Creating an email funnel that works is one of those marketing strategies it is essential to understand if you want to maximize your profits and better communicate and engage with your community.

Some experts have said that email marketing still outperforms social media by nearly forty percent more, and I’m inclined to believe them. I get way more engagement from the readers of my emails than I ever have on social profiles or in my Facebook group.

Not only does email marketing generate more revenue, but it is also more productive as it is three times faster. It also gives you a direct line of communication to your customers and subscribers without having to be filtered through a third party.

But what makes an email funnel that works?

Here are the four main steps to creating an email funnel that works:

Step One: Create a Lead-Generating Opt-in

The first step to creating an email funnel that works is having a high-converting opt-in that builds brand awareness and attracts the right people to your community. There are a couple of moving parts to this:

• An opt-in form that starts the brand recognition process for you
• A relevant and useful lead magnet that attracts the people you want to work with

This is the front door of your funnel and your chance to make a good first impression. Once someone has opted in, you can then tag them as a new subscriber and start sending them their welcome message and other relevant information.

Step Two: The Nurture Sequence

The second step in your funnel is to nurture your new community members with great content. I think this is one place where a lot of email marketers fall short and get overwhelmed with not knowing exactly what to put in here.

You’ll want to make sure your new subscribers get content that teaches them about you, your business, the products or services you offer, and how those can benefit them. It has less to do with promotions, and more to do with building a stronger relationship with your customers to keep them around long-term. It also allows you to learn your audience better and form a deeper connection to craft engaging content and leads to more action.

Step Three: Persuasion and Promotion Emails

As you build the relationships with your readers and community members, you want to make sure they know what you have to offer and how it can benefit them. This is where you start presenting them with promotional content and other offers. Your goal in this step is to turn readers into customers.

And don’t forget the call to action! Make it easy and obvious so that your reader knows what action you want them to take next.

Step Four: Engage and Follow Up

This is the step in an email funnel that never ends. And yet, it’s often a weak link in many funnels.

You want to keep engaging and following up with your customers for as long as they show interest in what you have to say. I was listening to a podcast recently where the host and her guest were talking about how the standard used to be 7 messages before someone made a buying decision, and now it’s up to somewhere around 14 because of the sheer amount of information people are bombarded with on a daily basis.

Even after someone makes a purchase, you want to follow up with them and keep them engaged, because if you stop talking to them as soon as you have their money, they’ll easily forget who you are.

A few ways to follow up are to send thank you emails and invite them to other groups or platforms that teach them how to use your products or services even better. The more places and ways you can keep your audience engaged, the better and fewer chances for them to unsubscribe or become disinterested and just stop opening your emails.

Final Thoughts

This is a pretty brief overview but should give you enough to get started on creating your own email funnel so that you don’t waste even a single lead from the events that you participate in or the content upgrades you share on your blog.