3 SALES FUNNEL STRATEGIES PROVEN TO INCREASE CONVERSIONS & CUSTOMER RETENTION

Where do you focus most of your time & energy in terms of sales funnel development? Do you work mostly on front-end or back end strategies? Traditionally businesses tend to focus more on front end strategies; for example, social media planning, creative design & sales content. However in the powerful world of enhanced funnel strategies and analytics, in my opinion, we can't have one without the other. We will never maximize our funnel conversion rates unless we deploy a proven set of back-end funnel strategies.

Below are 3 back-end funnel strategies TheMediaCrew uses to ensure our in-house sales funnels and our client sales funnels yield high conversion rates on a consistent basis.

StartFragment1. RETARGETING

Retargeting allows you to put your brand in front of these window shoppers as they browse the internet or social media. According to Adroll, only 2% of customers convert when they first land on a website. Retargeting helps to claw back some of the 98% of customers who didn’t buy the first time. Retargeting can be as clever as to display products the customer added to their basket and abandoned, a hotel they last looked it but didn’t book, a service they were engaged with but didn’t sign up for a free trial and more.

How Does Retargeting Work?

Some online tools make retargeting very easily such as Adroll.

All you need to do to start retargeting is to place a small JavaScript tag in the footer of your website. This will then capture cookies from each visitor to your site.

Adroll then uses these visitor cookies to track what they do on your site and will display relevant ads to those who did not buy as they browse through other sites.

If you are advertising with Facebook and Google AdWords, then you can also easily set up retargeting campaigns with these too.

Why Does Retargeting Work

Retargeting works so well because it attracts users back to your website by not letting them forget about you. For example, a user visits your site because they are looking for your product however they are not ready to buy because they want to wait for the year end to calculate a budget. By the time it gets to the year end, that user might forget about you and end up looking for the product and clicking through to a competitor and converting.

With retargeting, this user would not have forgotten you and your name would be the first that popped into their head when they are ready to buy.

Retargeting Best Practices

To get the most out of your retargeting, it is crucial to segment your website visitors correctly. To get people back to your website, you need to create ads that have high click-through-rates and to that, they have to be as relevant to the visitor as possible.

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2. SEGMENTATION

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We all know how important email marketing is and why you need to be doing it regularly. But do you know the real, true vale of good and proper email list segmentation? Because if done correctly its a guarnteed way to get better performance from your lists. Segmenting your email list(s) IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT - A MUST DO

Here are a few reasons why you should be segmenting your email list:

Not All Your Contacts Are The Same - DUH - LOL

Not all your contacts have the same goals, buying habits, online behaviors, hobbies, or are at the same stage in the sales process. And because your contacts are not all the same. It's crucial we don't send them all the same email message. We must create custom email messages for each segment of our email lists. This will not only reduce the unsub ratio but build trust with your subscribers because you are sending them matching, relevant information based on your list segmentation.

Contacts Will Be At Different Stages Of The Sales Funnel

To improve how people travel through your sales funnel, you must segment your email list by what stages they are at in the sales funnel. Those who are yet to buy from you will need to be nurtured a lot differently to those who have already bought. As well segmenting what stages users are at, you can also segment based on the urgency of pain points.

You’ll Get Better Results

Segmenting your email list will guarantee better results because each of your emails will be focused on almost each lead. Because you are sending an email to the right people at the right time with the right message, users will be more inclined to not only open your emails but also to click through and buy. According to Hubspot, segmenting your email list will result in a huge 39% increase in open rates, 28% decrease in opt-outs, 24% increase in sales leads and 24% increase in revenue.

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3. METRICS

My last strategy is to know & understand all statistics and analytics from top to bottom - inside and out. Here are some metrics you need to know:

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Conversion Numbers

One of the first numbers you need to know is your conversions numbers.

As well as how many conversions, you need to know conversion rates and cost per conversion.

You can use a competitor analysis tool to benchmark your figures against your industry to determine how well your website is performing. It is important also to know these numbers when segmented too. This means knowing the conversion rates of each medium, each source, each device, each location and more.

The more you segment your numbers, the more you will come to understand which areas need improving or scaling. While it might not be appropriate to start learning all these metrics from the “get-go” it’s important to realize that if you want to find where your hottest prospects and the customers that spend the most money with are, these are some of the numbers you’ll need to crunch.

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Upsell Numbers

Another number you need to know is your upsells.

Do you know the percentage of upsells that have come directly as a result of email marketing?

Do you know the percentage of upsells that have come directly as a result of social media offers?

The best way for you to increase the percentage of upsells is to know which areas are leading to the higher rate.

Once you know this then you can scale to maximize further upsell opportunities.

When Do You Break Even

Knowing your break-even point is important to all aspects of your digital marketing.

To know when you break even you must determine your costs and prices, calculate contribution margin and when you break even and calculate profits and losses.

This comes in very handy again when determining advertising budgets because will know how many units you need to sell to at least break even.

You know more than anyone that you don’t want to make any losses so know your break even point

Now these are just 3 backend strategies we deploy but there are many others you can use to help improve the customer experience, increase conversions & customer retention and to generate new revenue streams. If you wold like to learn more or are interested in TheMediaCrew helping you enhance your sales funnel. Please contact me as soon as you can.