Are You Selling Too Soon? How Message to Market Match Drives Conversions
We love diving into psychological principles like scarcity, social proof, and urgency because they’re fun, easy to implement, and do indeed help boost sales. But here’s the truth: These tactics are more like the icing on the cake than the cake itself.
Without message to market match—ensuring your message resonates with where your audience is in their buying journey—these clever tricks won’t do much to move the needle on your sales. In fact, they could end up falling flat if your message isn’t hitting the mark from the start.
What is Message to Market Match?
It’s one of the most powerful concepts in modern marketing, and in simple terms, this means tailoring your marketing messages to fit the specific stage your potential customers are in on their journey. After all, there’s no point using urgency tactics, countdown timers, or testimonials in your messaging if the person you’re speaking to isn’t even interested in what you’re offering yet.
When you align your marketing message with where the customer is in the sales funnel, you can improve your results and increase the likelihood of converting a prospect into a paying customer.
Let’s dive into how you can implement this approach, from piquing interest to driving urgency—and why segmenting your list is a game-changer.
The Marketing Funnel Breakdown: Where Is Your Prospect?
First, let’s quickly review the typical stages of a marketing funnel:
- Awareness
At this stage, prospects are just becoming aware of your brand or product. They may have heard of you but aren’t fully engaged yet. This is where interest and curiosity begin to form. - Interest
Now that they know who you are, they start to look into what you offer. This is a critical stage for educating your audience and building trust. - Decision
The prospect is actively evaluating your solution. They may be comparing it to other options. This is where urgency and scarcity come into play. - Action
The prospect is ready to buy. They’ve made their decision and are ready to pull the trigger.
Understanding these stages helps you decide what kind of message will resonate most at any given time. Sending the wrong message at the wrong stage can hurt your chances of a sale.
Why Message to Market Match is So Important
Imagine you’re trying to sell an expensive course or product, and you’re sending out an email blast to your entire list, pushing an offer with a countdown timer and phrases like “last chance” or “hurry before it’s gone.”
You’re trying to create a sense of urgency, but if the recipient has never shown any interest in your offering or hasn’t even opened your emails before, this approach is likely to fall flat.
This is where message to market match comes in. You need to think about where your prospect is in their journey. For example, a prospect who is in the awareness stage of your funnel shouldn’t be bombarded with urgency tactics. Instead, they need to be educated and entertained, not pressured into making a decision.
Nurturing Leads with Educational Content
In the early stages of the funnel, your focus should be on educating your prospects and piquing their interest. At this point, your emails shouldn’t be sales-heavy or pushy. Instead, you should send content that informs, entertains, and builds trust.
For example, if you’re launching a new product, send a series of educational emails that explain the benefits of your product, share case studies, or provide tips related to the problem your product solves. These emails should never feel salesy—they should provide value first and foremost.
The key here is that you’re pre-framing and pre-warming your audience for a potential offer down the road. By sending several of these non-salesy emails, you lay the groundwork for when the time comes to introduce your offer. And when you do send an offer, it won’t feel out of the blue—it will feel like a natural next step in their journey.
Segmenting Your List: A Key Strategy for Success
One of the most powerful aspects of modern marketing is segmentation. It’s no longer effective to treat everyone on your list the same. Instead, you need to segment your list based on how engaged your subscribers are. This is where message to market match really shines.
Once you’ve sent out those educational emails to your full list, you’ll start to see who is actively engaging with your content—those who click on links and view your offers. These are your hot leads, the ones who are most likely to convert.
At this point, you should segment your list into two groups:
- Engaged Subscribers
These are the people who have clicked through on your educational emails and shown interest in your offer. - Unengaged Subscribers
These are the people who haven’t clicked or interacted with your emails at all.
Now, here’s where the magic happens: You should only send urgency-driven, countdown, and scarcity emails to your engaged subscribers—the ones who’ve clicked through and shown interest in your offer. Why? Because these are the people who are actively considering your product and need a nudge to take action.
Meanwhile, your unengaged subscribers should continue to receive content designed to inform and entertain—nothing “salesy” yet. You want to keep them interested without pushing them into a decision before they’re ready.
By segmenting your list in this way, you ensure that you’re not alienating potential customers with aggressive sales tactics. Instead, you’re speaking to them at the right stage in their journey.
Let’s Look at 2 Examples of Message to Market Match with Segmenting:
- E-Commerce Store Launching a New Product
Scenario: An online store selling skincare products is launching a new serum. Instead of sending a sales-heavy email about the new product to their entire list, they first send out a series of educational emails to build awareness. These emails explain the benefits of the ingredients in the serum, provide skincare tips, and share customer testimonials about the brand’s products in general.
Segmentation Strategy:
- Full List: The first round of emails goes to everyone on the email list, focusing on educating and engaging the audience.
- Engaged Subscribers: Those who click on links or show interest in the serum are then segmented into a group for follow-up emails that focus on the upcoming launch with urgency, such as a limited-time discount or a bonus gift with the purchase.
- Unengaged Subscribers: Those who didn’t click on any links continue to receive educational content without any direct sales messages.
Result: By focusing urgency and scarcity tactics on those who’ve shown interest (clicked through), the store is able to increase conversions and ensure that it’s not alienating people who aren’t yet ready to purchase.
- Online Course Provider Offering a New Webinar
Scenario: A company offering online business courses has a new free webinar coming up, aimed at helping people increase their sales strategies. Instead of sending an email blast to the entire email list with a countdown to the webinar and a “sign up now” urgency, they start by sending a series of emails that provide valuable content—like tips on improving sales, free templates, and a sneak peek into the topics of the webinar.
Segmentation Strategy:
- Full List: Initial educational emails go to everyone on the email list, with a focus on providing value without pushing the webinar just yet.
- Engaged Subscribers: Those who click on the content or show interest in learning more are segmented into a group that gets follow-up emails with urgency messaging—like “Limited spots left for the webinar” or “Last chance to register today.”
- Unengaged Subscribers: Subscribers who haven’t clicked or interacted with the emails don’t receive the urgency messaging. Instead, they get more value-focused emails that lead up to the webinar.
Result: This targeted approach helps the company avoid annoying those who aren’t ready to commit while focusing urgency on people who are already interested, ultimately driving higher webinar sign-up rates.
Reaction-Based Marketing: A More Effective Approach
This strategy of sending urgency emails only to those who’ve already shown interest is part of a broader approach called reaction-based marketing. Rather than bombarding your entire list with the same message, you’re reacting to how your audience engages with your content.
With reaction-based marketing, you send tailored messages based on what your subscribers have already done. For example, if someone has clicked on a link in your email but didn’t make a purchase, you might send them a reminder email with a special offer or bonus to sweeten the deal.
This targeted approach helps you avoid wasting time and effort on people who aren’t yet ready to convert, while focusing your attention on those who are already warmed up and closer to making a purchase.
Bottom Line: The Power of Message to Market Match
The idea behind message to market match is simple: Tailor your marketing to meet your prospects exactly where they are in their buying journey. This requires understanding the different stages of your funnel, segmenting your list, and reacting to engagement to send the right message at the right time.
By sending educational, non-salesy content to your entire list, followed by urgency and scarcity messages only to those who’ve shown interest, you’ll improve your chances of converting leads into customers. The result is a more effective marketing strategy that doesn’t waste resources on people who aren’t ready to buy yet.
So, before you send out that next promotional email, ask yourself: is this the right message for where my audience is in their journey? If not, adjust your approach—and watch your conversions soar.
