How to Harness the Power of Email at Every Stage of Your Buyer’s Journey

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Email marketing does not need any introduction! It is one of the most committed, used, and successful mode of marketing for B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) industry. The popularity and dependence of emails are so vast that we can easily claim, about 103 trillion emails are sent globally every year. The number can be higher than that in the future, and we won’t be surprised!

Emails are one constant part of our life. You can count them on the list of daily chores. About 58 percent of email users check their emails on the phone the first thing in the morning. Well, no matter what charm social media has, emails have a consistent life with us. This is not a case of our personal lives only but the business world too.

Businesses largely depend on email marketing for lead generation and bringing more client consistency into the venture. They have a better return on investment through email marketing; thereby, 81 percent of companies rest their trust entirely in it.

Please know that email marketing is not that easy as you think of it. It has its own methods and successful hacks that companies have used for years and made their venture flourish. Any marketer has to run through different email marketing stages to finish it and harness the buyer’s journey in the funnel successfully. Let’s quickly go through the different stages of email marketing before we jump to actual substance.

What are the various stages of the buyer’s journey in email marketing?

Any buyer has to go through four different stages of email marketing, which includes:
#Stage 1: Awareness
#Stage 2: Consideration
#Stage 3: Purchase
#Stage 4: Loyalty

lucid

Image Source: https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/mastering-the-5-step-email-marketing-funnel

1. Awareness: The first and foremost important stage of the email marketing funnel is awareness. Any new site visitor looks forward to knowing your brand better. In this stage, you play the role of an informer, a guide, and an instructor who takes the individual through the brand business, history, products and services, and other relevant aspects. It would be best if you kept a focus on those individuals who genuinely seem interested and active. They have heard about your brand and subscribed to it. Now it’s your job to offer them something that motivated them enough to subscribe to your email campaign. About 74 percent of new subscriber look forward to receiving a welcome email immediately after they subscribe to your list. As a marketer, you may have plenty of doubts in mind while at the beginning of the process, like:

– How can I add maximum value to their emails?
– How can I help them without being too interfering?
– How to build their trust in your services?
– How to keep their subscription going smooth to your emails?

welcome

Image Source: https://blog.hive.co/the-most-mind-blowing-email-stats-of-2018/

Generally, the first stage of the email marketing funnel is the trickiest one, as you need to put more water into subscribers’ life. At the same time, you cannot push them too much as that can lead to more un-subscribers than subscribers. The first impression should be crisp yet subtle by all means as that builds your brand image for the next three stages to come.

2. Consideration: The second stage is focussed on the middle and bottom of the funnel subscribers. Basically, in this stage, you focus not only on new subscribers but also on the already existing ones. In case your company launches a product demo, it is likely that you send it to all the people who signed up for emails, also known as email drip campaigns. This will boost engagement, indeed, if not immediate sales. Your audience will be more interested to know your offer and may head to the next stage. Every stage will naturally have some already built-up challenges for you. Such as:

– How can you add value to the emails?
– What is so unique about your brand?
– Why should they continue to be the subscriber of your email campaign?
– Is your company’s products or services any different from your competitors?

The skill to position your product and services is vital at the consideration stage and likely to balance a bond between you and your subscriber. It will include educational and informative content supported by the transactional intent to add value to the overall buyer’s journey.

3. Purchase: The purchase or the buying stage is more focussed on the bottom of the funnel subscribers. These subscribers are gripped with enough information to make their final purchase decision. With an attractive offer at hand, you can motivate them to buy your products or services. Some of the doubts that you may face during the purchase stage are as follows:

– How can you make your offer unique and attractive?
– What are the conditions attached to your offer?
– What is the scope of your offer for the prospects?
– How will your product and services add value to the prospects’ life?

purchase

Image Source: https://www.enalito.com/email-marketing-strategy-for-2020/

There will always be confusion and challenges that will carry on your way, but as a marketer, you must have solutions for every stage to keep prospects engaged and remind them of the benefits of this bond.

Loyalty: The final stage of the email marketing funnel is about client loyalty. Once the prospect transforms into a client, he or she has to be loyal to the brand. These individuals are the ones who have passed through the email drip campaign and purchased your products.

The last stage is crucial as it enables your business to:

– Repeat purchase decisions
– Build brand commitment or loyalty
– Increase client turnover

Loyalty is a type of promotion that your clients carry forward for your brand without you having to advocate for it. You must design a loyalty programme that help your venture. In the loyalty stage, you may face some challenges, as mentioned below:

– What is the personalized offer you can give to your clients?
– Why should your clients advocate for your brand to others?
– How can you reward the customers for their loyalty?
– How to keep them engaged after making the purchase?

crocs

Image Source: https://www.business2community.com/email-marketing/9-winning-ecommerce-email-campaigns-you-should-borrow-today-02116490

Loyalty is the final stage for your company to achieve more and more. By building a good bond with your client, you can surely drive better sales.

How to harness or engage with buyers in their email marketing journey?

It is essential for any marketer to use the right trick to engage with buyers in their email marketing journey. Every client has a different journey and purchasing history. To engage with them at every stage, below are a few suggestions to ease your process. You can harness the engagement methods at your convenience:

Engagement for the awareness stage: In this stage, you can engage the clients in generating awareness of your brand by sending personalized emails. This helps in improving customer experience.

Benefits of sending personalized emails :
– More targeted approach
– Better relation building
– Value-adding concept
– Keeps audience educated

To engage in the awareness stage, you can use different types of content. Information should be shared in unique forms like articles, videos, and infographics to generate leads. It must be published by you in an exciting manner and not create monotony. It should also include a call-to-action with every email.

You can share a variety of content to spread awareness:
– Product research
– Blogs
– Infographics
– Newsletters
– eBooks
– Whitepapers
– Analysis reports
– Educational material

Engagement for the consideration stage :

In this stage, you have to be cautious and engage the clients by sharing brand value. You have to add value to their experience to lead them to sales.

Benefits of sending value-adding emails :

– Adds trust factor to the relationship
– Defines your brand tone and services
– Keeps transparency at the top
– Improves customer satisfaction

To make the consideration stage more successful, you can share different ideas through your emails. Such as:

– Free demo trials
– Promotional bonus
– Comparison whitepapers
– Expert guides
– Webinars Invitation
– Free access to podcast and videos

Engagement for the decision-making stage :

In this final stage of purchase-making, you can send emails that are in relation to closing the deal. You can do so by offering some client feedback and testimonials. This will humanize their experience and build faith in the decision to make a purchase.

Benefits of sending client review or feedback emails:

– Builds trust in the brand
– Improves sales rate
– Advocates the brand quality
– Engages the inactive prospects

To make the final stage successful, you can send emails that construct your brand’s image without you doing much for it. Some of the examples are as mentioned below:

– Products & services comparison
– Case study
– Client feedback/ testimonials

Concluding Note:
If you are looking forward to constructing an email marketing campaign into a significant success, then you must stay consistently involved in the buyer’s journey. Primarily, email marketing is aimed at sales by 62 percent, engagement by 50 percent, and brand awareness by 47 percent, and customer loyalty by 45 percent, as claimed by DMA. By thoroughly analyzing their expectations and different market competition, you can embrace the best alternatives and use them wisely for long-term success.

Diana Morris
Diana Morris is an experienced marketing manager at BizInfor with 9+ years of experience in the B2B market. She devotes her free time to writing blogs on small businesses, entrepreneurship, big data, and the latest marketing innovations. Diana helps Small and large-sized companies to establish long-term strategies to reach new clients.

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