Master the email marketing customer journey: A guide for 2024!

Thousands of emails are sent and received through Salesmate every day.

A key insight we gather from our clients is that success lies in understanding customer journeys, not just sending more emails.

So, building email customer journeys is the key to engaging relevant audiences throughout every phase, ultimately leading to conversion possibilities. 

In this blog, we’ll explore: 

• The lifecycle stages of email marketing
• How to build a successful email marketing customer journey 
• Best practices for creating effective email journeys 

Let’s start by defining an email marketing customer journey and why it’s essential for your success. 

What is the email marketing customer journey? 

The email marketing customer journey outlines how prospects and existing customers engage with your brand, from initial contact to post-purchase.

Each stage—from awareness to retention—guides them toward deeper engagement and conversions. The journey maps each engagement phase, ensuring every interaction builds on the last.

Every customer’s email marketing journey is unique, shaped by their behaviors and needs, making personalized interactions at every touchpoint crucial.

Hence, strategic email content is designed to meet the target customers’ evolving needs and interests, driving toward conversion and retention.

The email marketing journey is a roadmap where each email guides the potential customers from awareness to purchase and retention. 

Here is an email marketing customer journey for first-time buyers look like: 

An email journey map is a visual tool for illustrating a potential customer’s path and plotting all the interactions or touchpoints they experience during their journey.  

Think of it as a visual representation that outlines the sequence of emails customers receive as they interact with your brand. 

Here are common touchpoints in a B2B welcome email journey example:

Touchpoint 1: Welcome email

Introduce your brand and make a great first impression right after sign-up.

Touchpoint 2: Brand introduction

Share your brand story or showcase top products to build deeper engagement.

Touchpoint 3: Special offer/reminder

Entice subscribers with a timely discount or product recommendation to drive conversions.

These touchpoints help guide new subscribers towards further interaction with your brand.

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Why is the customer journey in email marketing crucial? 

The email customer journey is essential because it helps nurture relationships with the right messages and guides prospects through each phase of their brand relationship.

With an email marketing customer journey, you can:

• Personalize your emails: Tailor content to meet individual customer needs, improving relevance and engagement at each stage of their journey.
• Address challenges: Identify pain points, such as cart abandonment or lack of product understanding, and proactively solve them through targeted email campaigns.
• Improve engagement: Analyze touchpoints like sign-ups and purchases to deliver timely messages, keeping customers engaged.
• Optimize conversion rates: By strategically sending emails during critical moments, like the consideration phase, you can increase the likelihood of purchases with relevant offers or incentives.
• Build lasting relationships: Post-purchase follow-ups and loyalty programs deepen trust and build brand loyalty.

Tracking the email journey lets you refine your strategy, ensuring every communication is meaningful, well-timed, and addresses customer needs.

Here comes an essential tactic for defining your email customer journey – email journey mapping.

What is email journey mapping? 

Email journey mapping is a crucial step in planning your email marketing strategy. It provides a clear visual roadmap of the various touchpoints and interactions a customer experiences with your brand.

It ensures that your emails align with the prospects’ thoughts or actions at each journey stage. 

For example, using email journey mapping tools, you can track behaviors like multiple visits to an eCommerce site without purchasing, triggering targeted emails to increase engagement. These tools help create customer journey maps that align with each prospect’s journey stage.

There are no set customer journey steps for each prospect. For instance, you can have leads coming to your eCommerce site and exploring for months without buying, and then you have leads converting within a week. 

However, you can create a successful email campaign by understanding your customer’s journey stages. Here is what our next section unfolds. 

5 Key stages in the email marketing customer journey

Understanding the critical stages of the email marketing customer journey is crucial for building personalized campaigns that resonate with your potential customers and bring results.

Here are the main stages of the customer journey for email marketing: 

1. Awareness stage 

At this stage, prospects are just learning about your brand. So, your goal is to grab their attention and get them to subscribe to your emails.

Offering something valuable, like a free guide, discount, or checklist, in exchange for their email addresses works wonders.

It’s a fair trade—give value to get their contact.

Here’s an example of a fantastic welcome email that perfectly fits the awareness stage of the email marketing customer journey: 

The email warmly introduces the brand with a friendly tone, making new subscriber feels part of the community. 

What’s to learn? 

Welcoming new subscribers with a personal tone and an incentive immediately builds connection and encourages early interaction with your brand. 

Dive deeper into Email marketing lead generation [Benefits, best practices, software, and tools]

2. Consideration stage 

Prospects at this stage are familiar with your brand and visit your site to explore more.

In this stage, you should focus on nurturing their interest and helping them understand why your product or service is the right choice.

For instance, a SaaS company can send product comparison emails showing how their solution suits the recipient’s needs and customer success stories.

At this stage, customer journey email sequences aim to show them why your solution best fits their needs. Through educational content, you can also address their pain points or any hesitations they might have. 

The below email example from Neil Patel fits into the consideration stage of the customer journey. It introduces the concept of a marketing strategy (content gaps) and provides a link to learn more, encouraging the reader to explore the idea further. 

What’s to learn? 

In your emails, focus on keeping the message straightforward and personalized. Share useful insights that educate your audience and include specific actions they can take next.

This method helps to build engagement and gradually guides leads toward making a purchase decision.

3. Decision stage 

At this point, your leads are close to making a purchase but might need a final nudge. You should aim to make the next step as simple as possible to win their yes.

So, your emails should enable them to confidently take that next step, whether purchasing or signing up for a service.

Emails with clear calls to action (CTAs), great discounts, limited-time offers, or product demos work particularly well at this stage. The message should focus on overcoming any final objections and motivating the customer to take action. 

For instance, an eCommerce brand store can send a “You left something in your cart!” email with a 25% discount if they complete the purchase in 24 hours.

Here’s a perfect email example from Oiselle of how brands can drive conversions during the decision stage:

What’s to learn? 

Offering time-sensitive discounts and adding perks like free shipping are proven methods of encouraging action. The key is to make the message clear, the benefits obvious, and the call to action (CTA) easy to follow. 

4. Retention stage 

A successful business focuses on gaining and keeping customers for repeat purchases.

Retaining their existing customers is far more economical for businesses than attracting new ones, making it crucial for long-term success. 

A study reveals that companies prioritizing customer retention over acquisition are 60% more profitable.

You can send thank-you emails, post-purchase guides, personalized recommendations, or request customer feedback to help maintain a connection.

Also, you can invite them to follow your brand on social media or join a loyalty program. All these post-purchase emails ensure that your customers are engaged.

What’s to learn? 

Crafting personalized offers is essential if you want to build brand loyalty. So, ensure your post-purchase recommendations align with customers’ interests and preferences.

Read more: 6 Techniques for Better Customer Retention that Work!

5. Advocacy stage 

Happy and loyal customers are your best marketing asset. It is because when customers love a product or service, they likely tell others about it, which we call word-of-mouth publicity.

In this stage of the email customer journey, you turn your delighted customers into brand advocates who spread the word for you by requesting them to refer your brands to relevant persons.

Creating loyalty programs and sending emails with referral bonuses are the most common emails. So, encourage existing customer advocacy through referral programs and rewards for sharing feedback.

Here’s an example of an email fitting into the advocacy stage of the customer journey:

Flippa provides top picks of the month in which he shares the news of the referral program.

What’s to learn? 

Acknowledging customer actions and providing clear next steps fosters engagement, helping turn satisfied users into loyal advocates for your brand. 

Enhance your knowledge with The Powerful Impact of AI in Email Marketing Landscape

Now that we’ve explored the key stages of an email marketing customer journey, let’s look at how you can build a compelling journey for your brand.

How to build a compelling email marketing customer journey? 

To create and execute an email marketing journey, you must align your understanding of the audience persona, email journey stages, and what messages to send.

Here are some critical steps for building a successful email marketing customer journey:

1. Define your goals

Set clear, measurable objectives that align with business outcomes. The goals can be like:

• Boost conversion rates by 20% during the decision stage
• Decrease customer churn by 15% in the retention phase

This way, establishing objectives will clarify at which stage of the email marketing customer journey the brand needs to focus.

Further, defining these goals helps you measure the success of your campaigns and provides a benchmark for future strategies.

2. Segment your audience and tailor content 

To build a successful email marketing journey, start by segmenting your audience. Divide them based on one of the factors as discussed in the table below:

Once segmented, map content that addresses their needs at each journey stage—from awareness to advocacy. Segmentation helps deliver more personalized emails, increasing relevance and engagement.

After segmenting your audience, group them by behavior or preferences and plan content that aligns with their journey stage: 

• Awareness: Educational content and brand introductions. 
• Consideration: Product demos, case studies, or testimonials. 
• Decision: Discounts abandoned cart reminders. 
• Retention: Personalized follow-ups and loyalty programs. 

Enhance your knowledge with Customer Segmentation 101 guide for everything you need to know

3. Plan and automate your campaigns 

Use email automation to trigger messages at critical moments in the journey.

As per the studies, triggered email campaigns have an average open rate of 46%, a click-through rate (CTR) of 11%, and a click-to-open rate of 24%.

Automation ensures timely, relevant communications through various stages. For instance, you can send:

• Welcome emails automatically after sign-up to make a great first impression.
• Follow-up emails post-purchase to thank customers and encourage them to come back.

You can maintain consistent engagement without manual effort by creating automated email journeys with various touchpoints. 

Deepen your expertise with 7 Types of marketing automation to enhance your marketing process

4. Build and test your email content 

Create emails that are informative and visually appealing. Use A/B testing to fine-tune your approach and decide which email campaigns resonate the best with your segmented audience.

Here’s what A/B testing looks like:

You can A/B test different subject lines, call-to-actions (CTAs), and designs to discover what works best with your audience. This helps optimize your email performance and ensures your content remains effective.

5. Monitor key metrics and optimize 

Finally, to effectively gauge your email marketing success, focus on these essential metrics:

• Open rates: Measure how many people open your emails, indicating subject line effectiveness.
• Click-Through Rates (CTRs): Track link clicks within emails to assess content engagement.
• Conversion rates: Monitor actions taken from emails, like purchases, to see their direct impact on goals.

Analyzing these email marketing metrics will give you insights into what’s working and what’s not with campaigns, allowing you to refine your approach continuously.

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6 Best practices for optimizing email marketing customer journeys 

Optimizing your email marketing customer journey is crucial for enhancing engagement and conversions.

Try these email journey best practices to create a seamless and impactful journey that aligns with your customer’s needs and behaviors:

1. Adapt emails to each journey stage

The customer’s mindset differs at each stage, so the email should, too.

Here’s an interesting example for you: Imagine you own an online clothing store, so your email content could be like this: 

• Awareness stage: Send a “Welcome” email introducing your brand, offering a 10% off coupon, and sharing educational content like “How to Choose the Best Fabrics for Every Season.”
• Consideration stage: After a few visits to your site, send a customer testimonials email or product comparison guide that shows why your products stand out (e.g., “See Why Customers Love Our Organic Cotton Collection”).
• Decision stage: Trigger a cart abandonment email offering free shipping if they complete the purchase.

Such personalized cogent in your email will help you drive results with each campaign.

2. Automate emails using behavioral triggers

You can use email automation to set up behavioral triggers so emails automatically go out based on actions like signing up, purchasing, or even abandoning a cart.

This way, you’re constantly sending relevant emails at the right time with manual intervention, keeping engagement high.

Read in detail: 14 Best email automation tools to enhance your campaigns

3. Align journey stages with customer needs 

Make sure each email tackles specific customer needs at different stages. For instance, you could address their questions by providing comparisons or reviews.

Once they’ve purchased, focus on retention with loyalty programs or personalized follow-ups that show you’re still paying attention. 

4. Use dynamic content for personalization

With every email campaign targeting, the aim is to make a personal connection with prospects so that when they look at a product within your niche industry, they consider you as their top choice.

For instance, as a real estate business, if you have a prospect who frequently browses listings for 3-bedroom homes in a specific neighborhood, you can send personalized emails featuring new listings or price reductions in that area.

This content personalization approach keeps the content relevant and increases the chances of engagement, as you’re catering to the customer’s specific interests.

5. Segment by lifecycle stage

A one-size-fits-all approach will not work in marketing, as everyone has unique brand needs.

So, segment your audience according to their customer journey stage: new leads, prospects, or loyal customers.

This ensures that each email is relevant, helping to build good relationships with leads and improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

6. Optimize continuously with customer data

To optimize your email customer journeys, the key is to use customer data effectively. Start by tracking core metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and conversions. These metrics show your emails’ performance and where improvements are needed.

For example, if your open rate is low, it could mean your subject lines need testing. Running A/B tests on different subject lines or email designs helps you understand what resonates with your audience.

Continuous data-driven optimization leads to better engagement and results.  

Insightful read: 15 Best email marketing KPIs and metrics

7. Maintain consistency across channels

You must maintain a cohesive message across email, website, social media, and customer service for a seamless customer experience.

So, if you promote a discount via email, ensure the same offer is visible on your website and social channels.

Explore must: 11 Stellar email marketing strategies to create effective email campaigns

Salesmate CRM – Drive sales with automated email marketing campaigns!

A robust email campaign software can turn your email interaction into conversions with intelligent segmentation and personalization.

Salesmate helps you build powerful email campaigns and A/B tests them for segmented targeting that drives revenue.

With Automation Journeys, you can send the right emails at the perfect time based on customer actions like signing up or purchasing.

This comprehensive solution serves the business through marketing automation, sales, and customer support. It comes with robust CRM and automation functionalities at the most competitive pricing.

Key features of Salesmate to explore:

• Drag-and-Drop Email Builder: Quickly create responsive email templates without coding for email targeting.
• A/B Testing: Test email variants (subject lines, designs) to optimize campaign performance.
• Lead Scoring Software: Prioritize leads by scoring them based on engagement, improving sales focus.
• Advanced Segmentation: Filter contacts with over 100 criteria for precise targeting.
• Automation: Set your marketing and sales repetitive tasks like follow-ups and data entry on auto-pilot to improve efficiency.
• Analytics: Analyze campaign performance and sales efforts to optimize your strategy with data-driven insights.
• Sales Pipeline Management Software: Visualize sales cycle, track leads, and deal with real-time updates across multiple stages.
• Sales goals tracking: Set, monitor, and achieve individual and team goals, aligning with business objectives.
• Built-in Calling and Texting: Make calls, send texts, and record conversations directly from the CRM.
• Team Inbox: Centralize customer communications for easy collaboration across teams.
• Ticketing Software: Organize, prioritize, and resolve customer support tickets efficiently within the CRM.

Salesmate CRM provides the great flexibility to customize workflows and scale your business while maintaining high levels of customer engagement.

Want to drive sales with email marketing?

Send personalized and automated email campaigns effortlessly within Salesmate CRM. Plus, track and optimize your email strategy with analytics.

Explore CRM with Email Marketing Automation

Final thoughts 

If you have a defined email marketing customer journey, you can target better and deliver a great brand experience that leads your potential buyers from curiosity to loyalty.

Further, with email customer journey mapping, you can create and align email strategies with each touchpoint, automating behavior-based responses and continuously optimizing for engagement.

Ultimately, it’s about building trust, delivering value, and fostering long-term customer relationships.

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