The sales funnel is crucial for marketers as it represents the customer’s journey from first hearing of the brand to becoming its most passionate advocate. Email marketing emerges as a powerful, versatile tool that can guide potential customers through each stage of this transformative process.
Unlike other marketing channels, email provides a direct, personalized communication pathway that can be precisely tailored to meet prospects' evolving needs and expectations. That is why we decided to walk you through the best practices for using email marketing in the sales funnel.
Table of contents
Email marketing in the sales funnel step-by-step
Awareness Stage - first contact and capturing initial attention
Understanding Sales Funnel
The sales funnel is not a linear path but a dynamic journey with multiple touchpoints a customer has with your brand. Traditional models divide this journey into stages: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Conversion, Retention, and Advocacy.
Email marketing uniquely positions itself to nurture relationships across these stages, delivering targeted, timely content that resonates with recipients at each critical phase.
Email marketing in the sales funnel step-by-step
As we’ve already stated, email marketing can be used in every step of the sales funnel. Let’s now discuss how to use it separately in each stage.
Awareness Stage - first contact and capturing initial attention
Customers at the awareness stage are at the point of the first touchpoint with your brand.
At the true awareness stage, most potential customers haven't signed up for your email list yet. They're just becoming aware that your business exists or that they have a problem you could solve.
At this point, you’ll need to focus on methods to get people to sign up for your email list in the first place. It’s important to introduce your brand well and provide value. You can create compelling lead magnets that address your subscribers’ pain points. To promote such lead magnets, you can use your social media channels, blog posts, paid ads, industry forums, or partner websites.
You can also try to appear on platforms like Really Good Emails so that people know your newsletters are visually attractive and valuable. Or, you can partner with another brand so that they mention your brand in their newsletters. Either way, you need to make a good first impression on your potential subscribers.
The moment of signing up for your list shows at least basic awareness and minimal interest, marking the transition from pure awareness to the early interest stage. People need to notice your brand enough to find your signup form and take intentional action to join. They also need to decide your content might be valuable to them and trust you enough to share their email address.
Interest Stage
You already have people subscribed to your list, now you have to really pick their interest. Remember, it’s not the sales moment yet, so our main goal is not to encourage people to purchase your product. Your email template should be eye-catching, and your content should be light and educational.
Wildwonder
In the example above, Wildwonder, a prebiotic + probiotic sparkling drink brand, did a great job with their welcome emails. They created a colorful and attractive email layout.
They explained what you may expect from their emails. And, they even included a discount code as an example of their “exclusive deals”. The whole email is kept in a light, casual tone, which lets subscribers know this brand is cool and customer-friendly.
MASA
During the interest stage, you should also nurture the relationship you have with them by sending educational content that touches their pain points. You want to build authority in the subject. When the time comes, it should be your products or services that come to people’s minds when they’re looking for specific solutions.
You can also use custom fields to segment your audience. Owing to that, you will send more targeted emails depending on various criteria, for example, the industry or location.
The email from MASA, a tortilla chips producer, is a great example of an email campaign at the interest stage of the sales funnel. The main topic of this email is avocado oil. The message includes some shocking facts about how avocado oil may not be that beneficial and how to make sure it is edible.
It is content not directly related to tortilla chips, but it still relates to food. This email provides educational and useful content, showing MASA is conscious about the quality of food products and has the expertise to educate others about it.
At the end, they make a short mention of their products. But, it’s only a brief reminder of what they do. They added a CTA button in case someone is already interested in making the purchase, even at this point of the sales funnel.
Consideration Stage
At the consideration stage, subscribers are evaluating whether your solution meets their needs. That is why you should still nurture the relationship with them and build their trust. It’s still not the moment to push sales. So, you need to stop yourself from sending strongly persuasive emails focused on convincing people to buy.
Now it’s time to send your customers testimonials and reviews, detailed case studies, texts, or videos showcasing the possibilities of your products. You can even include some comparative content highlighting your unique advantages.
A well-crafted series of emails can address potential objections, showcase social proof, and guide prospects toward understanding your solution's unique value proposition.
Surreal, a healthy cereal brand, decided to include their customers’ opinions in their consideration stage email campaign. These reviews emphasize the Surreal cereal is a healthy, low-carb, but still incredibly tasty option.
Take a look at their CTA button - “Fill my bowl”. It is an unconventional phrase, but grabs attention, shows the benefit, and is really illustrative. They also added the FOMO by stating their product is selling fast.
Conversion Stage
We’re finally at the stage where it’s time to encourage subscribers to make a purchase. You need to use strategic persuasion techniques to convert interested prospects. It’s all about a delicate balance of persuasion and value demonstration.
You can include in your emails elements like time-sensitive offers, exclusive discounts, clear calls-to-action, and risk-reduction elements like guarantees or free trials. You can also highlight key features and benefits, and offer product demos or free consultations.
This email campaign sent by Oakley is a brilliant example of a conversion stage message. At first glance, we can see they are advertising their 25% off October deals, which will end soon given the countdown timer.
Then, we have some categories like bestsellers, sunglasses, and customized options displayed. Oakley ends their campaign with risk-reduction elements. They mention free shipping, free returns, the “buy online, pick up in store” and store locator options, to convince people to buy.
Retention Stage
At the retention stage, the post-purchase communication has to be handled well to maintain customer engagement and make them stay. You want to ensure buyer satisfaction and prevent their remorse. Remember that retention actually starts with a pleasant experience with your transactional email related to the purchase.
You also may ask customers to give their feedback on the product they purchased. Or, you can suggest complementary products or services.
If you run a SaaS company, you need to provide onboarding support and offer additional product education to make sure your users have a good start with your services. Share tips, how-to guides, or even behind-the-scenes content.
You can use automated email sequences to guide new customers through initial product usage. It will reduce your manual work because everything will be sent automatically just as you designed it. If you predict what your customers may need at the beginning of their journey with your product, you can set an email sequence to be sent in certain time intervals to minimize potential user frustration. A well-taken care of customer is a satisfied, long-term customer.
Loyalty & Rewards Programs
Another strategy for the retention stage is to create loyalty programs that entice people to stay with your brand. We will show you how it can be done based on the example of the MyMcDonald’s Rewards program.
The email above informs about the number of newly earned points, as well as the total balance, which can be exchanged for a free meal. You can click the CTA button and view rewards to be collected in their restaurant.
The email itself has a very simple design - a white background, and branded colors, and is not overwhelming with content. It contains only the most important information and visually appealing pictures of their food.
The McDonald's rewards program nurtures customer loyalty to the brand by offering points collected while ordering their products, which can then be redeemed for free meals. The more you buy, the more you can get later. Hence there's a greater likelihood that someone will choose McDonald's again instead of another restaurant.
In addition, McDonald's rewards points can be exchanged for a specific product - a sandwich, fries, or a drink. So, there is a high probability that a customer picking up their reward will also order something else, which they will need to pay for. But that means additional points, so the sales sequence will be repeated.
Advocacy Stage
We’ve reached the pinnacle of the sales funnel - the advocacy stage. It’s the point where your email communication should be aimed at turning existing customers into brand advocates.
To do so, you can promote your referral programs, offering rewards for referring friends or sharing reviews. You can also recognize and reward loyal customers, and send them special offers, discounts, or rewards in return for accumulated points. Another option is to encourage user-generated content - ask for reviews and stories you can later feature on your website.
In the example above, Going, a flight deal subscription service, advertises its referral program. The email layout is simple and consistent with the brand aesthetics. The recipient gets only the most essential information, so they are not overwhelmed by the amount of data in the message.
The first thing that catches our attention is the title - “Tell three friends, earn $100”. Then, Going explains in three simple steps how their referral program works and how you can easily refer your friends.
It’s a win-win situation as the customer earns money by recommending the product with which they are satisfied, and the company expands its customer base at a relatively small cost.
Measurement and Optimization
Once you have your email campaigns prepared and designed for each of the sales funnel stages, you need to constantly monitor and optimize their performance.
Key performance indicators
To check the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, these are the metrics you should follow:
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- Bounce rate
- Conversion rates
- List growth
- Spam rate
- Unsubscribe rate
When using Elastic Email, you can check all the crucial email marketing metrics like opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and list growth.
For spam rate, we recommend using the Google Postmaster tool, whereas conversions can be checked in Google Analytics provided you have UTMs added to the links in your emails. Luckily, when creating an email campaign in Elastic Email, you’ll find a built-in UTM generator.
You might also consider including additional metrics for your business analytics such as retention, lifetime value, and churn. Customer retention is your business’s ability to turn a customer into a repetitive buyer and prevent them from switching to one of your competitors.
The easiest formula for customer retention rate is CRR= [(CE-CN)/CS] x 100. In this formula, CE stands for the number of customers at the end of the period, CN is the number of new customers during the period, and CS is the number of customers at the start of the period.
The customer lifetime value is the estimated revenue a customer will generate throughout their lifespan as a customer. It can be calculated by combining the average amount spent on a purchase, the number of purchases per customer during a year, and the average length of the customer relationship in years.
The churn rate is the percentage of customers who decide to leave and no longer buy your products or use your services. The churn rate is calculated by dividing the churned customers by the total number of customers at the beginning of the period: CR = (customers lost / total customers) x 100.
Conclusion
Email marketing remains a powerful, cost-effective method of guiding potential customers through the sales funnel. Email is not just a communication channel—it's a relationship-building platform that, when used strategically, can transform casual subscribers into passionate brand advocates.
By understanding each stage's unique requirements and delivering high quality content, businesses can create meaningful connections that exceed traditional marketing approaches.
Ula Chwesiuk
Ula is a content creator at Elastic Email. She is passionate about marketing, creative writing and language learning. Outside of work, Ula likes to travel, try new recipes and go to concerts.
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