major component of your handmade business’s marketing efforts. It’s the platform that moves subscribers to the stage where they become first-time customers of your business, thus leading to brand loyalty and overall success of your handmade business.
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