Today's Email Marketing Funnel is Broken

The current email marketing funnel is broken

When sending emails, every company wants to stand out from competitors and captivate customers. 

Before COVID, companies were already using a wealth of marketing automation tools to send more emails, to more customers, with greater personalization.   

At the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Covid-19 Email Marketing Benchmark Report from Acoustic, there was an increase of nearly 50% in emails sent by consumer product companies.  This dramatic increase in email marketing further magnified the problem of how to get noticed.  Inboxes are filling up with more email than ever before.

Your company may follow all the recommended best practices: defining customer personas, segmenting messaging based on data, and crafting creative copy. But current email marketing funnel platforms are still limited in what they can do.

There’s only so much customization you can do with tools like HubSpot, Dotmailer, Mailchimp, and Salesforce. Not to mention, they each come with a learning curve.

There needs to be a better way to stand out in your customer’s inbox - without additional set up. 

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Increased competition in the inbox

By 2025, Statista projects at least 376 Billion emails will be sent and received worldwide, which is up from 319 Billion in 2021. Based on this growth, the current email marketing funnel model is not sustainable for high engagement. Gated helps cut through the noise.

When users set their own personalized paywall through Gated, it means that the senders who get through really get noticed. Gated users receive 43% less email, meaning your email has a higher chance of being seen – and read. 

Additionally, our data shows that when a sender pays to reach someone with Gated, the reply rate is greater than 50% on average. 

Personalization is key

Certainly, crafting tailor-made emails and reaching the right audience is the best way to increase engagement. AI tools like Lavender make this easier by benchmarking communication against industry standards and recommending email text that should drive higher response rates.

While helpful for email senders, this can't completely account for an email recipient’s needs and preferences.

In the Unlock video “You should decide you can reach you” (below), Latané Conant - CMO at 6 Sense - mentions how companies often confuse mail merge with personalization. 

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Latané emphasizes the importance of truly knowing your customer.  Here are 4 key points to consider:

• Why is it worth selling to this account?
• Who is the persona? 
• Is the solution relevant? 
• Is the timing right?
  

Gated provides another powerful way to personalize your message, by letting a user choose the nonprofit they care most about. This means that you can use this user-based information to build a real person-to-person connection and show your customer that you are invested in their interests.

With increased email competition in the inbox requiring more personalization, it’s time for a new approach to the email marketing funnel. Gated believes the next evolution of email is based in giving the user power over what types of messages they receive. After all, isn’t that the real essence of personalization? 

Read quotes from real senders about how Gated helps them stand out in the inbox and bring real value to customers. 

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Author Jacob McPherson is a member of Gated's content team and founder of Cement Media Inc.

Photo by Jackson Simmer via Unsplash.