How to build a High-Impact Ecommerce Marketing Funnel

Are you struggling to keep customers engaged as part of your long-term sales strategy? An ecommerce marketing funnel can help simplify the customer journey & keep them engaged while fostering deeper relationships. Instead of trying to win customers back a few times a year for a single sale, a good marketing funnel keeps them anticipating your emails & turning them into loyal customers.

If you’re not sure how to approach your funnel, here’s where to start & keep it going all year long.

Get Organized

Before you launch into an ecommerce marketing funnel, make sure you’re organized & set up for success. An inexpensive email marketing tool can help create an opt-in form so visitors can exchange their email addresses for a valuable piece of content, whether that’s a coupon code, product guide, or VIP access. Get to know your way around the platform before you launch, so you understand how to:

• • Segment your email list by demographic or interest
  • Design user-friendly emails with done-for-you templates & tools
  • Launch a test campaign to get comfortable with the process

Once you get the hang of actually sending out your email as part of your ecommerce marketing funnel, you can start building awareness among your audience.

Master Your Product Offerings

After getting organized, take time to master your product offerings. Are you selling fun, innovative, & unique products that can compete & stand out in your niche? You can experiment with your products with the help of POD & without the financial risk.

Upload your designs to your CustomCat library, apply them to your favorite products, & grab an easy integration for your site. When an item sells, you earn money while we get busy producing & fulfilling it. We’ll ship it out on your behalf with a label reflecting your company, so you can focus on building your marketing funnel instead of dealing with all of the ecommerce logistics. 

Learn how to get started with CustomCat here.

Stage 1: Awareness

The first step in creating a marketing funnel is building content to educate your visitors about your products, brand, & sales. As we mentioned above, that content can be an opt-in for a coupon code or other freebie. But it’s also about creating other types of content to raise awareness about your online store.

• • • Paid social media ads
    • TikTok videos
    • Facebook posts
    • Instagram stories
    • Blog posts
    • Video guides

You may need to experiment with your content to see what aligns with your brand & customers. Study the results & look for incremental growth that should eventually snowball as you refine your content & target market. 

Stage 2: Interest

As more consumers hear about your ecommerce store & products, a percentage of them will start to gain interest & start visiting your site. It’s vital to establish social proof across your channels by engaging with followers & encouraging customers to leave reviews. You can add these to your site or as part of an email marketing campaign within your funnel.

The interest stage is also the time to optimize your product descriptions, About page, sales pages, & any copy that could influence your customers. For example, a story about your travel adventures & transformation into an entrepreneur establishes like, know, & trust factors with your audience that encourages them to buy. 

Tighten up your copy & edit your images to make them look professional while commanding attention. Once your content is ready to go, it’s time to start email marketing to promote your products. Try sending them about once a week & playing around with the frequency while keeping an eye on your open rates. Research shows that a good open rate is between 15% & 30% for most industries. If your open rates are low, you may need to experiment with subject headings to spark more action. 

Stage 3: Purchasing

Set up your marketing funnel to send out trigger-based emails based on promotions, seasonal events, & frequency. It’s important to stay on top of customers’ minds throughout the year to see the results you want during the heyday of Black Friday & Cyber Monday.

Next, think about where you’re sending your customers once they open your marketing emails & click a link. Are they going to a product page or a landing page? Make sure your on-site messages align with your brand & email marketing funnel. If your email is spirited & friendly but the product descriptions or on-site messaging sound stiff & serious, you’ll experience a disconnect & could see sluggish sales.

Ramp up your efforts during the checkout process by influencing visitors with cross-sells & upsells to drive more sales. You can also use an abandoned cart app to rescue would-be sales & increase your revenue.

Stage 4: Refine & Repeat

Once you’ve established the core of your marketing funnel, it’s time to refine & master it. Keep promoting your opt-ins during the awareness & interest phases & amplify the purchasing phase. But it’s not just about sales. Keeping customers engaged lays the long-term foundation for your marketing funnel & could mean the difference between unsubscribes & sales.

Each step is something that builds & evolves as customers pass through your marketing funnel. You’re not going to suddenly stop because the first wave of customers passed through the interest stage & into purchasing. The marketing funnel is always in motion as more people enter it & hopefully stay through the repeat stage of the process.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that marketing funnels get their name for a reason–they’re shaped like a funnel or cone. Not every visitor will convert & jump into your funnel, & some will opt out along the way. But once your customers reach the narrowest part of your funnel, they’re more likely to jump on your offers & become a long-standing part of your business.

What are your most valuable insights for creating an ecommerce marketing funnel? Let us know by leaving a comment below!