A Working E-Mail Marketing Funnel

I’m not crazy about the term “marketing funnel.” I think this term is wildly misused and misunderstood by the vast majority of business owners—and some marketers who are out there selling it. But, as a business owner myself, I understand the importance of building a complete system to get the job done.

Some people say, “Scott you start out with brand messaging, but that alone won’t bring in sales!”  That’s correct, it won’t if you just leave it in a folder somewhere. So let’s talk about the COMPLETE system and how clear messaging plays a vital role. To do this, we must understand the three phases of marketing itself — Curiosity, Enlightenment and Commitment.

If those sound familiar, you’ve been through all of them for many of your purchases and of course, all of your human relationships evolve in this way. 

Allow me to explain.  

Curiosity — I don’t know you, you don’t know me BUT something in our interaction makes one of us CURIOUS enough to lean in and ask to learn more. This is why clear brand messaging is SO important because you need a great clear ONE LINER to make customers curious.And of course, this one liner is NOT about you, it’s about THEM and THEIR hero’s journey. The StoryBrand framework creates the BEST one liners I’ve ever seen.  

Enlightenment — This is our “dating” phase where we’re learning about each other. Does she LOVE coupons? Does he load the dishwasher the wrong way (yes, there actually is a wrong way). Are we you know, compatible? In human relationships, all of the fun stuff comes out during this phase. In marketing, we use a very clear wireframe landing pagetelling exactly the right story with exactly the right words to begin the enlightenment phase. Then we create a good lead generator, a pdf or video with good value for the customer so they will feel very comfortable giving us their E-MAIL address (Est worth about $25) in exchange for it. Then our nurturing emails (value-add) can allow customers to spend even more time with our brand—without much pressure to sell.  

Commitment — Oh, wow, the big day when you pop the question and she says YES! And of course true commitment becomes marriage and two people are joined as one — just magical!  In marketing, it’s not quite that cool but this is when the customer makes the decision to trust your brand enough to spend their money.  And yes, bells ring on cash registers and churches when we’ve reached the commitment phase. This is about GOOD sales e-mails that close the deal with a great offer that helps the hero (customer) get to the top of their mountain and go through that all-important identity transformation.  

Or as Alex Hormosi (author of $100M Deals and $100 Leads) says “GOOD Branding is a deliberate pairing of our business with GOOD outcomes for ideal customers.”  Ireally like that.  

So let’s recap the marketing funnel —

1. StoryBrand Messaging and a Clear One Liner
2. Wireframed Landing Page and PDF Lead Generator
3. Email Campaigns

Simple, right?  And there are lots of other cool ways to fill the top of your amazing marketing funnel without annoying people who we don’t really want to date. These are:

  • PR — We receive the visibility and reach of media without bothering anyone.  I love it!
  • Social Media — As long as you talk about them while they are looking at themselves in this self-curated mirror, you’re good. To be good at social media, you have to really understand human narcissism. 
  • Blogs and Visual Content — Again, they have to be VALUABLE, well-written and brief. 
  • Videos — Absolutely vital because not all people like to do the reading thing so much. Sad, but nonetheless true. 

I’ve always said that I like magnets better than funnels and this is what I’m talking about – the top of the funnel, the place that no over promising, lead generating, spamming marketers ever look twice. You want to have a healthy top of the funnel, but at the same time you want to care about the people going in there and think of every single one of them as a potential customer—and fan of your brand. I don’t believe in disposable communications. If you’re making the effort to communicate and send something, make sure they can take advantage or (here’s a wild idea) —don’t send it out. 

So that’s a really good, easy to build marketing funnel for any business done the right way. Don’t worry there are plenty of bad marketers in the world ready to mis-educate companies into doing it the wrong way (like spamming all of your LinkedIn contacts for example to get guilt-based business meetings).

Funnels are great (yes, magnets are even better to fill the top) and well-designed funnels are absolutely necessary to win in the marketplace.