A sales funnel makes your marketing far more effective because with it, you can lead every prospect from the initial interest (top of the funnel) right to the purchase/subscription (bottom of the funnel). To make it even more effective, you can automate the vast majority of what’s going on within the sales funnel with marketing automation features. And that’s what we want to discuss in this post.
In general, the sales funnel is a representation of what the sales process looks like in your company. Typically, there are three main stages of a sales funnel:
- TOFU (top of the funnel – initial interest)
- MOFU (middle of the funnel, consideration)
- BOFU (bottom of the funnel, purchase)
At each of these stages, some activities happen. For instance, in the TOFU stage, clients look for more information – they read Facebook groups, blog posts, and guides. In the MOFU stage, they usually know what kind of product/service they need, and they start comparing available options. Finally, there’s the BOFU stage, where the purchase is made.
You, as a company owner, can guide your clients down the sales funnel to encourage as many of them as possible to place an order with your company.
Define your sales funnel
The first stage to automate your sales funnel is to define it. Divide your entire sales process into small actions and events that eventually lead to closing the deal. To show you what we mean, here’s how such a funnel can look like (of course, in a simplified form):
| TOFU | The client sees our ad on Google They click it and go to a blog post about the service They see an exit pop-up encouraging them to leave their email address |
| MOFU | The client reads another blog posts – comparison of our tool vs. the competition They go back to Google and see the retargeting ad They also receive a promotional email with a free guide for them to download |
| BOFU | The client clicks the ad again They apply for a free trial period with our platform |
Of course, in real life, sales funnels are more complicated, but you get the general idea. It’s all about assisting your client in their journey to find the solution to their problems.
ANALYZE EVERY POSSIBLE ACTION
Once you have your list, you need to analyze every single activity and event. Can they be automated? Usually, the answer is yes; all you need is a good marketing automation platform. Does your funnel include promotional emails or newsletters? You can automate them! Does it comprise text messages sent to your prospect’s phone? They can surely be automated.
There is no one-fits-all template you can simply copy-paste to your company. It all depends on the sales process and the profile of your company. In short – you need to outline your sales funnel and then automate every possible element within it; that’s the shortest answer to the question in the title of this post.
However, there are some typical elements of every sales funnel that can be automated with a good marketing automation platform. Let’s have a look at them.
It all starts with marketing automation scenarios
You can think of your sales funnel as a scenario with a clear beginning and end. Marketing automation scenarios comprise sets of actions taken by your customers and reactions from your company. For instance, if you have a new visitor to your website, you can ask them to approve push notifications from your company. If they give you consent, you can use this communication channel in the next stage of the funnel, just like in the screen below:
You can create both short and simple and long and complex marketing automation scenarios; it all depends on your needs and ideas. However, if you want to automate the entire sales funnel in your company, you need to have at least one such scenario in place.
Organize your client databases
Every effective sales funnel requires a clean and organized database of both current and potential clients. Typically, companies use CRM systems for that, but you can also use a built-in solution available within a marketing automation platform.
At iPresso, we have two platforms that enable effective management of your client data:
- Contact database management (more straightforward solution)
- Customer Data Platform (more advanced solution)
Once you have all your client data organized in one place, you can plan future marketing activities and set more detailed and more effective automation scenarios.
Automate email marketing
Almost every sales funnel includes at least one email sent to your prospect. With our platform, you can automate both promotional emails and newsletters. All the “technical” emails (e.g., order summaries) can be automated as well.
Our platform comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop editor so that you can create compelling emails tailored to different stages of your sales funnel in an easy and effective way. Those emails can then be sent in response to specific actions taken by your customers or as a part of your outreach strategy – it’s all up to you.
Automate other forms of communication
Today, companies communicate with their clients via email, text messages, push notifications, and even WhatsApp. With a good marketing automation platform, you can automate all those channels. Of course, it takes some groundwork (you need to integrate those channels with your platform), but once it’s done, everything works like a well-oiled machine.
With iPresso, you can automate:
With iPresso, you can automate many more activities within your company – take a look at the list of our features to see what we can help you with.
The sales funnel doesn’t end with the purchase
The sales funnel is a never-ending process. After all, even if someone places an order, they can come back for more in the future. Once the order is placed, you can work on building long-term relationships with your clients and encourage them to stay in touch with your business. This is where our loyalty tools can come in handy. And then, your goal should be to stay in touch with your clients and provide them, from time to time, with valuable information about your market sector. Showcasing expertise can also help you win people’s trust and engagement.
Start marketing automation today
iPresso is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that enables you to automate your sales funnel from top to bottom. We encourage you to start a free trial of our platform. You will be able to see how marketing automation works in real life and what aspects of your marketing can be automated.
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