Imagine sending emails to your list that offer value, increase engagement, and strengthen brand awareness at regular intervals without creating new content for each email — for an unlimited amount of time. Oh! And it’s all done automatically.
Sounds pretty amazing, right? Right.
Lucky for you, it’s not a fairytale or some sort of email wizardry. It’s called a “forever funnel” and is sure to become a valuable tool in your email marketing toolkit.
What is a forever funnel?
A forever funnel is an email marketing concept that refers to a long-term, multi-entry, automated sales or marketing funnel designed to continuously engage, inform, and convert subscribers over an extended period.
The term forever means the funnel is intended to operate indefinitely, and depending on your email service provider (ESP), the number of entries of these funnels is only limited by your time and creativity.
Top 4 benefits of a forever funnel.
There are multiple benefits to having a forever funnel in place. While many are tailored to your individual goals and email strategy, the top 4 benefits of a forever funnel are often the same for all email marketers.
- Consistent communication.
A forever funnel automatically delivers regularly scheduled email content to your subscribers. This creates and cultivates closer relationships with your subscribers and ensures they’ll still hear from you, even during content breaks, vacations, or writing blocks.
That means once your forever funnel is up and running, you consistently deliver value, build community, and drive conversions to boost revenue!
- Lead nurturing.
For business owners, entrepreneurs, and content marketers, lead nurturing is a central focus of a forever funnel.
You’re building relationships with your audience and increasing trust while providing value-driven content. Especially if a subscriber has previously purchased from you (as in they’re already a customer or client), continued nurturing through a forever funnel increases their value by further encouraging engagement and interest.
- Traffic driving.
When you’re consistently sending content to your audience, you’re creating opportunities to drive traffic to your website, podcast, social channels, referral partners, and more. The consistent stream of traffic brings the opportunity to boost visibility, revenue, engagement, and authority levels.
- Targeting Insights.
A forever funnel provides a goldmine of targeting insights and subscriber data! If you’re putting in the effort to build a forever funnel, take the time to add tag automation and create segments. This gives you everything you’ll need to send targeted, personalized email campaigns in the future.
Depending on your goals for creating a forever funnel, additional benefits can include boosting revenue, gathering subscriber feedback, and increasing brand awareness and authority.
Content ideas for your forever funnel.
While it initially takes effort to create and build the structure of a forever funnel, the bulk of your email content probably already exists on your site, email archives, or vault. Forever funnels are prime for evergreen content and are excellent spaces to add content from other avenues.
Here are some content ideas to start adding to your forever funnel:
- Blog Posts: Gather your favorite blog posts from years past and add them as individual entries to your forever funnel. This is not only an excellent way to recycle old content on your site, but also a great way to introduce this content to new subscribers.
- Old Lead Magnets: You work hard on creating lead magnets and opt-in incentives, and there’s no reason you can’t add these to your forever funnel. Again, the theme is recycling and repurposing old content to build your funnel and provide valuable content. Think back to any ebooks, checklists, templates, or whitepapers you created in the past and add each to an individual entry in your funnel.
- Webinars and Workshops: Have you hosted or appeared as a guest on any webinars or workshops? If the topics are relevant to your audience, these recordings are great resources to add to your forever funnel. Webinars and workshops help diversify the content you send while showcasing your expertise to build trust.
- Podcasts, Videos, and Live Streams: And speaking of diversifying content, this goes the same for any podcasts, videos, and live streams you’ve been on or created in the past. Educational and entertaining, this type of content boosts engagement and reminds your subscribers of content they can easily share on social channels.
- Subscriber-generated Content: Use your forever funnel as an opportunity to automatically encourage your customers, clients, and subscribers to share their experiences and testimonials. Ask for open reviews or testimonials or provide a form with questions to compile their responses. Another way to incorporate user-generated content is by sending reviews, testimonials, and use cases to boost your authenticity and credibility.
- Surveys and Polls: Engage your subscribers and gather valuable feedback by sending surveys or polls in your forever funnel. You can then use this data to improve your offerings and tailor future content, collaborations, or affiliate partnerships.
- Resource Libraries: Develop resource libraries or content hubs where users can access a collection of your evergreen content organized by category or topic.
- Product Recommendations: Forever funnels are designed to nurture, including sales nurturing. When consistently contacting your audience and providing valuable and engaging content, these sales emails integrate seamlessly into the mix. Use this opportunity to recommend products, highlight services, or remind subscribers of affiliate partnerships and referral codes.
The beauty of forever funnels (and really all funnels) is once you have everything in place, they run like a well-oiled machine in the background.
The majority of your work takes place in the beginning with creating the structure of your funnel, gathering the content, and creating the first round of emails, but then things shift into maintenance mode. You can add new entries as you’d like, edit individual emails, and more. All the while, your subscribers are being delivered value, community, and engagement straight to their inbox.
And that is what we’d call a win-win in the world of email marketing.
Ready to set up your forever funnel with FeedBlitz? Head to this page to start your free trial. Questions? Feel free to reach out with any questions through our Support Page. While live support is available Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern, you can always find helpful information 24-7 at the resources linked here.