Email marketing customer journey: Ultimate guide for 2025

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The email customer journey is the core of successful email marketing in 2025. But it’s far more than just sending emails to your subscribers. It’s about creating meaningful touchpoints at every stage of your audience’s path. 

To establish a positive email customer journey, you need to guide your customers through sales funnels while nurturing their interest with helpful information. 

You can also create personalized, memorable experiences that build trust, strengthen loyalty, and drive conversions. 

In this post, we’ll walk you through each step of a customer’s email marketing journey. We’ll also provide practical tips and strategies to improve every interaction. 

To top it off, you’ll find real-life examples of email marketing customer journeys that show what works and why.

What is an email customer journey?

An email customer journey is a customer-centric approach that ensures your emails align with every stage of your customers’ experience. It allows your audience to learn about your brand, engage with your content, and build lasting relationships with your business, nurturing trust and loyalty over time.

Why is the email customer journey important?

Optimizing your email customer journey leads to happier customers and a higher email marketing return on investment (ROI).

With an effective email marketing customer journey, you can:

• Improve engagement: A customer journey email will keep your customers engaged by providing content tailored to their specific stage in the journey. For instance, welcome emails with exclusive offers or behind-the-scenes stories can captivate new subscribers.
• Boost conversion rates: The email customer journey is designed to guide prospects through every stage of the sales funnel. By delivering well-timed and relevant emails, such as product recommendations or special offers, you can encourage your audience to take action. This ultimately increases the likelihood of conversion. 
• Improve customer retention: A well-structured email customer journey helps maintain long-term relationships by delivering consistent value. By sending personalized follow-ups, exclusive offers, or helpful tips post-purchase, you can keep your customers hooked and loyal to your brand over time. 

According to Qualtrics, consumers prioritize trusting the information they receive over enjoyment or convenience. Therefore, maintaining consistent and reliable touchpoints with consumers is essential for building trust.

Email customer journey stages

The email marketing customer journey consists of five major stages: awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy. 

Each stage plays an important role in guiding your audience from the first interaction to long-term advocacy. Understanding these stages can help you develop more targeted and effective email campaigns. 

Let’s take a closer look:

Awareness stage

This stage is where your potential customers come across your brand for the first time. 

At this stage of the customer journey, they may not yet have a deep understanding of your brand or its unique value. Here, your focus should be on capturing their interest and encouraging them to explore further. 

Consider offering something valuable, whether that’s a discount, a free guide, or an exclusive checklist. This creates a win-win situation because they’ll get a valuable offer while you gain their trust. 

An excellent way to kick off the awareness stage is through a welcome email, such as the one below by Patagonia. This email strikes the perfect balance of introducing the brand’s values while inviting recipients to engage further:

Consideration stage

This is the second stage of the customer journey, where your prospects are no longer strangers to your brand. They’ve seen what you offer and are curious to learn more. 

This is where nurturing their interests becomes crucial. Your emails need to help them understand why your products or services best fit their needs. 

You can achieve this by sending emails like:

• Product comparisons: Show how your offerings stand out from competitors
• Customer testimonials: Share real-life stories of how your product has helped others
• Educational content: Provide how-to guides, FAQs, or explainer videos to address common questions or concerns

Here’s a helpful email example for the consideration stage. The following product comparison email by Oobli showcases how its chocolate stands apart from the competition. It explains key differences and highlights its unique selling points:

Decision/purchase stage

At the decision stage, your prospects are comparing their options, considering price points, and weighing different features. 

Therefore, your role should be to compel them to take action. Focus on addressing any lingering doubts and showcasing the value of your products or services. 

Decision-stage emails need to offer irresistible reasons to take the plunge, such as:

• Free shipping
• Limited-time offers
• Special discounts

Here’s an example of an ideal decision-stage email. Aura Bora offers free shipping for the next 24 hours with a shipping code to make the deal even more appealing.

This strategy creates a sense of urgency, motivating prospects to act quickly and finalize their purchase:

Retention stage

After a customer makes a purchase, the focus shifts to keeping them happy and engaged. Retention emails aim to ensure the customer feels valued and excited about their ongoing relationship with your brand.

Besides, retention is more economical than finding new customers. It’s also the secret sauce for long-term success.

An example of a simple but effective retention tactic is sending a post-purchase thank-you email. This simple gesture builds trust, shows appreciation, and cultivates customer loyalty by creating a positive post-purchase experience.

That said, here are other ways to retain your customers:

• Celebrating milestones, such as their birthdays and anniversaries, with special offers
• Inviting them to join your loyalty program
• Offering discounts to loyal customers 

The thank you email below makes a great example of the retention stage. Adùn expresses genuine gratitude to its customers for the purchase, making them feel appreciated. 

The warm and engaging tone also creates a sense of connection between the brand and the customer. This personalization helps the customer feel appreciated, which is essential for retention:

Advocacy stage

Your happiest customers are your loudest cheerleaders. When people love your products or services, they’ll naturally share it with their friends and family. 

This is the magic of word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. In fact, during a 2023 survey posted by Statista, WOM was the main way US internet users discovered brands, with around 36% reporting it as their primary source.

Therefore, at the advocacy stage, you must focus on turning your happy customers into enthusiastic advocates. 

Referral programs and loyalty rewards work wonders here. You can send emails with incentives for referrals, such as discounts for friends who make a purchase.

The referral email below by Going is a great example. By offering real monetary rewards for referrals, it taps into the emotional motivator of reciprocity. This powerful incentive prompts both the referrer and their friends to take action:

Key elements of an email customer journey

Here are the top elements that will make your customer journey email marketing a success:

Touchpoints

These are the moments when your customers interact with your brand. They can range from visiting your website or opening a promotional email to speaking with your support team. 

Identifying these interactions gives you a clear picture of how your customers are moving through their journey. 

For the best results, remember to think outside the box. Touchpoints aren’t just direct. The common ones include welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and post-purchase follow-ups. However, you can also consider indirect ones like online reviews or social media comments. 

Check out the different touchpoints in a customer journey in the image below:

Segmentation

Your subscribers aren’t one-size-fits-all. Segmentation will make it easy to treat them like separate individuals. 

By grouping your prospects based on factors like demographics, purchase history, interests, and values, you can deliver the content they want to see and can relate to. 

For example, you can create a segment for customers who’ve browsed a particular product category and send them tailored product recommendations based on certain factors to make them feel valued. This ultimately nudges them to make a purchase.

Personalization

This is key to making your email marketing stand out. When you leverage customer data to craft tailored content, your emails stop being just messages — they become conversations. 

Generally, people love when brands just “get” them, which explains why personalized emails have better engagement. 

Whether it’s using your customers’ names, referencing their past purchases, or suggesting products relevant to those they’ve browsed, these tiny gestures show that you’re paying attention. 

Take it a step further by offering tailored content or exclusive offers in line with their preferences. The more personal your approach, the more likely your audience is to engage and respond. 

Automation

Imagine having your customer journey email marketing practically run itself. Email automation makes that possible. This element ensures that your communication is timely and consistent without requiring constant oversight. 

With automated workflows, you can welcome new subscribers, send follow-ups after purchases, and even reignite interest from inactive customers automatically. 

Not only will this save you time, but it will also help you establish stronger connections with your audience. 

Besides, automation will ensure that your emails land at just the right moment based on each recipient’s behavior to maximize engagement.

Opportunities and pain points

While mapping out your customer journey, it’s natural to discover areas where things aren’t going as smoothly as anticipated. 

These areas could include a complicated checkout process, slow response from customer support, confusing website navigation, or overwhelming email frequency.

The good news is that these pain points are actually opportunities in disguise. They’re chances to elevate and refine your customer experience. 

So begin by examining the patterns in your customers’ feedback. Also, analyze support interactions and track how users engage with your website or app. The insights you gain can result in meaningful changes that boost satisfaction. 

How to create an effective email customer journey

Developing and implementing a great email customer journey can transform how you engage with your audience, build lasting relationships, and eventually drive conversions. 

Here are six crucial steps for creating your ideal email customer journey map:

1. Define your goals

Before you begin working on your email design and copy, pause for a second to define the purpose of your emails. 

Set specific objectives, such as driving sales for a particular product, onboarding new customers, or increasing traffic to your website or blog.

Also, ensure that your goals are measurable, realistic, and aligned with your business strategy. Using SMART goals will help you stay on track and ensure your efforts align with your business goals. 

SMART is the acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. See how these two examples implement SMART goals:

• Reach an open rate of 30% for your welcome email series by the end of the year. This gives you something concrete to aim for. 
• Grow your email subscriber list to 2,000 within six months. It’s specific, measurable, and has a clear timeline.

2. Segment your audience

Rather than sending generic messages, take the time to segment your list. This ensures that each message goes to the right person every single time.

Segmentation all starts with the right data. Use CRO tools to track customer interactions and gather detailed insights.

Once you’ve got your data, it’s time to think about how to categorize your audience within your email marketing funnel. Consider dividing them based on factors like:

• Behavior: Have they made a purchase or browsed your website?
• Demographics: Age, gender, location, or profession
• Preferences: Interests, values, or product preferences
• Lifecycle: Loyal, new, and at-risk customers

Then, map out content that speaks directly to their needs at every stage of their journey. 

3. Map out the customer journey

Email journey mapping is an essential part of building a strong email customer journey. It gives you a clear picture of how your customers interact with your brand across different touchpoints. 

By aligning your emails with what your prospects are thinking or doing at each stage of their journey, you can create highly targeted campaigns. 

This is how you achieve this: 

• Awareness stage: Share educational content and introduce your brand
• Consideration stage: Provide product demos, case studies, or customer testimonials
• Decision stage: Offer discounts and remind them about abandoned carts
• Retention stage: Send personalized follow-ups and reward loyalty
• Advocacy stage: Encourage referrals, social shares, and reviews

With tools for email journey mapping, you can track behaviors and send tailored messages that will compel your audience to take action. 

Since every customer’s journey is unique, these tools will help you meet them where they are in their journey. 

4. Create and personalize your email content

Your content is the backbone of the customer journey. Ensure every email you craft is clear, personalized, actionable, and relevant. 

Here are a few points to consider:

• Write compelling subject lines that grab attention
• Use visuals, such as product images or infographics, to enhance the message
• Tailor the email’s copy, visuals, and offers to reflect subscriber preferences
• End with a strong call to action that guides the subscriber to the next step

This Resy email is a prime example of personalization done well. It directly addresses the reader by name. This makes the communication feel more personal and less like a mass marketing message. 

It goes a step further by including the subscriber’s reservation history, adding a layer of relevance and context that resonates with them:

 5. Automate your email sequences

Email automation not only saves you time but also delivers a personalized experience to your subscribers. These automations work based on triggers that you can set up, such as a subscriber’s behavior, actions, or milestones in their journey with your brand.

Automated emails feel personal because they respond directly to the recipient’s behavior, making them more engaging and relevant. 

The possibilities for automation are endless. You can automate:

• Welcome series: Introduce new subscribers to your brand with a thoughtful email sequence
• Abandoned cart emails: Remind customers of items they left in their cart and offer special deals to encourage them to complete their purchase
• Birthday emails: Wish your subscribers a happy birthday and include a special gift or discount to show appreciation
• Post-purchase emails: Automate follow-ups after purchases, including confirmation, shipping notifications, and upselling opportunities

Below is an example of email automation workflow in action:

6. Test and optimize

Once your email journey is live, it’s now time to monitor its performance. Analyze the following key metrics:

• Open rates
• Click through rates
• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates
• Unsubscribe rates
• Churn rates

Don’t forget to use A/B testing within your email marketing software to see what resonates most with your segmented audience and what needs improvement. 

Test different subject lines, CTAs, and designs to uncover what works best. This simple practice can boost your email performance and keep your content on point.

Email marketing customer journey examples

A well-planned customer journey can turn simple email sequences into powerful tools that drive engagement, conversions, and lasting relationships. 

In this section, we’ll explore five successful customer journey email examples across different industries: 

1. Onboarding sequences

An onboarding sequence is the perfect opportunity to introduce your brand and establish a connection with new subscribers. This journey begins immediately after someone signs up and sets the stage for how you’ll engage with them moving forward. 

A well-thought-out onboarding email sequence combines educational content, brand storytelling, and personalized touches to make the new subscriber feel welcome.

The welcome email below by Glossier is one of the email marketing examples that effectively warms up new subscribers. This, in turn, creates a positive first impression and makes them feel welcome.

It effectively outlines what the subscriber can expect, perfectly aligning with the goal of onboarding, which is to educate and guide the recipient on their journey with your brand.

The focused call to action also encourages immediate engagement, nudging the subscriber to take their next step:

2. Abandoned cart recovery

When a customer abandons their cart while shopping on your site, automated emails can step in and help recover these lost sales. 

You can send cart abandonment emails to customers who added items to their cart but didn’t complete the checkout. These reminders gently nudge potential customers back. They’re often accompanied by enticing offers like discounts or free shipping to encourage them to return and complete their purchase.

The email example below from New York Magazine is a great abandoned cart email. Its clean and visually appealing design draws focus to the discount, with the “20% OFF” prominently displayed in large, eye-catching text. 

The copy reinforces the value of subscribing, emphasizing the quality content and exclusive benefits readers will receive:

3. Post-purchase follow-up

Well-crafted post-purchase emails help maintain customer satisfaction, encourage repeat purchases, and build long-term loyalty. This journey focuses on enhancing the customer experience beyond the initial sale and keeping them engaged.

Here’s a great post-purchase follow-up email example. The email features a clean, minimal design with a friendly and conversational tone that invites customers to share their feedback.

The single, bold call to action makes it easy for recipients to take action. The email also highlights the importance of the subscribers’ input, framing it as an opportunity to help improve the brand and assist other customers:

4. Loyalty campaigns

These campaigns are designed to deepen your connection with repeat customers and turn them into brand advocates. They typically focus on rewarding consistent purchases, celebrating milestones, and offering exclusive content or perks.

Take this loyalty email campaign by McDonald’s, for instance. The email rewards loyal customers by showing how many points they’ve accumulated toward gaining free food. 

This encourages ongoing engagement by emphasizing the value of continued purchases and highlights the benefits of the brand’s rewards program:

5. Re-engagement series

Bringing back lapsed customers might seem like a challenge. However, with a well-planned series of automated re-engagement emails, you can reignite their interest and motivate them to make another purchase. 

These emails allow you to reconnect in a personalized way, making it easier to drive repeat business and improve profitability.

Below, Sometimes Always shows a useful re-engagement email example. The mention of the bottles “going fast” taps into the psychological principle of scarcity. This prompts the recipient to act quickly so they don’t miss out.

The clear calls to action also encourage immediate action, directing the customer back to the website to complete the purchase:

Best practices for optimizing email customer journeys

By following these key best practices, you can ensure your emails are actually creating real impact:

• Leverage A/B testing: Experiment with different subject lines, content, calls to action, and send times to refine your email campaigns
• Refine customer segmentation: Use behaviors, preferences, and past interactions to create personalized email content that resonates with audience segments
• Optimize timing and frequency: Test different send times to find out when your audience is most active, and balance the frequency to avoid email fatigue
• Personalize at scale: Tailor subject lines, content, and product suggestions based on user behavior to create highly personalized and engaging emails
• Analyze engagement metrics: Track key metrics like open rates, click-throughs, bounce rates, and conversions

The image below is an example of an email marketing report with metrics like bounce rates analyzed:

How Omnisend helps your email customer journey

Creating a seamless and effective email customer journey is fundamental to driving engagement, conversions, and long-term relationships. 

That’s where Omnisend steps in. This email marketing tool provides powerful features that simplify each stage of the customer journey.

With the platform’s automation workflows, you can set up personalized, triggered email sequences that respond to customer behavior. These workflows allow you to send the right message at the right time. This helps effortlessly guide leads from awareness to conversion.

Segmentation is another standout feature that makes it easy to divide your audience based on preferences, behaviors, or purchase history. This enables you to send targeted emails that truly resonate with each segment, whether it’s sharing educational content with new subscribers or offering exclusive discounts to loyal customers.

With the segmentation feature, you can now segment your subscriber list based on almost anything you can think of, as you can see in the image below:

Beyond automation and segmentation, Omnisend’s detailed analytics provide deep insights into your email performance, showing you open rates, click throughs, and conversion paths. 

These insights help fine-tune your campaigns, ensuring they align with customer needs at every stage of their journey.

By simplifying these complex tasks using easy-to-use tools, Omnisend empowers you to create an email customer journey that feels personalized, engaging, and tailored to your audience. 

Conclusion

Creating an effective email customer journey is a non-negotiable way to build meaningful connections with your audience and drive long-term engagement.

By mapping each stage of the customer journey, you can send personalized, relevant messages that align with their behaviors and needs.

From knowing real-life email journey examples to learning how to create effective strategies, this article has provided valuable insights to help you build stronger connections with your audience. 

Tools like Omnisend make it easier to track behaviors, segment audiences, and automate personalized emails that fully engage your customers. 

It’s your perfect ally for driving email marketing success in 2025!