A strategic guide on how to use email marketing across the funnel

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But that’s exactly why emails don’t impress anyone anymore — they feel like the same narrative from different senders.

At Belkins, we’ve seen this shift firsthand. Over the past decade, we’ve run allbound campaigns for 1000+ B2B companies across different industries and markets — from early-stage startups to enterprise organizations.

That experience gave us a unique dataset on what actually works today in different types of outreach: cold outbound, nurturing sequences, newsletters, LinkedIn campaigns, cold calls, paid advertising, and other inbound or outbound touchpoints.

And what we see is a clear pattern: the tactics that worked a few years ago don’t work the same way anymore.

To stand out today, an email needs to do much more than just land in the inbox. It has to:

• Deliver value before asking for attention
• Align with the current stage your prospect is at
• Work inside a coordinated strategy, preferably omnichannel
• Act like a connector between intent, content, and sales

So, instead of asking “How many emails should we send?”, the real question becomes “How should email work across the entire buyer journey?”

Let’s break down how email marketing supports different stages of the funnel and how to make it drive meaningful conversations.

Using email marketing for different B2B goals

Cold outreach alone is like an energy bar: it gives you a quick energy boost, which drains quickly. Nurturing is like a full meal — it takes time to prepare, but it sustains you longer. 

In B2B, you need both.

The right email marketing strategy supports different stages across the funnel:

• Brand awareness and trust building
• Lead nurturing and intent development
• Lead generation and sales activation

Each of them requires different messaging, cadence, and KPIs.

📚 Read more: Full-funnel B2B lead generation strategy for 2026 and beyond

Brand awareness and trust building (top of the funnel)

Goal: Build credibility and stay visible to buyers before they’re ready to talk.

At the top of the funnel, your potential buyer is not thinking “Which vendor should I choose?” Mostly, they don’t even realize there’s an issue. But even if they do, they ask themselves: 

• “Is this even a problem?”
• “How serious is it?” or “What consequences can it have?”
• “What are others doing about it?”
• “Do I need to care about this right now?”

If your first email says “Book a demo,” you’ve skipped at least four consideration stages, and prospects feel that gap. As a result, their trust drops instantly.

Instead, email at this stage should do four very specific things. Let’s unpack each one.

Reinforce your brand narrative

In other words, it’s how you tell others what you think on this or that topic, how you see the world. Your brand narrative answers:

• What do we believe about this market?
• What mistakes do we see companies making?
• What shift is happening in the industry?
• What future are we helping shape?

Example: Compare the subject lines below.

The first one is bad because it’s quite generic, vendor-focused, and centered on pushing your product. 

The second one is much better for this stage and goal, as you’re framing the industry and highlighting that “We understand this market deeply.” Inside the email, you can add:

• A brief analysis of the current market situation
• 2–3 data points to support your claims
• Reasons for the shift in buyer behavior
• A soft CTA, inviting them to find out more about what to do

And that’s a narrative.

Educate without pitching

Education at the top of the funnel (TOFU) should expand awareness, introduce proven frameworks, and help buyers realize they have an issue. Also, it should make the buyer slightly smarter in, let’s say, 2 minutes. Here are some ideas for educational content:

• Checklists
• Mini frameworks
• Quick diagnostic questions
• Before/after comparisons
• Data-backed benchmarks

If you pitch too early, you communicate: “I care more about closing than about understanding.” And potential buyers can sense that instantly.

Example: Let’s say you sell revenue operations consulting and want to send an educational email.

Again, the second one is better because you’re not selling. The structure of such an email can be as follows:

• Name those revenue leaks + the reasons behind them
• Suggest a real example
• Share a micro-framework to address those issues
• Finish with a soft CTA, inviting them to read/discover more

Now, when the problem escalates, they might remember you.

Deliver insights buyers can use immediately

This is where most newsletters fail, because they often summarize content, promote assets, or recycle announcements. High-performing TOFU emails, in contrast, give immediate value.

Example structure:

Subject: Why 60% of outbound fails before email #3

Body:

• 2-sentence insight
• Short explanation
• 1 tactical takeaway they can apply tomorrow (e.g., “If your first follow-up doesn’t add new information, you’re not following up, you’re nagging.”)

Overall, your key goal should be to equip your potential clients with practical tools and insights to help them operate better. 

Here are some more immediate-use content ideas:

• “If you’re attending X conference, ask this question.”
• “Before running your next campaign, check these 3 signals.” 
• “If reply rates have dropped, audit these 2 things first.”

Position yourself as an industry authority

You can say you’re an expert in something 1,000 times, but actual expertise comes from: 

• Data
• Specificity
• Strong opinions backed by experience
• Pattern recognition

Here are some of the ways for you to signal your credibility in email:

• Reference real campaign results
• Share internal benchmarks
• Explain when and why something doesn’t work
• Break common myths using some practical examples
• Share behind-the-scenes insights, playbooks, processes, etc.

For example:

“We’ve seen highly specialized companies outperform category leaders in reply rates by 47% because it’s easier to target a sharp pain than a broad issue.”

That kind of insight changes how buyers think.

Another example of statements demonstrating weak and strong authority:

The second one is much more specific and shows you’ve got hands-on experience with different email campaigns. Real-life cases or numbers added to that message will only reinforce it.

Lead nurturing and intent development (middle of the funnel)

Goal: Turn interest into buying intent.

This is where email stops being broadcast and becomes behavioral. In other words, at the awareness stage, you educate, and at the nurturing stage, you respond.

Nurturing does three things exceptionally well:

1. Reduces perceived risk
2. Builds category trust
3. Aligns timing without forcing it

In long B2B sales cycles, you can’t predict when budgets will be unlocked or priorities will shift.

You can, however, ensure that you’re visible, credible, and relevant when they do.

When to start nurturing

People move from awareness to nurturing when engagement compounds.

At Belkins, we track lifecycle progression inside HubSpot and pay attention to these engagement signals:

• Page views
• Content downloads
• Webinar registrations
• Repeat email clicks

These interactions feed into engagement scoring and influence lifecycle movement: Lead → MQL → SQL.

Here are some examples of how we actually score those interactions:

When a lead gets a total of 40 points, it prompts our business development team to reach out and qualify them.

Read more: How we score leads at Belkins: Our CRM model, criteria & real-world logic

3 types of lead nurturing flows we use at Belkins

We believe that nurturing should be structured, segmented, and built around intent. Some of our automated flows include:

• Website download nurturing
• Blog subscriber sequences
• Closed-lost re-engagement campaigns
• Segment-based flows tailored by loss reason

Each of them serves a different purpose. Let’s have a closer look at three of them.

#1. Content download sequence

If someone downloads any gated content, we treat it as an expression of curiosity with direction. In such a case, the follow-up should:

• Expand on the topic
• Address likely objections
• Provide deeper use cases
• Introduce relevant case studies

Take an example of a 3-step sequence after the prospect downloads our Cold Outreach Benchmarks Report:

Email #1 (sent 1–2 days after download)

Email #2 (if they clicked email #1)

Email #3 (soft transition towards sales, sent 7–10 days later if engagement continues)

Why does this sequence work? 

It follows the correct nurturing logic:

1. Reinforce insight
2. Deepen context
3. Introduce positioning
4. Convert softly

So you gradually move the lead through Curiosity → Reflection → Relevance → Conversation instead of abruptly jumping from “Downloaded report” → “Book demo.”

#2. Blog subscriber sequences

These are long-term credibility builders. We use them to:

• Keep our brand top of mind
• Highlight and reinforce our expertise
• Surface patterns across content

This is slow-burning nurturing, which builds familiarity rather than forcing urgency. Here’s an example of such a sequence.

Email #1 (welcome + positioning)

Email #2 (pattern recognition, sent 5–7 days later)

Email #3 (immediate value, sent 10–14 days later)

Email #4 (soft persona-specific branching, sent 20–25 days later)

Email #5 (authority builder, sent 30–40 days later)

Why does this sequence work? 

It builds:

1. Credibility before positioning
2. Familiarity before conversion
3. Authority before pitch

And it allows engagement scoring to determine the next steps.

If at any point this subscriber:

• Clicks multiple times
• Engages deeply
• Registers for a webinar
• Downloads gated content

They move into:

• A monthly insight newsletter
• Quarterly benchmark highlights
• Event-based invites
• Intent-based routing if engagement spikes
• Or SDR-supported activation

Thus, you can either continue nurturing or switch to sales-based conversations.

#3. Closed-lost re-engagement sequence

Many companies mark deals as closed-lost and move on.

We don’t.

We believe that even lost opportunities can be won; that’s why we segment all closed-lost contacts into several groups:

• General reactivation
• Competitor switchers
• Potential in-house decision makers

Each group receives different messaging to meet their needs. For example:

Competitor switchers might get:

• Industry comparisons
• Migration case studies
• ROI breakdowns

In-house decision makers might get:

• “Build vs. buy” frameworks
• Cost-of-delay analysis
• Internal resource calculators

This way, we make our personalization strategic and address decision logic.

Take an example of a sequence targeting competitor switchers:

Email #1 (soft re-entry)

Email #2 (risk reversal and comparison, sent 5–7 days later if there’s no reply to email #1)

Email #3 (case study with friction angle, sent 3–5 days after email #2)

Email #4 (migration confidence builder, sent 5–7 days after email #3)

Email #5 (soft exit with value drop, sent in 3 days if there’s no response to email #4)

Why does this sequence work?

This sequence:

• Is non-aggressive, pattern-based
• Doesn’t accuse
• Opens the door for dissatisfaction
• De-risks switching
• Normalizes reconsideration
• Signals expertise without attacking the competitor
• Provides direct proof
• Positions you as a safe alternative
• Ends on value, not silence
• Keeps authority intact
• Makes you helpful even if they don’t switch

Overall, remember that competitor switchers are experienced buyers, so your tone should signal:

• Maturity
• Market awareness
• Respect
• Structural superiority

Handled right, they convert faster than net-new prospects. Handled poorly, they disappear permanently.

Personalization in nurturing vs. outbound

We’ve said it multiple times and won’t get tired of repeating it: Personalization goes far beyond mentioning the company name or referencing a recent LinkedIn post. 

Truly tailored messages are either trigger-based or behavioral — and that’s the key differentiating factor between outbound and nurturing personalization.

Which one is better? Depends on your goals, timeframe, and the stage your prospect is at.

Read more: How we nurture B2B leads: Belkins’ strategy

Lead generation and sales activation (bottom of the funnel)

Goal: Start meaningful conversations that convert.

There’s a common narrative that outbound no longer works. But what we consistently see is this: Yes, generic outbound doesn’t work. Contextual outbound still does.

So, what actually starts conversations today? Based on our campaign experience across 90+ industries, outbound that works tends to fall into one of these categories.

Networking-style outreach

Instead of pitching, you initiate a peer-level exchange. 

For example, rather than saying:

“We help companies improve outbound performance.”

Try this:

“We’ve been analyzing reply rate shifts across your industry and noticed something interesting about ICP fatigue. Curious if you’re seeing similar patterns?”

Such an approach invites perspective and doesn’t sound pushy.

Insight-led messaging

Buyers respond when you help them interpret their environment.

For example:

• Regulatory changes affecting compliance
• Market saturation trends
• Performance benchmark gaps
• Operational inefficiencies that are common at their stage

It’s more about saying, “Here’s what we’re seeing across your market.”

Trigger-based timing

Outbound personalization, at its best, is signal-driven. Typical triggers we use:

• New C-level hires
• Regulatory shifts
• Industry event attendance
• Public funding
• Market expansion

These signals create natural conversation openings. But here’s the nuance: Triggers don’t guarantee intent. They just create relevance, and intent still has to be uncovered.

From our experience, event campaigns that target the trade shows’ and conferences’ attendees often perform exceptionally well because the context already exists. What’s more, prospects are in networking mode, expect conversations to happen, and are more eager to book short meetings.

But what we noticed is that high meeting volume doesn’t always mean high qualification. 

That’s why event-based outreach is ideal when:

• The goal is to start conversations
• The company wants exposure
• The sales team can qualify post-meeting

If leadership expects every booked call to be a sales-ready opportunity, expectations must be recalibrated.

Read more: 11 cold email templates that performed best in our clients’ campaigns

Email marketing as part of an omnichannel strategy

Though we still see emails (both inbound and outbound) as a powerful tool serving multiple purposes, it works better when combined with other channels. 

Let’s review several possible scenarios of how email can reinforce different touchpoints (and vice versa).

Email + LinkedIn

Email builds a structured narrative. LinkedIn builds familiarity. Used together, they create layered exposure.

How it works in real life:

1. Email introduces a core insight.
2. LinkedIn reinforces it through connection notes, posts, or comments.
3. As a result, prospects see consistent positioning across platforms.

But it’s not a silver bullet. Sometimes this exact combination won’t help.

Still, LinkedIn can effectively reinforce email. Let’s see some examples of that.

Example #1 (insight + social reinforcement)

Step 1 — Email

Subject line: Outbound fatigue is rising in saturated ICPs

The email shares:

• Benchmark data
• Pattern recognition
• A short tactical takeaway

Step 2 — LinkedIn

Two days later, SDR connects with:

At the same time, the founder posts on LinkedIn about a widening gap between reply rates and meaningful conversation rates, citing numbers to support it.

Now the prospect:

• Saw the structured argument in the email
• Sees the same pattern publicly discussed
• Experiences consistency

Example #2 (event-based coordination)

Email:

LinkedIn:

SDR sends a connection request:

Example #3 (persona-specific adaptation)

Let’s say the general narrative is “Segment precision matters more than volume.”

To a VP of Marketing, LinkedIn might say: “Curious how you’re balancing scale vs. segmentation this quarter?”

To a CFO, an email might say: “Teams scaling outbound volume without narrowing ICP are seeing declining ROI efficiency.”

So, the strategic core stays the same, but the tone and emphasis shift and adapt to each channel.

Example #4 (nurturing → LinkedIn visibility)

Say the prospect clicks two nurture emails about lifecycle friction, and you get no reply/engagement.

Instead of pushing harder via email, SDR can:

• View their LinkedIn profile
• Engage with a relevant post
• Share a neutral industry insight

This reduces perceived pressure, and when a follow-up email arrives later, it will feel familiar.

Read more: How we use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation

Email + call

Cold calls in isolation feel intrusive, yet calls after contextual email feel timely. The simplest email and call sequence may look like this:

1. Email introduces relevance.
2. Prospect opens or engages.
3. SDR calls referencing that context.

While email provides the foundation for your call, you can mention it to make the call feel connected. Something like:

• “Hey, I emailed you about ‘X’ — wanted to see if you’re up to discussing details.”
• “Hi, I sent you an email about the upcoming conference and wanted to double-check your availability to meet with my CEO, Adam.”
• “Hi, it’s Rob from ‘X’, we talked about ‘Y’ over email. To reduce those back-and-forth messages, let’s book a quick 15-minute intro next week?”

Read more: The ultimate guide to B2B objection handling and closing deals

Email + sales outreach

When marketing and outbound emails align, the prospect experiences consistency.

They don’t feel like two different teams are approaching them with two different agendas. They hear the same narrative, reinforced from multiple angles.

We noticed that such alignment improves pipeline velocity by at least 34%.

Here are a few examples of syncing the messages:

Example #1 (insight → activation)

Marketing layer

The newsletter shares benchmark data about declining reply rates in broad ICPs.

Outbound layer

“We’ve been working with several companies in your space facing similar reply rate compression — particularly where the ICP scope is broad. Are you experiencing something similar?”

Example #2 (event → SDR acceleration)

Marketing layer

Email promotes a webinar on sustainability compliance shifts, and the prospect registers for it.

Outbound layer

“Noticed you registered for the compliance webinar — curious whether this is tied to an upcoming regulatory deadline on your side?”

Example #3 (case study → direct relevance)

Marketing layer

Email shares a case study of a company switching from a competitor due to reporting limitations.

Outbound layer

“We recently helped a team migrate after encountering reporting constraints at scale — if that’s ever relevant, happy to share what’s changed structurally.”

When prospects recognize your narrative across channels, they don’t need to “relearn” who you are at every touchpoint. And that familiarity speeds up progression down the funnel.

Read more: B2B sales outreach strategy for 2026 (Belkins blueprint)

Email + retargeting

The key point here is that email introduces the narrative and retargeting sustains it, keeping you visible.

In long B2B cycles

• Buyers rarely convert after one interaction.
• Decision-making involves multiple stakeholders.
• Internal discussions happen offline.

And that’s where visibility and familiarity come in handy: if the stakeholders have seen you multiple times, it reduces perceived risk, so your chances of standing out among similar solutions or services are higher.

Retargeting also solves a common B2B problem: your email might reach one stakeholder, while retargeting can cover the whole buying committee. For instance:

• VP of Sales receives a nurture email.
• CFO later sees a retargeting ad about ROI efficiency.
• Marketing Director sees a LinkedIn ad about campaign optimization.

A few more examples of combining email marketing or outreach with ads:

Example #1

Email introduces: Micro-lesson on reply rate compression.

Retargeting reinforces: Short visual breakdown of segmentation strategy.

Example #2

Email shares: Case study about competitor switch.

Retargeting reinforces: Quote snippet from that case study.

Example #3

Email promotes: Webinar about regulatory shifts.

Retargeting reinforces: Reminder ad framed around industry impact.

When aligned, this combination:

• Extends message lifespan
• Builds subconscious familiarity
• Reduces friction at the decision stage
• Supports multi-threaded deals

It ensures your narrative doesn’t disappear after one open.

And instead of: Touch → Silence → Restart later

You get: Touch → Reinforcement → Recognition → Action

Why email sequences should focus on intent, not volume

Once, we believed more outreach meant more growth, but the TerraScope case became a turning point. 

When they first approached us, we used the classic strategy: large prospect lists and high-volume outreach. In the first 6 months, the results looked solid — we booked 54 meetings in Q1 and 40 in Q2. But then the amount began to drop: 25 meetings in Q3 and only 7 in Q4. By the end of the year:

• The total addressable market was exhausted.
• Engagement started dropping.
• Only 25% of meetings were truly sales-qualified. 

Instead of finding new audiences, we asked a different question: what if the problem isn’t reach but relevance?

So, we:

• Restructured the journey
• Mapped the buying committee (CSOs, Sustainability Managers, Procurement, CFOs)
• Moved from high-volume outbound to a targeted, omnichannel, full-funnel playbook
• Build sequences around intent signals, persona behavior, and stage progression

And here are just a few of the results we got:

• 2x more sales-ready meetings with large companies in Q2 
• $2.2M total pipeline generated

The TerraScope case taught us something critical:

1. Growth comes from tightening relevance at every stage.
2. Email sequences shouldn’t be designed around volume targets. They should be designed around intent progression.
3. Sending more emails fills inboxes, but sending smarter emails fills pipelines.

Read more: How we helped TerraScope re-engage its market and boost sales-ready meetings

How to measure success across the funnel

We believe that you shouldn’t measure email performance in isolation. That’s why we pay more attention to:

• Stage movement
• Conversation quality
• Pipeline impact

Let’s see some examples of what we track at each stage of the funnel.

Awareness stage: Are we building trust or just getting opens?

At the top of the funnel, open rate is the most overrated metric.

As Tetiana Musina, our HubSpot Implementation Specialist, puts it:

“We don’t look at opens as a success signal. We look at engagement: CTR, replies, time spent viewing the email, content downloads, and webinar registrations.”

That’s the difference between passive visibility and active interest.

For example, when we compared three newsletters:

• Two focused on industry reports and expert webinars
• One was a simple podcast roundup

The first two generated almost 3x higher CTR and click rates than the podcast-only email and significantly lower unsubscribe rates:

The message is clear: audiences don’t reward volume or curation alone. They engage with depth, relevance, and actionable insight.

So, at the awareness stage, we monitor:

• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Click rate
• Replies
• Webinar registrations
• Content downloads
• Engagement score growth

If none of these metrics grow, then awareness isn’t working, and we revisit our strategy.

Nurturing stage: Is engagement deepening?

Nurturing is meant to increase the signal strength, which is why we measure:

• Engagement score growth
• Repeated content interaction
• Reply depth (short answer vs. meaningful exchange)
• Return visits
• Pipeline stage movement

The growth of engagement score is the primary signal for moving someone deeper into the funnel, but we pay attention to other behavioral changes, too.

Outbound and direct sales: Are we creating meaningful conversations?

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of hyper-relevant outreach. That’s why we measure outbound success by:

• Sales-qualified meetings
• Conversion to opportunity
• Pipeline velocity

From our experience, tailored campaigns based on real market triggers (new hires, regulations, events, expansion signals) significantly increase meaningful conversation rates compared to broad campaigns. 

And yes, such a shift requires more research, but it definitely pays off:

Final thoughts

To sum it up, if email is treated as a volume machine, it fails. To bring results, it should be part of a structured buyer journey.

Before sending any message, think of:

• Who exactly are we targeting — and why?
• What stage are they in?
• What problem are they aware of (or unaware of)?
• What signal tells us they’re ready to move forward?

Without those answers, even the best copy won’t convert.

One more key point to remember is that strategy always comes first. You can use multiple channels in isolation, but they only really work when they are orchestrated:

• Email builds structured depth.
• LinkedIn builds familiarity.
• Calls create immediacy.
• Content builds authority.
• Retargeting reinforces memory.

Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t to increase open rates; it’s to start conversations with people who are actually ready to have them.

And that only happens when email isn’t a campaign but part of a coordinated system designed around intent.