8 Marketing Funnel Automation Best Practices

You're running a marketing campaign and nurturing leads, but you need more time. There are so many moving parts. Emails need to be sent. Blogs need to be written. Social media posts need to be created. Incorporating an AI marketing strategy can streamline these tasks, but all of this is still taking forever. And even when you finally get everything organized, you’re still unsure if you have every detail covered. What if you forgot something, and it ruined your campaign? It’s enough to give anyone anxiety. Book a free demo today to learn how our omnichannel marketing platform can help you gain a competitive edge, streamline your marketing efforts, and deliver outstanding results.

What is Marketing Funnel Automation?

A marketing funnel is a model that illustrates the theoretical stages of the customer journey. It helps to visualize how prospects move from learning about your business to making a purchase.

Different types of marketing funnels exist. For example, there are funnels for sales pages, email opt-ins, and even membership sites. Each one has its unique structure and goals. However, they all share the same basic concept:

• Attracting the right prospects
• Nurturing them
• Guiding them to purchase

The Importance of Marketing Funnel Automation

Online companies must be in tune with the customer journey to optimize sales and boost profits. As a business owner or marketer, you must understand how to capture an individual’s attention and convince them to purchase. But how do you do that?

One way to shape the customer journey is by designing a marketing funnel. A marketing funnel is a tool that can help convert leads and increase sales. In this article, we explain what a marketing funnel is, describe why it’s important, and go over the stages of a marketing funnel. Read on to learn more about marketing funnels.

Marketing Funnel Automation Drives Real Results

Over 51% of companies are currently using marketing automation. The global marketing automation market is expected to reach $8.42 billion by 2027. 45% of small businesses currently use marketing automation tools. 80% of consumers are likelier to purchase from brands that offer personalized experiences. 70% of marketers plan to increase their use of automation tools in 2024.

Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. 63% of companies outgrowing their competitors use marketing automation. Improving customer experience (43%), enabling better use of working hours (38%), and better decision-making (35%) are the most commonly reported advantages of using marketing automation among surveyed marketers.

The Stages of a Sales Funnel

Understanding the buyer's psychology and journey will allow you to craft your offer and personalize your message to what they’re looking for. The famous AIDA model created by E. St. Elmo Lewis breaks the customer journey into these four stages:

• Awareness: When a prospect becomes aware of your business
• Interest: The prospect is interested in what you have to offer
• Desire: The prospect believes your product or service fits them well.
• Action: The prospect takes action to become a customer

The funnel starts widest at the top and becomes increasingly narrow at the bottom. Prospects are introduced to your brand at the top. Each stage disqualifies bad-fit prospects and guides the qualified leads to the bottom of the funnel. Automation can be implemented at every step of the funnel.

Top of the Funnel – Awareness

At the beginning of a customer’s journey, a person may face a specific problem. The customer discovers your business through a Google search or advertisement. They will be looking for solutions to their problem. At this stage, people are just becoming aware of the problem and are curious about why it occurs.

• A prospect for a personal trainer might ask, “Why am you gaining weight?”
• A lead for an outsourced HR firm might ask, “Why do you struggle to retain employees?”
• A prospective customer for an electricity provider may ask, “Why is yourelectricity bill so high?”

Your job is to educate them on the problem and engage them on how they could solve it. Consider producing content that drives awareness of the problem, such as “5 fat-loss mistakes” or “7 reasons why your best employees quit.”

Middle of the Funnel – Interest

The prospect realizes how their problem affects their life or business and wants to know solutions that can fix it.

Questions That The Prospect Might Ask Are:

• How can I lose weight?
• How can I retain and nurture talent in my company?
• How can I reduce my electricity bill?

In-depth guides, how-to articles, and other thoughtful pieces perform best in the middle of the funnel.

Bottom of the Funnel – Desire and Action

At the bottom of the funnel, your prospect understands the problem and the solution they need. Now they will decide who to buy from. By now, your customer has trust in your expertise. You’ve clarified that the problem is a big deal and that solving it is urgent. You’ve positioned your product or service as the solution.

Prospects In This Stage May Ask:

• Does Business A offer a better solution than Business B?
• Who has the best warranty?
• Which business is more affordable?

Give them everything they need to decide to reinforce their trust in you. Good content could include a product trial, live demos, customer testimonials, side-by-side product comparisons, and feature analyses.

Why are Marketing Funnels Important?

The marketing funnel is important for several reasons. It helps businesses prioritize and execute a productive marketing strategy. Below are some of the benefits of creating a marketing funnel for your business:

• Streamline The Customer Journey: The marketing funnel attracts prospects and converts them into paying customers. Clearly defined steps in the customer journey make it easier for your or prospective customers to take the desired action.
• Easily Track Analytics: A marketing funnel makes tracking and reviewing analytics easier, as you can see which parts of the customer journey generate the most conversions and which segments are failing.
• Identify Areas For Improvement Within Your Marketing Strategy: With clearly defined stages in a marketing funnel, you can make tweaks and improvements necessary to optimize your company’s marketing strategy.

Familiarity with the different parts of the customer journey is important; that is where a digital marketing funnel can be helpful. If you are wondering what a marketing funnel is, it describes moving customers from learning about your business to purchasing. You need to use different marketing strategies depending on where the lead is in the customer funnel. That is why dividing a digital marketing funnel into marketing funnel stages is helpful.

If You Want to Increase Your Success Rate with Lead Generation

Some of the stages you need to think about include:

Awareness stage

Awareness is the first stage of the funnel. This is where potential customers are attracted to your business through marketing campaigns, product research, and discovery. There are different ways you can get customers interested in your industry. Use digital marketing, attend trade shows, or even hold specific events for certain prospective customers.

Some helpful digital marketing strategies include blog posts, white papers, and infographics. Use social media, search engine optimization, and specific media mentions. Lead generation is essential here, as you can collect information about your potential customers and add them to a lead management system. Using data tracking, you can move them down the funnel.

Interest or Consideration Stage

Now that you have people interested in learning more about your business, they are part of the interest stage. They want to learn more about your company, brand, products, and services. This is your opportunity to educate potential customers. You might provide your target audience with helpful information related to the details of your products and services, and you could also share important research about what your business does.

This is also an opportunity for your brain to develop strong relationships with potential customers. Keep track of interactions with your leads in a database to determine their position in the sales funnel. You should use strategies to nurture leads through email drip campaigns, content that is more targeted around their interests, and mentions that relate to products and services in which they have shown interest in the past. You can turn new customers into regulars if you develop a strong relationship with customers and clients. This is one of the most important final stages of marketing.

Desire Stage

If your potential customers reach the desired stage of your digital buying process, they are full-blown prospects. You have grabbed their attention, shared important information about your brand, and convinced them that it might be worth their while to make a purchase. At the same time, they might still need to be ready to make a purchase. They must ensure that your products and services are the perfect solutions for their needs. They will assess the strength of your offer, compare it to their budget, and decide what type of outcome they should expect from your products and services.

Important marketing strategies can help you convince your potential customers to purchase. For example, you can share testimonials from other customers and clients. Direct them to various price pages to learn more about their options. You can even use case studies to convince potential customers that your products and services are worth it. If you want to close the sale, give them a discount code, particularly if you think it will convince them to return for future purchases.

These are a Few of the Most Important Stages of the Digital Sales Funnel

You must consider structuring your marketing efforts around different parts of your customer marketing funnel. This will help you convince your customers to make a purchase.

Action Stage

The action stage is where prospects convert into customers. This is when they decide to purchase, sign up for a service, or take whatever action your marketing and sales funnel has guided them toward.

Your marketing efforts should make the purchasing process as smooth as possible. This might include:

• Clear and compelling calls-to-action (CTAs)
• Streamlined checkout processes
• Easily accessible customer support
• Transparent pricing and product information
• Limited-time offers or incentives to encourage immediate action
• Minimizing any friction that might cause potential customers to abandon their purchase is - - - crucial.

Remember, even after reaching this stage, some prospects might need a final push to complete the action.

Loyalty Stage

The loyalty stage is often overlooked but is crucial for long-term business success. This stage focuses on retaining and turning existing customers into loyal customers and potential brand advocates.

Key Strategies For The Loyalty Stage Include:

• Customer Retention: Implement loyalty programs to engage and satisfy existing customers. These programs could include loyalty rewards, exclusive offers, or premium support.
• Upselling And Cross-Selling: Offer complementary products or upgraded services to increase customer lifetime value (CLV).
• Customer Feedback: Regularly solicit and act on customer feedback to improve your products and services.
• Personalized Communication: Use data from previous interactions to provide tailored recommendations and communications.
• Referral Programs: Encourage satisfied customers to become brand advocates by referring new customers, often with incentives for successful referrals.

Focusing on the loyalty stage can create a virtuous cycle in which satisfied existing customers continue to purchase and help fill the top of your marketing and sales funnel with new prospects.

Types of Marketing Funnels

There are many different types of marketing funnels. We'll discuss 5 of them here.

• The Sales Letter Funnel: Is a traditional type of marketing funnel. It utilizes a long sales form letter to sell a service or product. Along with the main sell, it can include upsells and downsells.
• The Squeeze Page Funnel: Is used to pique the curiosity of the prospective buyer. It is a simple page funnel designed to get the visitor to give you their email address. There are no fancy pictures or extra links.
• A Curiosity-Based Headline: Is used to get the readers' attention. The visitor must enter their email address and click submit to get an answer to the question. Squeeze pages are very effective for attracting a new audience. A good squeeze page typically has a high conversion rate.
• The Membership Funnel: Has a membership site. The visitor must pay for this. Often, it includes paid newsletters. These memberships can be sold through a webinar, a video, or a sales letter.
• The Survey Funnel: Has two main goals. The first goal is to engage your visitor. Questions are asked, and there are micro-commitments. The second goal is to determine who your visitor is. That way, different sales pitches can be made based on who they are.

Products and services can also be marketed with a video sales letter funnel. In this type of marketing funnel, the video makes the sale. A video sales letter also offers an opportunity for an upsell. As you assemble your marketing funnel, you must think carefully about your target market. After all, as you start a business, you must consider how your marketing funnel can set you up for success. For example, are you trying to target other businesses as my clients? Or are you trying to target individual consumers?

There are Some Significant Differences Between B2B And B2C Marketing Funnels

Some of the most important points you need to keep in mind include:

The sales cycle in the B2B world is significantly longer than in B2C. You must be more patient as you move your clients down the funnel if you target other businesses. As you set up your funnel, you will target an entire group if you want other companies to become your customers. If you’re marketing in the B2C world, you will target individuals. Your social media strategy will also be different in the B2B world compared to the B2C world. In the B2B world, the most popular social media network is LinkedIn. If you’re targeting other consumers, your social media platforms include:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

Because the sales cycle in the B2B world is longer, these marketing funnels are generally divided into more stages. For example, the B2C funnel is usually divided into awareness, interest, and desire. In the B2B world, the funnel is divided into:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Consideration
• Intent
• Evaluation

Funnels are generally divided into stages because marketing strategies will vary depending on the stage your lead is at. You must think carefully about how you structure your digital strategy depending on your target market. You may re-evaluate your funnel occasionally to ensure you use the right strategy.

Related Reading

• AI Email Marketing Tools
• AI Marketing Strategy
• AI Email Marketing
• AI Content Marketing

8 Marketing Funnel Automation Best Practices

1. Define Your Marketing Funnel Automation Goals to Succeed

Before an organization can successfully navigate the marketing automation funnel, it needs to establish the goals of its efforts. This involves creating a marketing strategy with defined objectives and documenting the plan for success. Research has found that marketers are a whopping 414% more likely to report success when documenting their digital marketing strategy.

Defining the goals of a marketing automation funnel helps create a focused plan that can improve efficiency and funnel performance. For example, if a business aims to increase sales, it might define its marketing funnel automation goal to nurture leads until they are ready to purchase. With this objective, the business can create targeted automated email campaigns to boost conversions and improve sales.

2. Map the Customer Journey to Improve Marketing Funnel Automation

Mapping the customer journey related to your marketing funnel automation is critical. Every business has different customers with unique behaviors, aspirations, and pain points. Understanding these elements allows you to create better-targeted marketing automation to improve funnel performance. This process involves identifying the various customer segments and outlining their typical journey as they transition through the stages of your marketing funnel. It’s also helpful to detail the different types of content they consume along the way and how to automate delivery to improve the customer experience.

For example, a business that sells software may identify a segment of customers who have recently downloaded a free trial version of their product. Upon mapping the customer journey for this group, they may discover that users typically seek installation guides, tutorials, and other educational content before purchasing. With this knowledge, the business can create automated marketing campaigns that deliver relevant content to target audience members as they progress through the buying cycle. Documenting these processes will improve marketing funnel automation efficiency and performance.

3. Use Technology to Improve Marketing Funnel Automation

Automation technologies can significantly improve your marketing funnel automation. These tools can help gather and analyze customer data to create actionable insights that improve funnel performance. For example, application programming interfaces (APIs) can pull customer data from various relevant sources, including:

• Website analytics
• Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
• Social media platforms

This actionable business intelligence helps brands segment target audiences, target messaging, and tailor valuable content and offerings.

4. Leverage AI and Machine Learning to Enhance Marketing Funnel Automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can significantly enhance your marketing automation. These technologies can analyze data to anticipate customer behavior, allowing you to tailor campaigns for each individual. You can improve your marketing impact by delivering the right message at the perfect moment.

For example, say you run an online store that sells sporting goods. A customer visits your website and browses a few pages of information on tennis rackets before leaving without making a purchase. A few days later, they received your email with a special offer on tennis rackets. This automated email was triggered by the customer’s behavior on your website. It is much more relevant than a generic follow-up encouraging them to return to your site. Using AI and automation to create personalized marketing messages, you can improve your open rates, click-through rates, and overall conversions.

5. Build a Digital Relevancy Map for Marketing Funnel Automation

A digital relevancy map provides a framework for creating relevant content for key customer segments at different funnel stages.

• Identify the specific customer segments that are important to your business.
• Outline the types of content they prefer, how they use it, and the stages of the funnel they correspond with.
• Create automated marketing processes to deliver the right content to these segments as they transition through your marketing funnel.

6. Use A/B Testing to Optimize Marketing Funnel Automation

A/B testing (split testing) optimizes automated marketing campaigns and improves performance. The process involves creating two variations of a marketing asset:

• An email
• Landing page
• Etc
• Running tests to see which performs better.

With marketing funnel automation, A/B tests can be particularly useful for improving the efficiency of automated processes. You can create variations of email content, subject lines, and calls to action to discover which nurtures leads more effectively through your marketing funnel.

7. Prioritize Content for Marketing Funnel Automation Success

Content is still king when mastering the marketing automation funnel and driving a customer personalization strategy. Choose a user-friendly marketing automation platform as a central hub for:

• Content planning
• Ideation
• Collaboration
• Storage

This will be a massive aid in streamlining the end-to-end content lifecycle, and it will also help eliminate silos and reduce costs.

8. Choose the Right Marketing Automation Solution

To establish and evolve a funnel that maximizes conversions, choose a marketing automation. Solution that supports all of the following:

• Streamlined campaign management
• Personalized customer experiences
• Lead nurturing through automating and optimizing activities (e.g., email campaigns, personalized content recommendations, timely follow-ups, etc.)
• Data-driven insights and optimization
• Omnichannel engagement

Create Personalized Experiences That Drive Loyalty and Growth with Rengage's Omnichannel Marketing Platform

Rengage is a comprehensive solution designed to seamlessly manage and enhance customer journeys. It provides insights and measurable outcomes without the need for coding skills. We focus on accelerating the customer journey from onboarding and activation to conversion and churn, enabling customers to unlock untapped revenue from existing users with ease.

Our platform allows you to:

• Gain valuable insights into your segments
• Run campaigns efficiently using an intuitive journey manager
• Measure the impact of your journeys on user conversion through our innovative journey moments and journey builder features

Book a Free Demo

If you're ready to transform your customer interactions into personalized experiences that drive loyalty and growth, Rengage is your platform. With Rengage, you can take your marketing strategy to the next level and achieve sustainable growth in today's competitive landscape.

Book a free demo today to learn how our omnichannel marketing platform can help you gain a competitive edge, streamline your marketing efforts, and deliver outstanding results.