If you want to make the most of your lead funnel, but don’t know where to start, today’s article is for you. 

Optimizing a funnel may seem like a sprawling task. There are just so many moving parts and customer touchpoints — and each of them is a potential “leak” that may rob you of leads, prospects, and buyers. 

And the more closely you look, the more missed opportunities you notice. 

“Opportunities” is the operative word here! As long as you focus on specific, actionable steps to tighten up your lead funnel, you’ll be able to generate big ROI even with small, incremental changes.

So today, I’m going to share with you 5 simple yet powerful hacks to improve your marketing funnel — one element at a time.

They are super quick to implement, and can deliver disproportionate results for your business in the form of new leads, more conversions, shorter sales cycles, and increased retention.

I will show you:

  • How to engage your new subscribers immediately after they opt in (most business owners completely ignore this to their own detriment)
  • An underrated landing page type asset that could drive more conversions for your business — if you give it just a little extra love
  • Your most-opened but least-loved emails hiding in plain sight, and how exactly you can improve them 
  • The #1 easily preventable reason you’re losing email subscribers, and what to do about it
  • And how to recapture prospects that slip through the cracks in your sales process, so you can get more customers without increasing your lead gen

Ready? Let’s dive in!

 

1. Inject clarity and personality into your confirmation email

You know the one.

It’s the first email your leads get after they opt in, asking them to confirm their subscription. Most brands don’t spend any time on it, using the standard template provided by their email marketing service…

That’s a mistake.

This tiny confirmation email is instrumental in growing your list and making a great first impression on new subscribers. So let’s make it count!

Take 5 minutes to make a few simple but impactful changes:

  • Your leads need to know that the opt-in worked as intended — so let them know why they’re getting the email, and reassure them that they are almost subscribed.
  • If they signed up to get a specific lead magnet or content upgrade, make sure you reference it in the copy, and tell them that it’s only one click away.
  • Insert an image or an animated GIF to add personality and visual interest to the email, so people are more likely to pay attention.
  • If it’s in line with your brand voice, add low-key (or high-key!) humor to engage your leads from the very beginning.

This way, your potential customers will not only be more likely to confirm their subscription — they will also be highly engaged and ready to open the real welcome email when it drops in their inbox!

 

2. Drive additional conversions with your thank-you page

Thank-you pages are extremely underrated in online marketing.

9 times out of 10, all they do is show leads a generic message thanking them for signing up / checking out your free lead magnet etc. And that’s perfectly fine…

…but it leaves a lot of potential untapped. 

A thank-you page is just another kind of landing page that you can leverage to grow your business. If people see it, that means they already took action and engaged with your brand. Which means, they will be more receptive to another request from you — thanks to the psychological “foot in the door effect.”

So why not ask them for something else? You could:

  • Link to your social media profiles, so they can follow you
  • Offer a small upsell to instantly qualify new leads
  • Invite them to contact you or fill out a quick survey
  • Give 1-2 “homework” items to complete using your lead magnet
  • Show them a video message from your CEO, or your team
  • Link to your top 5 pieces of content, or another free download

And so on. There’s a ton of clever uses for thank-you pages that can increase engagement and conversions — experiment to figure out what best fits your brand!

 

3. Make your transactional emails more charming and helpful

Transactional emails exist to communicate vital info to your customers: payments, shipping, changes to their account, etc.

Because of that, they usually get very high open rates… so it’s ironic that transactional emails tend to be super bland and generic. But what if they weren’t?

I’ve been saying this a lot, but there’s an opportunity there. Several, in fact!

  • You can revamp your transactional emails so they align more closely with your brand voice. Instead of just delivering dry information to customers and calling it a day, make them sound like you.
  • Leverage those high open rates to communicate helpful information to your customers. E.g. remind them about your return policy in your shipping email — or tell them when they will be charged next in your payment confirmation email.
  • Put special deals and discount codes at the end of your transactional emails, to further reward people who have bought from you (note: use this technique sparingly).

That said, don’t forget that the main purpose of these emails is to be functional and communicate clearly — so don’t turn them into pure promotional material! Use a soft touch, sprinkling just 1-2 low-key marketing messages here and there.

 

4. Revamp your unsubscribe flow to recapture exiting leads 

When people unsubscribe from your list, it’s not always because they don’t like your brand and never want to hear from you again. According to our friends at Hubspot, the top 3 reasons leads unsubscribe are:

  1. Too many emails (34%)
  2. Low-value content (26%)
  3. Irrelevant promotions (10%)

Now, you absolutely want to address all 3 of these reasons in your marketing. But for now, you want to focus on #1, because it’s the most common one by far — and also the easiest to fix.

Here’s how:

Give your leads the option to adjust email frequency! When they click that unsubscribe link, allow them to switch to monthly / bi-monthly emails instead of your regular schedule.

For most people, this will be much more preferable than leaving your list for good.

Beyond this simple tweak, there are other changes you can make to recapture leads who are on their way out. For example, you could:

  • Customize your unsubscribe thank-you page to give people an option to resubscribe (especially effective if they can do it in 1 click).
  • Give them a “farewell gift” in the form of a freebie. Don’t make them resubscribe for it — that would be rude… but include another compelling free offer at the end of that resource.
  • Show unsubscribed leads a goodbye video message to delight them one last time and motivate them to resub.

 

5. Increase sales with smart follow-up campaigns

No matter how solid your sales funnel is, it’s a fact of life that prospects will slip through the cracks.

For example, someone might add your products to cart and never complete checkout. Or they may schedule a sales call and not show — or even complete a sales call, say yes, but ghost on payments.

You want to plan for these contingencies, and make preparations to address them when they happen.

And there’s only one proven way to recapture prospects who don’t follow through… following up.

Follow-up can be automatic, or manual. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, they can vary in effectiveness depending on context. Here’s a few examples to show you what I mean…

  • If a prospect abandons a cart full of goodies, you can send them an automated cart abandonment email that: 1) reminds them of all the items they wanted to buy, and 2) gives them a link to complete checkout from where they left off. This is essential for any ecommerce business.
  • By contrast, if someone is a no-show on a sales call, it makes more sense for one of your salespeople to follow up with them manually. That way, they can add a personal touch to make follow-up more effective — e.g. a video voicemail.
  • And finally, if a potential customer takes too long to make payments, you will want to use a combination of automated + manual follow-up to convert them. A few automated reminders followed by a real person reaching out works well.

 

Skyrocket your lead funnel’s ROI with video marketing

If you want to get the highest ROI out of your marketing funnel, video is the optimal tool for the job. Not only is it proven to convert, but it’s also incredibly versatile. You can:

  • Use it on your landing pages to drive signups
  • Leverage it in email marketing for increased engagement and clicks
  • Post it on social media and video hosting platforms to generate targeted traffic
  • Enhance your retargeting and follow-up campaigns to recapture leads and prospects

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

My team and I want to help you create your next high-converting video.

Over the years, we’ve produced hundreds of high-converting videos for brands across dozens of industries. Education, biotech, manufacturing, finance, coaching, real estate, petroleum, pest control — you name it, we’ve done it!

And our results speak for themselves.

I invite you to take advantage of our genius marketers, silver-tongued copywriters, and absurdly talented artists and videographers to create a marketing video you’d be proud of.

We used to do only whiteboard animation – not anymore! Now you can work with us to create awesome marketing videos in a variety of styles:

  • Live action
  • Motion graphics and cartoon animations
  • Virtual Reality Animation
  • Digital stop motion animation
  • 2D character animation

And more.

Interested? Then click here to get a risk-free quote and tell us about your dream explainer video — and one of our marketing experts will get back to you post-haste!

Looking for something smaller… but still more than powerful enough to grow your business? We can craft an irresistible Elevator Pitch that will help you grab your prospects’ attention in less than 30 seconds. Learn more about it here