How To Maximize Email Marketing On WordPress

Last updated on December 18th, 2025 at 03:09 pm

Do you have a WordPress website?

Then you have made a great choice – it’s one of the best content management platforms in the world. In fact, according to W3Techs, WordPress powers 43.1% of all websites!

However, it was designed for blogging, not for email marketing, which means that you will need additional software if you want to start, grow, and monetize your email list.

Today we will explain why we believe that ClickFunnels is the best solution for that and how to use it to maximize email marketing on WordPress.

Table of Contents:

Choose the Right Software

Okay, so first things first, let’s talk about software.

Here are the three key functionalities that you will need if you want to implement the advice in this article:

Email marketing – You will need an email marketing functionality that allows you to create opt-in forms, collect email addresses, and send both one-off broadcast emails and automated email sequences to your subscribers. Additionally, you want email segmentation and marketing automation capabilities.
Landing pages – Landing pages are an essential component of lead generation funnels, so you will also need a landing page builder functionality. Ideally, it should come with a library of proven, high-converting landing page templates for the most common use cases as well as a visual editor that allows you to customize those templates.
Sales funnels – Email marketing doesn’t exist in isolation – it should always be viewed in the context of your overall sales funnel. That’s why you will also need a funnel builder functionality. Ideally, it should come with a library of sales funnel templates for all the most common use cases.

Something to keep in mind here is that every additional piece of software that you use increases the fragility of your workflow.

The more plugins and apps you stitch together, the more likely it is that one of them will break and disrupt the entire system.

That’s why we recommend getting all the functionality that you need from a single platform whenever possible.

Needless to say, we are biased here, but we believe that ClickFunnels is the best solution for WordPress email marketing.

It has a powerful email marketing functionality, an extensive library of landing page and sales funnel templates, a visual editor that you can use to customize those templates, and much more.

You can sign up for our 14-day free trial and start implementing the advice in this article immediately without any risk!

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Design Your Sales Funnel

The purpose of email marketing is to guide your dream customers through your sales funnel.

This means that no amount of strategies, tactics, and hacks will help if your sales funnel is a mess!

That’s why we recommend designing your sales funnel first. Once you understand the big picture, creating an effective email marketing strategy should be relatively straightforward.

There are several popular sales funnel models out there. Which one should you choose for your business?

We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.

It was created by our co-founder Russell Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).

This sales funnel has four stages:

Bait – You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
Frontend – You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
Middle – You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service.
Backend – You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.

Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.

We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.

Design Your Sales Funnel

The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:

Start the relationship with that person by offering free value.
Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email.
Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

And if the Value Ladder graph above seems overwhelming, keep in mind that you don’t need to have your entire product line ready to get started.

You can create a simple Value Ladder sales funnel with just a lead magnet and a frontend offer, then build out the rest over time.

Also, our software, ClickFunnels, can guide you through the process of creating your first sales funnel step-by-step. So why not start building your Value Ladder today?

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Grow Your Email List With a Lead Generation Funnel

Entrepreneurs often take a passive approach to building their email lists. They add a few opt-in forms to their company’s website. Maybe they create some sort of a lead magnet. And then they just leave it at that.

This would be okay for a hobby project, but if you want to use email marketing to grow your business, you have to be more proactive than that.

The best way to build your email list is to create a lead generation funnel and then drive traffic to it with paid ads.

Here’s how it works:

You create a lead magnet
You create a landing page for that lead magnet
You drive traffic to that landing page with paid ads

Let’s take a closer look at each of these three steps:

Create a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to potential customers in exchange for their email address.

It can be anything that they can either download to their devices or access online:

A report
An eBook
A video course
An email course
A webinar

…etc.

For Example:

Here are some of our digital lead magnets:

There are also physical “FREE + Shipping” lead magnets where you offer the potential customer a free physical product but ask them to pay for shipping.

For Example:

Russell has written three best-selling books about online marketing that are collectively known as the Secrets Trilogy.

All three books are available on Amazon but you can also get them from us for free provided that you cover the shipping:

Grow Your Email List With a Lead Generation Funnel — Get “DotCom Secrets” for FREE!

Here are the three key differences between digital and physical lead magnets:

Cost – Physical lead magnets cost more to produce, plus you need to store them somewhere. This means that they are riskier from a financial perspective.
Perceived value – Physical lead magnets are perceived as more valuable, especially if they are available for sale somewhere else (e.g., Russell’s books being available on Amazon increases their perceived value as lead magnets).
Lead quantity vs. lead quality – All you are asking in exchange for a digital lead magnet is the potential customer’s email address, so you will likely generate more leads this way.
Meanwhile, with physical lead magnets, you are also asking them to cover the shipping, which introduces additional friction to the lead generation process.

This additional friction means that you will likely generate fewer but higher-quality leads with a physical lead magnet.

Of course, these are just the general rules. There are always exceptions!

If you have never built a lead generation funnel before, we recommend starting with a digital lead magnet as that is the safer option.

Regardless of whether you decide to go with a digital or a physical lead magnet, it’s important to make sure that:

Your lead magnet offers an effective solution to a problem that the potential customer is struggling with.
That problem is either the same one or related to the one that your frontend offer addresses.

Also, people won’t give you their contact details unless you offer them something super valuable in return, so make sure that your lead magnet exceeds all expectations!

Create a Landing Page for That Lead Magnet

Once you have your lead magnet, it’s time to create a landing page for it.

We recommend starting with a simple squeeze page that has these three key elements:

A headline that conveys the value of your free offer. How will your lead magnet make the potential customer’s life better? Emphasize that!
An opt-in form where the potential customer can type in their email address. It can be either displayed immediately or shown once they click the call-to-action button.
A call-to-action button that encourages the potential customer to get the lead magnet. Use offer-specific copy (e.g., “Get Your FREE eBook Now!”) as opposed to generic copy (e.g., “Download” or “Subscribe”).

You might also want to experiment with various additional elements such as a subheadline that provides more information about your offer, a few sentences of copy, social proof, etc.

Typically, these additional elements increase the conversion rate, but you should still A/B test everything just to be sure.

As for the images, you should probably use an aspirational background image that reminds the potential customer what they want to achieve.

However, if you have a personal brand or are the face of your company, using a photo of yourself can also work well.

For Example:

Here’s a simple yet high-converting squeeze page that we use to promote one of our lead magnets:

Create a Landing Page for That Lead Magnet — Get “The Funnel Hacker’s Cookbook” for FREE!

We don’t recommend building your landing page from scratch if you don’t have any previous experience designing landing pages.

Instead, use a proven landing page template that complies with the best landing page design practices.

Our software, ClickFunnels, includes a template library that features high-converting landing page templates for all of the most common uses.

So why waste time reinventing the wheel when you can simply do what’s been proven to work?

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Drive Traffic to Your Lead Magnet Landing Page With Paid Ads

Once you have your lead magnet landing page, it’s time to start driving traffic to it with paid ads.

We recommend paid advertising because paid traffic is immediate, targeted, and scalable.

All major social media platforms allow you to run ads on them:

Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
TikTok

Choose the platform that makes the most sense for your business, create an ad campaign, and start running it with a small daily budget.

Once you figure out how to run ads profitably, you can begin gradually scaling your campaign.

Alternatively, if you aren’t sure which platform to go with, you can create ad campaigns on all of them, test them with small daily budgets, then see which one performs the best and double down on it.

Convert Email Subscribers to Paying Customers With This Welcome Sequence

Once you have the potential customer’s email address, you should send them this 6-email welcome sequence:

Email #1: Who Are You? Introduce yourself to the new subscriber.
Email #2: Where Did You Come From? Share your origin story. How did you come to do what you do now?
Email #3: What Do You Do? Explain what it is that you do. How does it all work?
Email #4: How Did You Gain This Expertise? Explain what makes you qualified to do what you do. Mention relevant education, credentials, and accomplishments.
Email #5: Who Do You Do This For? Describe your dream customers + share a case study on how you helped such a person get the results that they wanted.
Email #6: How Can You Do It For Me? Pitch your frontend offer and provide a link to its sales page.

Alternatively, you can use a “buffet” approach, where instead of pitching one offer you provide a list of all your offers with quick descriptions and call-to-action links.

Send one email per day so that the entire sequence would take six days to complete.

Emails #1 to #5 will help you build trust with the new subscriber which will make them more receptive to your sales pitch in the email #6.

Bonus tip:

End emails #1 to #5 with a question and a call to action encouraging the new subscriber to hit the reply button and let you know what they think.

Then make an effort to respond to each and every email that you get from new subscribers. This will help you create a more personal connection with them!

Use Email Segmentation and Marketing Automation to Make Your Emails as Relevant as Possible

Generic emails not only don’t convert well but can also alienate your subscribers.

If someone opens an email from you and realizes that it’s not relevant to them, they will be less likely to open your emails in the future.

And if that continues happening, they might unsubscribe from your email list altogether.

That’s why it’s so important to make sure that your emails are as relevant as possible to each subscriber. But how can you do that?

This is where email segmentation and marketing automation come in.

Email Segmentation

Email segmentation is an email marketing practice where you create subscriber segments based on various criteria such as demographic information, subscriber behavior, purchase history, etc.

This allows you to:

Target specific subscriber segments
Exclude specific subscriber segments

You can use email segmentation to make your email more relevant.

For Example:

You can create a segment of subscribers who have purchased your frontend product and then exclude them from any future sales emails related to that offer.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is an email marketing practice where you create automated email workflows based on behavioral triggers.

You can use it to make your emails more relevant by automatically tailoring your email content to each subscriber based on their behavior.

Marketing Automation — Email workflow in ClickFunnels

For Example:

Let’s say that you sell several fitness-related info products that address different problems (losing weight, gaining muscle, fixing posture, etc.).

In that case, if you only have one lead generation funnel, it might make sense to use the previously mentioned “buffet” approach where you list all your offers in the welcome sequence email #6.

You can then create separate workflows for each product that get triggered if the new subscriber clicks the call-to-action button for it.

Say, if someone clicks on the weight loss product link, you can start automatically sending them weight loss content as opposed to muscle building or posture stuff.

You can easily create automated email workflows like that with ClickFunnels!

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Write Emails That Sell With the “Hook, Story, Offer” Copywriting Framework

Email copywriting is a huge subject that we can’t adequately cover in this article.

But we can recommend the “Hook, Story, Offer” framework that we use in our own sales emails. It has worked extremely well for us. It can work for you, too!

Hook – Grab the subscriber’s attention with a compelling subject line. Keep in mind that the subject line is the most important copy element of any email. Why? Because it determines whether the subscriber will open it!
Story – Tell the subscriber a captivating story that resonates with them on an emotional level. That story should include a lesson that is relevant to them. You want the subscriber to feel like they have learned something from your sales email even if they aren’t ready to make the purchase. That will make them more likely to continue opening your emails in the future.
Offer – Transition from the story to the sales pitch and then to the call to action. You can use either a call-to-action link or a call-to-action button.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

Don’t overdo it with sales emails.

Bombarding your email subscribers with endless sales pitches is a surefire way to alienate them. Digital marketers call this “burning the list”.

However, if you want to stay top of mind with them, you need to email them regularly. So how can you do that without being obnoxious?

We believe that launching a weekly email newsletter is the best solution to this conundrum because it gives you an excuse to email your subscribers regularly while providing free value.

Here’s a three-step plan that can help you get your newsletter going:

Start with a simple link roundup format where every week you share links to relevant and interesting content from around the web (e.g. articles, podcasts, videos, etc.).
Expand the scope of your newsletter by adding original content. This can mean how-to articles, mini-guides, commentary on the current state of your industry, etc.
Expand the scope of your newsletter even further by adding original interviews and case studies.

It can take a while to get the hang of it, streamline the process, and figure out how to publish your newsletter consistently. That’s okay. Take your time. Only progress to the next step once you have mastered the previous one.

Also, if you don’t have time to produce your newsletter, consider hiring a freelance writer.

You can find writers on job boards such as ProBlogger Jobs, Best Writing, and Dynamite Jobs.

Don’t Forget to Regularly Prune Your Email List!

Inactive subscribers might not seem like a big deal initially but they can become a serious problem as your list grows. Why?

Because they cost you money, damage deliverability, and distort various email marketing metrics.

We recommend creating an automated workflow for pruning your email list:

Set up a behavioral trigger – If the subscriber hasn’t opened your emails in three months, this pruning sequence should be activated.
Send them a confirmation email – Asking them to confirm that they want to remain on your email list by clicking a confirmation link.
Split the workflow into three paths –

If they didn’t open the confirmation email then remove them from your list.
If they did open the email but didn’t click the confirmation link then also remove them from your list.
If they opened the email and clicked on the confirmation link then keep them on your list.

Don’t let dead weight accumulate unchecked until you have to remove tens of thousands of inactive subscribers from your email list.

It’s best to implement a pruning sequence right from the get-go. It will help you ensure that your email list remains engaged as it grows!

Build a Sales Funnel for Your Business with ClickFunnels!

ClickFunnels has everything you need to build a sales funnel for your business:

Proven sales funnel and landing page templates.
Visual editor that you can use to customize those templates.
Email marketing functionality that allows you to send broadcast emails, set up automated email sequences, and create email workflows with behavioral triggers.

What’s best is that we have a free trial which means that you can check out our software without any risk.

So why not start building your Value Ladder sales funnel today?

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P.S. You can easily connect ClickFunnels to WordPress!

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