Create a higher converting email funnel

Let's dive into what makes your emails convert more! Email marketing is very much alive.. AND the market has shifted aaloootttt. Buyers are behaving differently and so are spam filters...

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Welcome to Think Like a CMO, the podcast for entrepreneurs who are ready to stop doing random acts of marketing and to start thinking like the chief marketing officer their business actually needs. What's up? I'm your host, Sarah Gummel. I'm a marketing strategist and consultant helping small business owners to build a marketing ecosystem that actually creates predictable results. Around here, we talk about what it really looks like to step into your role as the CMO, to start seeing the big picture, lead your marketing with strategy, and to stop wasting time with productive busy work that isn't actually getting you anywhere. This is all about no fluff, honest conversations, potent strategies, and practical insights that you can use right now to make your marketing work smarter, not harder. You and I both know that email is not dead, okay? Email marketing is still very well alive, but with that said, the market has shifted. The platform has shifted. Email marketing does not look the same as it did even a couple years ago, but definitely not 10 years ago. So how can you build an email funnel that actually converts into sales consistently and reliably? That's exactly what we're gonna cover in this episode. Before we get started, I want to cover what we're gonna define as an email funnel for the purposes of this particular episode. For this particular episode, the email funnel we're really gonna focus on is intro offer into bigger offer. That could be a freebie into a paid offer, or it can be a micro intro offer into a higher paid offer. Okay, this could also apply to products. So if you have a product shop, you sell candles or makeup or you own like a clothing boutique. This could even apply to if you have like a discount code that gets them on your email list. This could apply to the funnel that we're gonna use for this episode. Okay, we're getting right into the good shit, okay? For setting up an email funnel like what we just talked about that actually converts into sales. The first and foremost thing we need to look at is the entry point. What is the intro offer? And is it something that they actually want, right? We need to create that intro offer to not only be the thing that they actually want, the thing that they can't ignore, the thing that they can't go without to actually get the opt-in, but it has to also bring in the right people. If we fill this email funnel with a bunch of people who are not the ideal audience, the sales conversion is gonna be trash. So not only do we need to create an intro offer that they actually want to download, okay, whether it's free, $5, even $20, it doesn't matter. It has to be something they actually want. Something that is so juicy they can't ignore it. You have to understand this about people, right? Is even if it's free, giving your email is or giving their email is still a big step. We that's still a level of commitment, giving you their email address in exchange for this free thing. Especially if you're selling to other businesses or entrepreneurs, they know there's a funnel attached to it. They know that they're gonna get sales emails attached to it. So in order to say, yes, I want to receive these emails, it has to be juicy. The messaging has to be so clear, so benefit focused. It has to hit on these psychological triggers so that it feels important and urgent and like it's so clear that it's gonna solve this problem that they have, right? But then how can we also pre-qualify people in that description of the offer so that we're bringing in the right people? So I'll give you an example. If I say um I have a freebie that is the marketing calendar, right? So it's the growth-driven marketing calendar. It tells you exactly what to do daily, weekly, and monthly as the CMO of your business. But I'm not just gonna say, hey, here's a free marketing calendar, because you might be like, okay, great, that sounds cool. But if I say, hey, if you're ready to stop wasting time on marketing tasks that feel productive but aren't actually making you any money, here's a list totally for free of exactly what you can focus on daily, weekly, and monthly in your marketing that's actually gonna move the needle forward for you. So that's the description, that's what makes you want it, right? But I don't want to call in just any marketer with this. So I might say this is the growth-driven marketing calendar for the entrepreneur who does all their own marketing and is struggling to keep up with it when client work gets busy, right? Or for the entrepreneur, and this is not my ideal market, but I might say for the beginner entrepreneur, like the the side hustler. If your audience is moms, what kind of mom? Right? If your audience is teens, what kind of teens? If your audience is athletes, what type of athletes? You can get really descriptive in a short amount of words and add that into either the title or the subtitle so that you start to pre-qualify people before they even come into the pipeline. Because it's the top of the pipeline, you can be a little bit more broad. Yes, you want to be specific, but it can still be broad and specific if that this next piece I actually see missed a lot. And it's really, really important that this piece you nail it, okay? This piece is the offer behind the intro offer. The offer that comes in the funnel after they say yes, after they actually enter the funnel, what where whatever the intro offer is. The offer that comes next has to be the perfect natural next step that's so clear of like, oh yes, this is the next thing. With really strong CTAs, and I'll add a little side note here that each funnel really should only have one offer at a time to decrease confusion and overwhelm and decision fatigue. But I want to come back to what the offer actually is behind the intro offer. And I'm gonna use this example from when I was a personal trainer, I was a fitness coach, and I had built a global fitness company serving women all over the world, consistent five-figure months. And what was happening, here's a here's a great example, one of the shifts that I made that got me here. When I would bring people in through a freebie, say that freebie was related to workouts. If I am bringing you in with workouts, I know that's what you need or what you think you want. So the offer has to relate to workouts. I'm not gonna bring you in with a workout-related freebie and then start selling you mindset or start selling you on diet plans, right? Now that might be included in the offer, but the offer is going to be workout-centered because that was the freebie you opted into. Another example outside of my business, I'll give you an example from a client. I had a client that sold makeup and skincare products. If you get someone in through something related to skincare, right, it doesn't make any sense to then sell them lipstick because they came in for skincare, right? You could even narrow it down to say what kind of skincare. Did they come in through a freebie that describes different moisturizers? Then we need to sell them on moisturizer, right? If they came in through a freebie that is like an everyday makeup tutorial, then the offer needs to be makeup. I did an audit one time for a line dance instructor. She was a line dance instructor, and so she did like the actual line dancing, and then she also taught instructors how to be instructors. She would bring people in through the events, so the people who just wanted to dance, right? But then she would start selling them on the instructor certification. It doesn't make any sense. That's not the natural next step offer. And there was a reason why she had a really hard time converting in that funnel. She was really relying on manual sales because they were coming in to dance. They just wanted to dance, they didn't want to be an instructor. So a better idea would say, okay, you know, here's uh five things to do before you become a line dance instructor and then sell the certification. Now that you're picking up what I'm putting down, okay, we talked about making sure that the intro offer is really, really solid. It pre-qualifies. We talked about making sure the offer behind the intro offer is the perfect natural next step. You have really strong, clear calls to actions or CTAs, and making sure that you're only giving them one offer at a time, which works perfectly into this next piece, which is creating less friction. When you think about your funnel, whether it's an email funnel, a big funnel, whatever. When you think about the funnel, how complicated is it really? And are they actually going to go through every single step? Where are you making it complicated for them? Where are you making it time consuming for them? And I want you to even think about and sit with this and actually count how many clicks from the time they discover you to the time they buy, especially in this email funnel, right? They've said yes to an introductory offer. Now, how many steps are you asking them to take to actually become a client? So, for example, if you're saying, hey, the it's uh intro offer to email funnel, the emails are gonna send you to the landing page, the landing page is gonna send you to checkout. That's relatively simple. But if even if it's going landing page to sales call, relatively simple, right? But if you're trying to get them on a sales call, could we take out the landing page? So it's just email to sales call. Even looking at the sales call, how many questions do they have to answer to book your sales call? Right? If you wanted them to go from landing page to checkout, how many steps are there? I'll give you a great example. It sounds so simple, landing page to checkout, right? But I did this audit one time for a med spa, and the med spa had landing page to checkout. Easy piece of cake, it's only one step wrong. It was not only one step. I actually counted the amount of clicks, and it was 13. 13 clicks from the time someone says, Yeah, yes, I want to book my appointment to the time the appointment was actually completed. They were seeing zero appointments booked from their landing page, and that was exactly why. When I went through and tested it, even me, knowing that I was doing like a marketing audit, I was like, oh my god, like holy shit, this is way too long. So I'll give you uh some more detail there. When you when someone said yes, I want an appointment, it was like, you know, uh, tell us how many uh leaders you want, how many injections you want, what service do you want, what person do you want to book with, what location do you want to go to? It was like all of these questions just to book the appointment. Where can you create less friction in your funnel to make it so easy to say yes? One way that I did this recently, I went back to doing sales calls about a year and a half ago because I know I convert really well on sales calls. I want to make sure that people are really aligned, right? Make sure it's a really good fit, making sure people are clear and confident on where they need to be for the right support. So I went back to doing sales calls about a year and a half ago. And when you book a sales call with me, I do have a form to make sure that I'm pre-qualifying before we spend time on a call so that I'm not wasting your time or mine. But the form before the call was actually scheduled was creating a barrier for my audience because I wanted them to really give me detail. So it takes, I don't know, I think I timed it one time, it takes like maybe six minutes, right? So I put in there as like five to eight minutes. Sometimes I'll even tell people like spend 10, so I'd rather overestimate. But what I did was I switched the funnel. So now when you say, yes, let's get on a call. I want to talk about my marketing support options. I say, great, here's my calendar link, which is so much less friction friction. We don't have to go back and forth manually about day and time, right? Here's my calendar link. Pick your day and time, schedule your appointment first. The appointment is on the calendar. You picked your day and time, it's confirmed. Now go to the form so that if you're not ready to do the form right this second, you can do it anytime up until 24 hours before, right? I need to I need these responses at least 24 before your appointment. And I will cancel if this form doesn't get done. And I will tell you, I have booked so many more sales calls, and I don't really have to cancel that many. You have to trust your people. They're adults, they can make their own decisions and they can keep up with their own things as long as you remind them, hey, don't forget this form is due 24 hours before your appointment. If I don't get it, I'm gonna have to cancel it. It's also a great way to pre-qualify people because the people who aren't serious or the people who are not ready to actually get to work are probably not gonna remember to fill out the form and then they're just disqualified because they never submitted the form. So, where can you create less friction in your funnel? There's two more things I want to cover. The next piece of this is find somewhere else to get in front of your people and to follow up with them and to stay top of mind just in case they're not seeing the emails. One of my favorite ways to do this is through text marketing. So you send an email. If you have a text attached and you have a verified phone number and all the things, you can send a text message that says, Hey, we sent you an email, or hey, don't forget your discount code is ending in you know three hours. Hey, your application is not yet completed. As long as your audience can sense to receiving text messages and they gave you their phone number, then you can go ahead and send them those text messages. It's a great way because most people see every single text message. Text marketing, for the most part, has a very high open rate and a very low unsubscribe rate. That gets them into their email inbox looking for your email. Same thing if you do any kind of retargeting ads. So you can do a retargeted ad to people on the um on the email list or people who visited the intro offer website and make sure they're seeing some kind of paid traffic to complement what you know they downloaded or what intro offer they started with and what you're offering them in the email funnel. Or if you know that you're primarily focused on one funnel, you can talk about it on your organic social media as well. So they're seeing your emails, hopefully. And if they're not seeing your emails, then they're seeing your organic social media content. You can also do direct outreach, right? You can reach out to the people who are getting the intro offer, send them a voice note on Instagram, slide into their DMs on LinkedIn or Facebook or TikTok or whatever, and say, hey, I saw you downloaded this thing. How's it going? Do you have any questions? Did you see my email about the next steps? These are people who are already warm and hot audiences, so you're doing you and them a disservice by not following up with them. I'll give you, I'll give you a great example of this. I have uh this freebie, the marketing calendar that I talked about earlier in this episode. And someone downloaded it. I always send myself a notification when someone downloads really anything, because I think it deserves to be celebrated, but I also want to make sure that I check on that person and make sure the funnel is working and all the things. So, anyway, so I get this notification that someone downloads a freebie. I find them on Instagram, I send them a voice note. I'm like, hey, I'm so glad you downloaded this freebie. I saw you got your calendar. If you have any questions, let me know. I really kept it pretty simple. She answers almost immediately and she's like, Oh, Sarah, great timing. I was actually just thinking about you because the freebie wasn't working. So now I have an opportunity to have a conversation with her to go in, check and see why the freebie wasn't working. So that also gives me a chance to fix my funnel, right? But it turns out there was something in just her account, which was great. But anyway, so I go in, I fix the freebie, I make sure I message her back and I say, hey, I fixed it, I tested it, make sure that you see it. So then that got her in there and it got her in like looking at her emails, it got her in the portal, it got her to actually open it all up and say, Oh, yep, I got it. Right? So now I if I would have just relied on this email funnel that I had behind the introductory offer, she might have reached out on her own, but that could have easily been a really, really great quality leave lost for something really, really simple, right? I might also say, Hey, did you see that um I'm offering a free marketing audit that to go with your calendar? Like, did you book yours? Right? That's not actually uh I might I might add that actually. I might go ahead and add that because it's a great uh next step from something like that. But if I did do that, I would reach out to people in a voice note and I would say, hey, I saw you download the calendar. Thanks so much for downloading it. If you have any questions, let me know. And I wanted to make sure you saw that I'm giving away these free audits for the people who downloaded the marketing calendar. Make sure you book one. Or do you need me to resend you the link to book one? Right? Or check the email I just sent you with the link to book. Whenever I send an email and I'm doing some kind of follow-up that's related to that email, I do want to send them back to that email. It creates a little bit of friction, it does create an extra step. But what it does is it gets them in their email, it gets them to open your email, and it gets them to click directly from the email, which boosts all of your DNS records and your deliverability in your email. So if it's something from like email marketing specifically, now if it's a manual email, we can just skip it. But if you're in a funnel, I want to make sure that you're seeing my emails. I want to make sure that you move me from spam into your inbox, make sure that you're opening, make sure that you're clicking directly from the emails because that just helps the deliverability of all future emails. Yo, this is some good shit, okay? This is a great episode. Anyway, let's get into the last piece of this. The last piece is gonna be the subject lines, the buttons, the landing pages, and the actual sale. Now, this could look different depending on what your funnel looks like, but when we look at an email funnel that actually converts into sales, there's a lot of pieces of an email funnel starting with the subject line. The subject line has to speak to what is going to grab their attention, what is going to break the pattern, what's going to break through all the noise of everything else in their email inbox that makes them say, oh my God, what is this email about? Right? I need to read this email. So we have to start with the subject line to even get them to open it. Once they open it, the copy has to be good to keep their interest, right? What's actually in the email has to keep them there. And then the button has to be really clear on what it is, right? The button has to be hard to miss. You want to make sure that it's like a big bold color uh button, really easy to see, hard to miss. You can play around with different copy on the button. So it might say something like learn more or hell yeah, I'm in, right? You can play around with the actual button text. The button is gonna be what gets them into the next step. Are they saying yes to following you on Instagram? Are they saying yes to booking a call? Are they saying yes to just viewing a landing page? What is that button for based on where we want to send them? And we need to make sure that the tie-in, right? So the whole email copy, once you want to keep their interest, but from the value part of the email to the button, we want to make sure that it's a really clear tie-in, make sure that's a really natural, like, okay, you just got through this email. Now your next step is to do this. And then the sale part is gonna come from wherever you're sending them, right? So if you want them to go to a product shop or if you want them to go to a landing page, that landing page, that product shop has to be optimized for conversions. So now this opens up a whole nother level of this conversation to make sure that you are tracking your website traffic and your website conversion. Know what your industry average should be of your conversion rate. I have a client who does a lot of cold traffic to her website. She sells um products, so her industry average is only about like two to four percent for what she should be converting. Right now, when we first started, she was less than like 0.8%. I think she was somewhere around 0.5%, which was really pretty poor. And we've gotten her up to over 1%. So we've essentially doubled her conversion rates, which is really, really great. She's really not that far off from what's considered a healthy conversion rate in her industry. But if we're doing all this work in the email funnel to then send them to an external landing page or product shop, we need to make sure that that page is actually converting. Because if it's not, then that's 100% where we're losing the sale. So you look at like if we're getting people to open the email, we know the subject line is good. If they're getting through the email but they're not clicking, so that's your click rate, then we know that the email itself is not actually compelling them to take action, which could be the copy or it could be the button, or it could just be the call to action of where you're actually sending them or the offer. If we're getting the open rate and the click rate, but we're still not converting, then we know it's a landing page issue. So looking at all of these different pieces separately, and it kind of goes back to what we talked about in a previous episode of tracking metrics, and every single stage of your pipeline has a different purpose and a different KPI, right? So your email marketing is to get the open rate and the click rate, it's to get them somewhere else. Once they're in that other place, how do we get them to say yes? If we're going email to uh calendar booking, right? So we're getting them to open it, we're getting them to click onto the calendar page, but they're not actually booking the appointment. Why? Is there enough availability? Is it too many steps to get them to book? When I was doing this with my um product-based client, we looked at um traffic and conversion rates and all these things, and it was like, what is the actual checkout process, right? We see people adding things to their cart, but they're not actually purchasing. Why? Because the checkout process is confusing. How can we make it simpler? How can we make it shorter? How can we answer questions on the checkout page to really handle those objections? Or how can we remind them that there's a live support chat if they have questions? It's really important that you don't put a hundred. Percent of the responsibility on the email funnel itself to make the sales. There's a lot of different moving pieces that um feed the email funnel, right? The email funnel email is just the avenue of communication. We need to make sure all the pieces that tie into the email funnel are also doing their job and they're also converting. This is exactly what I mean when I say think like a CMO, right? It's not just that you need an email template of email one and email two and email three. It's that you need to know how to implement the right email funnel, send them to the right place, have less friction, right? Messaging, copy 100% important. But there's so many other things that go into a successful email funnel, which I hope you got from this episode. I work with my clients a lot on email marketing. That is one of the things that we do a lot of focus on. We do done with you strategy and we do done for you services. So if this is something that's helpful for you for you, go ahead and check out this uh show notes. There will be all the ways that we can get connected. But thank you so much for tuning in to Think Like a CMO. If this episode helped you to think differently about your marketing, specifically your email marketing, I want you to go ahead and make sure you're following the show for one so you don't miss any future episodes. Leave us a review, share it with a friend. You can even share it on Instagram and tag me at Sarah Gemmel. If you're ready to tighten up your email marketing strategy, you're ready to create an email funnel that actually converts into sales. Like I said, go ahead and check out the show notes. I'll give you some different ways that we can get you started or get you into the right marketing support container so that we can help you with that. But thank you so, so much for being here. Remember that you are already the CMO of your business. Let's make sure that you're thinking like one.