How to Work a Sales Funnel In Your Email Campaign

As a content creator you know how important it is to grow your email list as a way to acquire more business.

And even though, on average, people can send and receive up to 361 emails a day, email marketing still generates the biggest return on investment – up to 4,200% ROI.

It's the best form of communication between the content creator side and the consumer side. This means it's a perfect platform to create a drip campaign to generate sales and more profits.

This drip campaign will be the start of your sales funnel, helping you turn warm leads into buyers.

But, where do you start? We'll go over the steps I took as a digital marketer and writer, to promote my six-figure freelance course, Write Your Way to Your First $1k.

1. Create a Lead Magnet that Relates to Your Product

A popular method to get your product out there for the masses is to give away a free sample of it.

For example, Haute Stock, a stock photo subscription site, offers free photos for signing up to their newsletter.

After signing up, you continue to get one free photo every month.

By giving limited access to your product, it can entice subscribers to go ahead and purchase your full package.

This can also convince subscribers that what you have to offer is credible, useful and of excellent quality.

To help encourage sales of my freelancing course, I made a free six-day email course called Get Paid to Write Online. This gives subscribers a free bite-size version of my paid course.

They can try it out, get to know my writing style, and see what I have to offer. And if the subscriber finishes the course and still needs more guidance, the next logical thing to do is sign up for my full, paid course.

Other freelancers are doing this also.

The copywriters of Copy That! has a free copywriting course the welcomes new people into the types of digital products they create.

Having a sample lesson, course, or free access to a digital product like a plugin, a theme or stock photos as your lead magnet can dramatically help you promote your brand and increase your conversion rate.

2. Provide Value Based Emails and Pitch Emails

For you to really start earning a passive income from your products you need to have an automated system to make it happen.

Whether you use Convertkit like I do other software like Get Response or Beehiiiv, you need a place to create a series of automated emails.

You don't want to give away too much valuable information or else subscribers won't need to buy your course, product or digital product.

You also shouldn't constantly pitch them your product or services as this can turn off subscribers and generate high a unsubscribe rate.

So, what's the right balance between value based-emails and pitch-based emails? If you decide to do a welcome series for your free sample or an actual course like I did, you'll want to space out your pitch emails.

For me, while my course material spans six days, my subscribers actually get a series of 40+ emails. I unlock a sample lesson from my course on day seven and a OTO offer of a deal for my course and another product.

If a subscriber doesn't opt-into my course, they are then given a series of weekly emails spaced over three weeks as a way to provide more valuable information and to make a deeper connection with me.

3. Incorporate the Zeigarnik Effect in Your Emails

As people, we like completion. We avoid incomplete tasks and whenever possible we strive to complete something before moving on.

A Russian psychologist, Bulma Zeigarnik, discovered in the 1920's that the human brain doesn't like incomplete tasks. We keep thinking about these incomplete tasks until they are finished.

This has been termed the Zeigarnik Effect and it's a powerful marketing tactic for product development and advertisement.

For your sales funnel you can incorporate this psychological effect in different areas of your campaign.

1. Your Email Subject Line

An effective way to increase open rates is to pique the curiosity factor of your subscribers.

For example, creator Eve Arnold of the Part-Time Creator Club sends out emails with cliffhanger titles that make you want to find out what she's talking about.

To entice your subscribers to open your free course lessons or pitch emails, try creating a cliffhanger, or up the curiosity factor in your email subject line.

2. In Your Email Campaign

Typically in an automated email series, open rates decline over time. To encourage a healthy open rate, provide value in each email.

Don't just repurpose an old blog post. Instead, offer discussion or ask a question to encourage feedback.

For my email campaigns I work on having one main call-to-action.

This might be to follow me on X, watch a Youtube video or check out my latest product.

4. Follow Up With Purchases

Retaining your customers is just as important as acquiring leads. They are the ones who bought your product and they are the ones who might one day vouch for your product and become loyal customers.

To nurture this relationship, have a follow-up system in place.

For example, whenever someone buys my course, I manually email him or her a thank you from my personal email account (not automated) and invite the new buyer to our private Facebook group.

Sure, this takes a few minutes of my time and is hardly what would be called passive.

But, it shows that you truly value your customers – people feel they made a purchase from another person that cares about their success (I really do) and not just a faceless business.

Another way to follow up is to always be accessible. Whether it's on X or through an Instagram Live, being available can help delight and retain your customers.

Wrapping It Up

Having an automated drip campaign is the perfect backdrop to your sales funnel. You can strategically create value for your subscribers while also pitching to them periodically.

From creating a lead magnet that relates to your product to using a fundamental psychological tactic to finally setting up a plan to retain your customers, email marketing can be the perfect method to generate long-term sales.

Over to you – have you thought about how you will create your sales funnel in your email marketing campaign?