How to Build Your Email Marketing Funnel in 2025

Why Your Business Needs an Email Marketing Funnel Now More Than Ever

Before we dive into the “how,” let’s talk about the “why.” Understanding the power of an email funnel is the first step toward committing to building one that works. It’s more than just sending out a weekly newsletter; it’s about creating a strategic system that guides potential customers from their first interaction with your brand to their first purchase and beyond.

The Rising Tide of Customer Acquisition Costs

If you’ve run digital ad campaigns recently, you know that customer acquisition costs are on the rise. Changes in data privacy from major tech players have made it harder to target audiences with precision, and the sheer volume of online businesses means you’re competing with more brands for the same eyeballs.

This is where email marketing truly shines. Unlike paid channels, your email list is an owned asset. You’re not subject to algorithm changes or bidding wars. Once someone subscribes, you have a direct, reliable way to communicate with them, turning an expensive one-time click into a long-term relationship. This shift toward owned channels is a smart move for any business looking for sustainable growth.

The Power of Direct Communication and Personalization

How do your customers actually want to hear from you? Despite the rise of new channels, studies show that 60% of consumers still prefer email for receiving product updates and promotions. Email is a personal and direct space, and when used correctly, it can build incredible trust.

An email funnel takes this a step further by enabling powerful personalization. You can send different messages to different people based on their actions and interests.

• Someone who downloaded a guide on running shoes gets different content than someone who browsed hiking boots.
• A customer who abandoned their cart receives a gentle reminder.
• A loyal, repeat buyer gets an exclusive VIP offer.

This level of tailored communication makes customers feel understood, not just marketed to. In fact, 60% of consumers say they are likely to become repeat purchasers after a personalized shopping experience, making it a win-win for everyone involved.

Building a Predictable Revenue Engine

Ultimately, a business needs to generate revenue consistently. An automated email funnel acts as a predictable engine for sales. Once set up, it works for you 24/7, nurturing new leads, recovering potentially lost sales, and encouraging repeat business.

For web creators and agencies, this presents a huge opportunity. You can go beyond just building a website for a client. By designing and managing an email marketing funnel, you provide an ongoing service that delivers measurable value. You can show your client exactly how much revenue your work generated, solidifying your role as a strategic partner and creating a stable, recurring revenue stream for your own business. With the right toolkit designed for WordPress, this becomes a streamlined, profitable service.

In short, an email funnel isn’t just another marketing task. It’s a foundational business asset that lowers your reliance on expensive ads, builds stronger customer relationships, and creates a reliable source of income.

Understanding the Four Stages of the Email Marketing Funnel

To build an effective funnel, you need to understand the journey your customer takes. We can break this journey down into four distinct stages. Each stage has a specific goal and requires different types of content and communication to move the person smoothly to the next step.

Funnel Stage	Goal	Key Activities
Awareness (TOFU)	Attract visitors & capture email addresses	Lead magnets, opt-in forms, landing pages
Consideration (MOFU)	Nurture leads & build trust	Welcome series, educational content, segmentation
Conversion (BOFU)	Drive the sale or desired action	Abandoned cart emails, special offers, upsells
Loyalty & Advocacy	Retain customers & create fans	Post-purchase follow-ups, re-engagement campaigns

Let’s explore each of these stages in more detail.

Stage 1: Awareness (Top of the Funnel – TOFU)

The journey begins here. At the awareness stage, your goal is simple: attract the right people to your website and persuade them to subscribe to your email list. You’re not trying to make a hard sale yet. Instead, you’re offering something of value in exchange for their email address.

Key Tactics for Lead Capture

To convince someone to hand over their email, you need a compelling reason. This is where lead magnets come in.

• Lead Magnets: A lead magnet is a free resource you offer in exchange for an email address. The key is to provide something your target audience genuinely wants.
  • For eCommerce Stores: A 10% discount on their first order, free shipping, or early access to a new product launch.
  • For Service Businesses: A helpful checklist, an insightful eBook, a free webinar, or a case study.
  • For Bloggers/Creators: An exclusive guide, a resource library, or a multi-day email course.
• Opt-in Forms: These are the gateways to your email list. The design and placement of your forms matter.
  • Pop-up Forms: These appear after a user has been on a page for a set time or shows an intent to exit. They are highly effective but should be used tastefully.
  • Embedded Forms: Placed directly within your blog posts or on key pages, these forms feel like a natural part of the content.
  • Sticky Bars: A full-width bar at the top or bottom of the screen that stays visible as the user scrolls.
• Landing Pages: For more significant lead magnets, like a webinar or a detailed eBook, create a dedicated landing page. This page should have one job: to convince the visitor to sign up. Remove all other distractions, like the main navigation, and focus on the benefits of your offer.

The Right Tools for the Job

You’ll need tools to create and manage these lead capture elements. For those of us working within WordPress, using a tool like Send by Elementor offers distinct advantages. As a WordPress-native toolkit, it allows you to build and manage everything from your WordPress dashboard. This ensures a seamless experience for you and a fast-loading site for your visitors, avoiding the compatibility headaches that can come with connecting external tools.

Stage 2: Consideration (Middle of the Funnel – MOFU)

Okay, you have a new subscriber. Congratulations! Now what? Don’t just dump them onto your general newsletter list. The consideration stage is all about nurturing that new relationship, building trust, and educating them about how you can solve their problems. This is where automation becomes your best friend.

Crafting the Perfect Nurture Sequence

The most critical automation at this stage is the welcome series. This is a sequence of 2-4 emails sent automatically to every new subscriber. It has some of the highest open rates you’ll ever see, so make it count.

A simple yet effective welcome series could look like this:

1. Email 1: Welcome & Delivery. Immediately send the lead magnet they signed up for. Thank them for joining and briefly introduce your brand.
2. Email 2: Connect & Educate. Share your brand’s story or mission. Address a common pain point your audience faces and hint at how your products or services help.
3. Email 3: Social Proof. Showcase a customer testimonial, a case study, or links to your best-selling products with glowing reviews. Let others do the selling for you.
4. Email 4: Soft Call-to-Action. Encourage them to follow you on social media or check out a popular blog post. You’re not pushing for a sale yet, just deeper engagement.

Segmentation: The Key to Relevance

As you nurture your leads, you should start segmenting them.

Segmentation is simply the process of grouping your contacts based on shared characteristics or behaviors. This allows you to send more relevant, targeted messages.

You can start with simple segments:

• Based on the sign-up source: Group people based on which lead magnet they downloaded.
• Based on demographics: If you collect information like location or interests, use it.
• Based on engagement: Create a segment of highly engaged subscribers who open every email.

As you grow, you can use more advanced segmentation based on website behavior, like which pages a person has visited or their purchase history. A powerful, integrated platform like Send by Elementor can handle this automatically, as it’s deeply connected to your website and customer data within WordPress.

Stage 3: Conversion (Bottom of the Funnel – BOFU)

Your subscriber now knows who you are and trusts you. They understand the value you provide. Now is the time to encourage them to take action and make a purchase. The messaging here becomes more direct and offer-focused, but it should still feel helpful.

High-Impact Conversion Campaigns

For WooCommerce stores, one automation stands out above all others: the abandoned cart series. A staggering number of online shopping carts are abandoned before checkout. An automated email sequence can recover a significant portion of that lost revenue.

• Abandoned Cart Automation: This is a short series of emails (typically 1-3) sent to anyone who adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase.
  • Email 1 (1 hour later): “Did you forget something?” A simple, helpful reminder with a link back to their cart.
  • Email 2 (24 hours later): “Your items are waiting.” You can add social proof here, like reviews for the products in their cart.
  • Email 3 (48 hours later): “Your cart is about to expire.” Consider including a small discount (like 10% off) as a final nudge to complete the purchase.

Other effective conversion tactics include:

• Targeted Promotions: Send special offers to specific segments. For example, a discount on hiking boots to the segment that downloaded your “Top 10 Hiking Trails” guide.
• Product Recommendations: Use their browsing or purchase history to suggest other products they might love.

The Power of Integrated Analytics

How do you know if your funnel is actually working? You need data. This is where the integrated analytics dashboard in a tool like Send by Elementor becomes essential. A good system won’t just show you open rates and click rates. It will show you

revenue attribution—exactly how much money each email and each automation flow has generated. For a web creator, this is the most powerful feature you can have. It allows you to walk into a client meeting with clear, real-time analytics and say, “The abandoned cart flow we set up last month recovered $2,500 in lost sales.” That’s how you prove your value and justify your ongoing fee.

Stage 4: Loyalty & Advocacy (Post-Funnel)

The funnel doesn’t end with the first sale. In many ways, it’s just the beginning. It costs far less to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. This final stage is all about turning one-time buyers into repeat customers and loyal brand advocates.

Building Long-Term Relationships

Your communication should continue after the purchase.

• Post-Purchase Follow-up: Send order confirmations, shipping notifications, and a request for a product review a week or two after they receive their item. User-generated content like reviews is incredibly powerful social proof.
• Re-engagement Campaigns: If a customer hasn’t purchased in a while, send them a targeted “we miss you” campaign with a special offer to win them back.
• VIP & Loyalty Programs: Create an exclusive segment for your best customers. Give them early access to sales, special discounts, or exclusive content to make them feel valued.

The Role of SMS in a Modern Funnel

To really enhance the post-purchase experience, consider adding SMS marketing to your toolkit. SMS is perfect for immediate, high-priority messages. While email is great for storytelling, SMS excels at quick updates. About 90% of text messages are read within just three minutes, making it a powerful channel for time-sensitive information.

Use SMS for:

• Order and shipping confirmations.
• Flash sale announcements.
• Back-in-stock alerts.

The key is to use a unified platform like Send by Elementor, which manages both email and SMS within the same interface. This way, you have a complete view of all communications with a customer and can create a seamless, multichannel experience without juggling multiple tools.

Step-by-Step: Building Your First Funnel in WordPress

Now that you understand the theory, let’s get practical. This section will walk you through building a foundational email funnel inside WordPress, framed from the perspective of a web creator setting one up for a client’s WooCommerce store.

Prerequisite: Choosing Your Toolkit

The marketing tool landscape is vast. You have standalone Email Service Providers (ESPs) and a wide array of WordPress plugins. The challenge with this disconnected approach often involves juggling multiple subscriptions, wrestling with API keys, and dealing with data syncing issues that can slow down your site.

A more modern and efficient approach is to use a WordPress-native, all-in-one communication toolkit. For this walkthrough, we’ll be referencing the features and workflow you’d find in a solution like Send by Elementor. It’s built from the ground up for WordPress and consolidates all the essential tools—email, SMS, automation, forms, and analytics—into a single interface right inside your dashboard.

Step 1: Set Up Your Lead Capture Form

Let’s start by creating a simple but effective lead magnet: a pop-up offering 10% off for new subscribers on a WooCommerce store.

1. Navigate to the Forms Section: In Send by Elementor, you’d navigate to the lead generation tools to begin.
2. Choose a Template: To save time, select a pre-designed pop-up template. These are often based on proven design practices to maximize conversions.
3. Customize the Content: Update the headline to clearly state the offer (e.g., “Get 10% Off Your First Order”). Keep the body text brief and explain that they’ll receive the code via email.
4. Connect to a List: Assign this form to a specific contact list, such as “New Subscribers.” This is crucial for triggering the correct automation.
5. Set Display Rules: Configure when the pop-up should appear. A good starting point is to show it after a visitor has been on the site for 15 seconds or when they show “exit intent” (moving their mouse toward the close button).
6. Activate! Publish the form and watch the subscribers start rolling in.

Step 2: Build Your Welcome Series Automation

Now, let’s nurture those new subscribers with an automated welcome series.

1. Go to the Automation Builder: Using the visual, drag-and-drop automation builder in Send by Elementor, this process is straightforward. You can even start with one of their ready-made templates to speed up the process.
2. Select a Trigger: The trigger for this flow will be “Joins a list.” Select the “New Subscribers” list you created in the previous step.
3. Design Email 1 (Immediate Send):
   • Subject: Welcome! Here’s Your 10% Off Code.
   • Content: Use the email builder to create a clean, on-brand email. Welcome the subscriber, provide the discount code clearly, and add a button that links directly to the shop.
4. Add a Time Delay: Set a delay of 1 day before the next email.
5. Design Email 2 (Day 2):
   • Subject: So, a little about us…
   • Content: Share the brand’s origin story or mission. This helps build a human connection.
6. Add Another Time Delay: Set another 1-day delay.
7. Design Email 3 (Day 3):
   • Subject: See what other customers are loving.
   • Content: Showcase 3-4 of the store’s best-selling products. Include high-quality images, short descriptions, and a star rating or a snippet from a customer review for social proof.
8. Activate the Flow: Once you’re happy with the sequence, turn it on. Now every new subscriber will automatically receive this nurturing series.

Step 3: Implement the Abandoned Cart Flow

This is the money-maker. With Send by Elementor, this is incredibly simple because it comes with a pre-built automation flow specifically for WooCommerce Abandoned Carts. You can often activate this with just a few clicks, making it a “set-and-forget” revenue generator.

1. Find the Pre-built Flow: In the automation section, select the Abandoned Cart template.
2. Review the Trigger: The trigger is already configured to fire when a logged-in user or a guest who enters their email at checkout abandons a cart.
3. Customize the Emails: The flow will likely come with pre-written emails. Review and tweak them to match your client’s brand voice. A typical sequence is:
   • Email 1 (1 Hour Delay): A gentle “Did you forget something?” reminder.
   • Email 2 (24 Hour Delay): A “Your cart is waiting” message that might include customer reviews or highlight a benefit like free shipping.
4. Activate and Forget: Turn the flow on. It will now run in the background, recovering sales you would have otherwise lost.

Step 4: Track Your Performance and Prove Value

A few weeks after launching the funnel, it’s time to check the results.

1. Open the Analytics Dashboard: Inside the Send by Elementor analytics dashboard, you’ll find real-time reports for all your campaigns and automations.
2. Review Campaign Performance: Look at the reports for your welcome series and abandoned cart flow. You’ll see standard metrics like open and click rates.
3. Focus on Revenue: The most important column is revenue attribution. The dashboard clearly shows how much money each automation has generated.
4. Prepare Your Report: Take a screenshot of the results. You can now confidently tell your client, “The email funnel we built is working. Last month, it generated $X in revenue that the business would not have captured otherwise.” This concrete data transforms your service from a cost into a high-return investment.

Choosing the Right Marketing Toolkit for Your WordPress Site

The success of your email marketing funnel depends heavily on the tools you use. For web creators working in the WordPress ecosystem, the right choice can make the difference between a frustrating, time-consuming process and an efficient, profitable service offering.

Key Factors to Consider

When evaluating options, focus on these four critical factors:

1. WordPress Integration: Is the tool truly native, or is it just a simple connector plugin? A
   truly WordPress-native solution is built to live inside your dashboard, leading to better performance, fewer conflicts, and a familiar interface.
2. Feature Set: Does the platform cover the entire funnel? Look for a comprehensive toolkit that includes email, SMS, automation, segmentation, and analytics all in one place.
3. Ease of Use: As a busy creator, your time is valuable. The ideal tool should feel intuitive. Look for features like
   drag-and-drop builders and a library of pre-built templates to accelerate your workflow.
4. Analytics and ROI Tracking: Can you easily demonstrate the value of your work? The platform must provide clear, real-time analytics that connect your marketing efforts directly to revenue.

A Brief Look at the Tool Landscape

The market offers several types of solutions, each with its own pros and cons.

• Standalone ESPs: These are powerful, dedicated email marketing platforms. They offer deep functionality but often require complex setup to integrate with WordPress. Your customer data lives on their servers, and you’ll rely on APIs to keep everything in sync.
• Basic WordPress Plugins: Some plugins are great for sending simple newsletters. However, they typically lack the advanced automation, segmentation, or multichannel (SMS) capabilities needed to build a complete marketing funnel.
• The WordPress-Native Approach (e.g., Send by Elementor): This category represents the ideal solution for WordPress professionals. A tool like
  Send by Elementor is designed specifically for the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem. It provides a comprehensive suite of marketing tools within a single, native plugin. This means the interface is familiar, and you don’t have to worry about common integration friction or data syncing issues that come with external platforms. This approach simplifies the entire process, allowing creators to focus on strategy and results.

Conclusion

Building an email marketing funnel is one of the most powerful investments you can make for sustainable business growth. It allows you to move beyond the uncertainty and rising costs of paid advertising by creating a direct, reliable channel to your customers. By systematically guiding your audience through the stages of awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty, you can build meaningful relationships that translate into predictable revenue.

For web creators, this represents a pivotal opportunity. You can expand your services beyond the initial website build and become an indispensable growth partner for your clients. By implementing and managing these funnels, you deliver clear, measurable results, strengthen your client relationships, and unlock valuable recurring revenue streams.

The process doesn’t have to be complicated. The right tools, like Send by Elementor, that integrate seamlessly into the WordPress workflow you already know, make all the difference in empowering you to deliver exceptional results.