Email funnel marketing yields an incredible $38 for every dollar you invest. This makes it 40 times more powerful than social media marketing!

The numbers tell an interesting story. Companies miss out on 4 out of 5 potential revenue opportunities. Here’s the kicker – 91% of customers actually want promotional emails from their favorite businesses. Something doesn’t add up. Businesses simply aren’t capturing and nurturing these eager prospects well enough.

Email marketing funnels can solve this problem. A well-crafted, automated email funnel guides your prospects through their buying decisions while you run other parts of your business. This piece shows you how to build an ActiveCampaign email funnel that turns casual browsers into devoted customers.

You’ll find simple, practical steps to follow, whether you’re just starting with email automation or want to enhance your current system. Let’s head over to building an email marketing system that makes money while you rest!

Understand What an Email Funnel Is

“The customer doesn’t care about what segment they belong to or what order of emails they get, they care about whether what you’re selling or offering is going to improve their lives. It’s why before you start planning any email funnel or automation, you start backwards. Determine the offer – and then back out the various pieces you need to support that offer.” — Sophia Le, Email marketing strategist for SaaS companies

An email funnel is a well-laid-out series of emails that guides potential customers through their buying experience. It acts like a roadmap to help leads become loyal customers from their first interaction with your business. Research shows email has the highest conversion rate of any B2C marketing channel. This makes it a great way to get more customers and boost sales.

What makes email funnels work

Email funnel marketing’s strength comes from its strategic approach to customer communication. Your messages reach prospects at the right time based on where they are in their decision-making process, rather than sending random promotional content.

Email funnels excel through personalization. You create messages that strike a chord with recipients by segmenting your audience and customizing content for specific groups. Your emails get opened, read, and acted upon more often with this targeted approach.

Email funnels also provide these distinct benefits:

• They help leads grow from their first contact with your brand
• They boost personalized marketing to build trust and authority
• Automation tools make tracking and improving performance simple
• They boost your return on investment by a lot when done right

There’s another reason email funnels work so well – automation. The system moves prospects through each funnel stage with minimal manual work once it’s set up. You can keep talking to your audience consistently without constant monitoring.

Email funnels respect permission-based marketing principles. Subscribers choose to hear from you by joining your email list. This means you talk to people already interested in what you offer.

How email funnels are different from regular email campaigns

Regular campaigns and email funnels serve different roles in your marketing strategy. Knowing these differences helps you utilize both better.

A standard campaign usually means one email sent to your whole list or a segment. These campaigns often connect to specific events like holidays, promotions, or company news. Marketing teams schedule and send them at set times.

Email funnels (or “flows”) work differently – they’re automated sequences that start when someone takes specific actions. A welcome sequence starts when someone subscribes. Cart abandonment triggers a recovery sequence.

Timing works differently too. Campaigns follow your schedule while funnel emails respond to subscriber actions. This makes funnels match your customer’s experience better than your marketing calendar.

The goals also vary between these approaches. Campaigns push for quick action like sale promotions while funnels build relationships over time. Campaigns generate 40-50% of email marketing revenue, showing their power to drive quick results.

Email funnels shine at relationship building. Companies using automated emails are 133% more likely to send relevant messages matching a customer’s purchase cycle. Better engagement and more conversions come from this relevance.

The best email marketing strategy uses both methods. Campaigns drive store traffic while funnels help convert more visitors. Welcome flows average 82% open rates, and three cart abandonment emails convert 69% better than one.

Understanding email funnels’ unique benefits and their differences from standard campaigns helps create a complete strategy. This guides prospects smoothly through each stage of their brand experience.

Know the Stages of an Email Funnel

A successful email marketing funnel takes subscribers through specific stages of the buyer’s experience. You need to understand these stages to craft messages that appeal to subscribers at the right time. Let’s learn about the four main stages of an effective email funnel and how to make each one work better.

Awareness: Attracting new leads

The awareness stage is your first connection with potential customers and your brand. Your original goal at this phase is to introduce your brand and build trust—not chase immediate sales. This stage helps you grab attention and create a positive first impression.

Most subscribers are just learning about possible solutions to their problems, and aggressive selling tactics will push them away. Your focus should be on:

• Educational content that solves customer pain points
• Welcome emails that give a warm introduction and thank subscribers for joining
• Newsletters that show your expertise and offer valuable resources
• Content that shows your company’s mission and values

The best awareness stage emails use a friendly, conversational tone. They should tackle customer challenges head-on and give simple, clear calls to action. Keep in mind that 86% of welcome emails are opened and clicked. This gives you the best chance to make a strong first impression.

Interest: Educating and engaging

Subscribers move to the interest phase after they warm up to your brand in the awareness stage. They actively look for more information about solutions that can help with their needs.

Your email content should now build relationships. Do this by offering high-value, relevant content that shows how your products or services can fix specific problems. Here are some effective strategies:

Share detailed information that emphasizes how your offerings stand out from competitors. Emails that target specific customer pain points work better by a lot than those with generic content.

Give educational materials like how-to guides, tutorials, and industry insights that match your subscribers’ interests. This makes your brand a trusted authority while teaching prospects about possible solutions.

The primary goal at this stage isn’t to make a sale. You want to create real interest in your offerings while giving value through your email content.

Desire: Building trust and intent

Subscribers in the desire stage move from being just interested to thinking over your product or service. They know they have a problem and believe you might have the answer, but they’re probably comparing you with competitors.

Your emails during this key phase should:

Focus on building product confidence through comparison guides, special features, or case studies. You need compelling evidence that makes you different from competitors.

On top of that, utilize social proof through customer testimonials and reviews to establish credibility. Research shows this stage works best to showcase how others benefit from your solution.

Yes, it is more important to personalize content here. Emails that match subscriber priorities and behaviors become more relevant and effective.

Action: Converting leads into customers

The action stage is where your email funnel efforts pay off. Potential customers are ready to buy or convert. They’ve moved from “I like it” to “I want it,” and now you need to turn that desire into “I’m getting it”.

So your emails should build product confidence and create urgency to convert. These tactics work well:

Sales emails or limited-time offers with clear, compelling calls to action. Free trials, discounts, and bulk offers work especially well at this stage.

Customer testimonials can give that final push needed to turn leads into paying customers. The secret is to create simple but rewarding calls to action that make the next step easy.

This email marketing funnel framework matches how customers naturally make decisions. They move from awareness to interest, then desire, and finally action. Your email strategy will create a better path to conversion when it lines up with these stages.

Set Up Your Funnel in ActiveCampaign

You now understand email funnels and their stages. The next step is putting your strategy into action with ActiveCampaign. Your email funnel setup needs three key parts: lists and tags, opt-in forms, and automation workflows. Let’s break down each step.

Create your email list and tags

ActiveCampaign requires at least one list before you can build any automation. Here’s how to create a list:

1. Go to “Contacts” in the left menu
2. Click “Lists” in the secondary menu
3. Select “Add a list”
4. Enter a descriptive name, website URL, and list description

ActiveCampaign gives you unlimited lists. Yet, using fewer lists with tags and segments works better for organization. This strategy helps avoid double charges for contacts appearing on multiple lists.

Tags work as flexible markers that organize contacts based on their behaviors, interests, and status. They help you:

• Create advanced segments for targeted messaging
• Start automations when tags change
• Use conditional content in emails

Your tag management should follow consistent naming rules for source (how contacts found you), status (funnel position), and customer type (purchase history).

Design your opt-in forms and landing pages

Your email funnel needs entry points—forms and landing pages bring in new leads. ActiveCampaign’s drag-and-drop builder lets you create these without coding.

Creating an opt-in form is simple:

1. Head to Website > Forms
2. Click “Create a Form”
3. Pick your form type (inline, floating box, modal, or floating bar)
4. Choose form actions (subscribe to list, add tags, create deals)

The “Style” tab lets you match your brand by adjusting colors, fonts, buttons, and layout.

Landing pages convert visitors into leads effectively. ActiveCampaign’s landing page builder offers:

• Hundreds of templates
• Custom images and buttons
• Sign-up form embedding
• Specific offer or event promotion

Your landing page should focus on one offer with a clear headline and strong call-to-action.

Build your automation workflow

The final piece is creating the automation workflow that runs your email funnel. Here’s how to start:

1. Click “Automations” and select “Create an automation”
2. Choose “Start from scratch” or pick a recipe
3. Add a start trigger—usually “Subscribes to a list”

Set your trigger to “Once” to avoid sending duplicate emails. Build your workflow by adding actions like:

• Send an email
• Wait for specific conditions
• Add/remove tags based on engagement
• Use If/Else conditions for branches

To cite an instance, see a welcome sequence: send the first email, wait a week, then use If/Else to send different follow-ups based on whether they opened your message.

These components allow your email funnel to direct prospects through awareness, interest, desire, and action stages automatically. The automation will tag, segment, and send targeted messages at the right time as contacts interact with your content.

Test everything fully before going live. Once ready, just click the “Active” toggle to launch your email funnel marketing system.

Write Emails for Each Funnel Stage

The right message at the right time in your email funnel marketing experience can boost your engagement and conversion rates. Let’s look at how you can write emails that work for each stage of your ActiveCampaign funnel.

Welcome and lead magnet delivery

Your welcome email acts as a digital handshake that makes a vital first impression with open rates averaging 82%. Make this email warm and personal instead of focusing on sales.

Your welcome email should:

• Thank subscribers for joining and tell them what they’ll receive
• Give them your promised lead magnet right away
• Tell them how often you’ll email
• Add a short introduction to your brand’s values

Lead magnet emails perform better when you remind subscribers what they signed up for and show the specific benefits they’ll get.

Here’s a good structure for your lead magnet delivery:

1. Thank them for subscribing
2. Give them the promised resource with a clear download link
3. Show what they’ll learn from the resource
4. Add a gentle nudge toward the next funnel step

Educational and value-driven emails

After your welcome, build trust through educational content. These emails should show your expertise without pushing sales too hard.

Educational emails get more engagement because they solve specific problems your audience faces. Your educational emails should:

• Solve one specific problem or question
• Give advice people can use right away
• Show relevant examples that prove your points
• End with a subtle call-to-action tied to the content

Educational emails must give real value before asking anything in return. This builds trust and makes conversion more likely later in the funnel.

Sales pitch and conversion emails

After building credibility with educational content, you can move toward conversion-focused messages. Sales emails should create urgency while keeping the trust you’ve built.

Good sales emails:

• Start by naming a specific pain point
• Show your solution with clear benefits
• Add social proof like testimonials or case studies
• Use a clear, action-oriented CTA

Personalization matters a lot here—emails with personalized subject lines get opened 50% more often. Adding limited-time offers can boost conversion rates by creating urgency.

Follow-up and re-engagement emails

Every email funnel sees some subscribers drop off. Re-engagement emails help maintain list health and win back lost opportunities.

Your re-engagement emails should:

• Use subject lines that spark curiosity or offer clear value
• Remind people about your relationship and what they’re missing
• Give them a reason to come back, like a special discount or unique content
• Let them easily update their priorities instead of unsubscribing

Re-engagement emails work best when they focus on giving new value rather than pointing out inactivity. A well-crafted re-engagement campaign can improve your sender reputation and help your emails reach inboxes more reliably.

Timing matters as much as content throughout your email funnel. Automation helps you send these messages when they’ll have the biggest effect, guiding prospects smoothly from awareness to conversion.

Use Automation and Segmentation Smartly

Email funnel marketing becomes more effective when you control the full potential of automation and segmentation. Your automated email funnel will boost engagement and conversions if you target the right people at the right time. ActiveCampaign offers powerful features that can help you achieve this.

Trigger emails based on user behavior

Behavior-based emails respond to specific actions your subscribers take. These emails work better than scheduled campaigns. Triggered emails show an impressive 83.4% higher open rates and 341.1% more clicks compared to regular campaigns. These results happen because behavior emails reach users when they’re most ready to participate.

Effective behavioral triggers include:

• Form submissions
• Website page visits
• Email opens or clicks
• Shopping cart additions or abandonments

Timing plays a crucial role in triggered emails. Messages sent at the wrong time can destroy your response rates. A study showed that poor timing led to almost zero replies. You should test different timing sequences instead of following general standards. A typical follow-up sequence could send messages four days apart for the first two follow-ups and extend the interval for later messages.

Segment contacts by interest or actions

Segmentation splits your audience into smaller groups with shared characteristics. This enables targeted communications. ActiveCampaign’s segments update immediately as contacts meet or fall out of your specified criteria.

Mailchimp’s data shows impressive results for segmented email campaigns:

• 14% higher open rates
• 11% more unique opens
• 101% more clicks

ActiveCampaign lets you create effective segments by combining conditions with AND/OR logic. Each condition has three parts: the condition name (such as “has tag”), the operator (like “contains”), and the value. You can segment based on email activity, list membership, contact details, website visits, and purchasing behavior.

Use lead scoring to prioritize follow-ups

Lead scoring helps you rank prospects based on their readiness to buy. This system helps your sales team identify which leads need immediate attention. Your sales team can focus on hot prospects while marketing nurtures others who need more time.

Point values can be assigned to various actions and attributes:

• +5 points for visiting the pricing page
• +10 points for opening promotional emails
• +25 points for being a decision-maker

Leads become qualified for direct sales contact after reaching a specific point threshold. Companies that use lead scoring report better efficiency, higher conversions, and increased revenue.

ActiveCampaign allows you to automate workflows based on lead scores. You can create a segment that adds contacts to a “qualified leads” list automatically when their score passes a certain threshold. This automation lines up your follow-up efforts with prospect readiness and maximizes conversion potential throughout your email marketing funnel.

Test, Measure, and Improve Your Funnel

Your email funnel needs constant testing and refinement to succeed. Good data helps you assess how it works and make it better.

Track open and click rates

Open rates show how many subscribers see your content. These numbers have become less reliable since Apple’s privacy changes preload emails and inflate the stats. However, they still give you a good way to compare different campaigns. You should target rates above 15%, though successful funnels often reach 25-30%.

Click-through rates (CTR) show engagement more clearly than open rates. CTR tells you which subscribers clicked your links and took action. Here’s how to measure it properly:

• Look at clicks on your main call-to-action instead of counting all link clicks
• Divide unique clicks by delivered emails to calculate your rate
• Look at similar campaigns side by side for better analysis

Run A/B tests on subject lines and content

A/B testing lets you compare different email versions to find what works best. ActiveCampaign allows you to test:

• Subject lines – try different lengths, word orders, or personal touches
• Email content – experiment with layouts, images, or copy length
• Call-to-action buttons – test text, colors, or where you place them

Test just one thing at a time for clear results. Send your test to some subscribers before picking the winner for everyone else. Small tweaks can make a big difference – using personal sender names boosts open rates by 0.53%.

Refine based on conversion data

Success comes down to conversions – how many subscribers take your desired action. These tips help boost conversion:

• Add UTM tracking codes to email links to measure results in analytics
• Learn which emails drive quick sales versus long-term results
• Try different headlines, main images, and call-to-action text to find what drives conversions

Note that regular testing compounds your success over time. Each improvement builds on previous wins and shapes your emails into their most effective form.

Conclusion

Email funnels are powerful marketing tools that can revolutionize your business results. This piece outlines the key steps to create a high-converting email funnel in ActiveCampaign that guides prospects from awareness to action.

Email marketing delivers an impressive 38:1 return on investment, making it one of the most effective digital channels today. Your email funnel’s success depends on understanding each stage of the customer’s trip and delivering the right message at the right moment.

Your funnel needs constant attention to realize its full potential. Regular tests of subject lines, content variations, and sending times will help you find what appeals most to your audience. These small improvements create a compounding effect that boosts your results significantly.

Segmentation and automation are the foundations of your email funnel strategy. These powerful features help you deliver individual-specific experiences at scale without constant manual work. The data shows that segmented, behavior-triggered emails perform better than generic broadcasts consistently.

A simple welcome sequence can serve as your starting point. You can expand as you get more comfortable with ActiveCampaign’s automation capabilities. The best email funnels grow through continuous refinement based on live performance data.

Providing genuine value at every touchpoint matters most. Sales follow naturally when we solve customer problems and address their needs. This customer-focused approach builds trust and creates lasting relationships that go way beyond a single transaction.

Building your email funnel today will reward you for years. Your automated system works behind the scenes, nurtures leads and generates sales while you grow other aspects of your business.

FAQs

Q1. What are the key stages of an email funnel? An effective email funnel typically consists of four main stages: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. Each stage serves a specific purpose in guiding potential customers from their first interaction with your brand to becoming loyal customers.

Q2. How many emails should be included in a welcome sequence? While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, most businesses find success with a welcome flow of about five emails. This allows you to introduce your brand, deliver value, and begin nurturing the relationship without overwhelming new subscribers.

Q3. What’s the best way to segment contacts in ActiveCampaign? In ActiveCampaign, you can create effective segments by combining conditions using AND/OR logic. Segment based on email activity, list membership, contact details, website visits, and purchasing behavior to deliver more targeted and relevant content to your subscribers.

Q4. How can I improve my email open rates? To improve open rates, focus on crafting compelling subject lines, personalizing content, and optimizing send times. Additionally, regularly clean your email list, use a recognizable sender name, and ensure your emails provide value to your subscribers.

Q5. What metrics should I track to measure my email funnel’s success? Key metrics to track include open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall ROI. Also, pay attention to unsubscribe rates and engagement over time. Use these metrics to continually refine your funnel strategy and improve performance.